THERE are two Beth Morgans. The first is the woman portrayed in the media, the femme fatale who slept with powerful property developers and became the centre of an extraordinary corruption hearing into Wollongong City Council.
The second is the one I’ve been sitting next to for the past two weeks.
The first is the woman in the sunglasses, her shield against the world. For the media, the sunglasses help preserve the mystery. For Morgan, they give her a faint hope that people will not recognise her. The second is the woman in clear prescription glasses, fighting to salvage what she can of her reputation and future livelihood, carefully studying transcripts of evidence.
For the past fortnight Morgan, 32, has been the most talked about woman in Australia. Each day, as she left the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption in Sydney, media chased the former Wollongong town planner down the street.
Armed only with her sunglasses, she stared straight ahead. It was as if she were following Winston Churchill’s famous saying: if you’re going through hell, just keep going.
Inside the ICAC, she sat in the same seat every day, checking transcripts and taking notes of new evidence.
For 10 days we got into a pattern: we both sat in the back row, leaving a vacant seat in the middle. In the early days she cut a solitary figure. At lunch she was alone, flicking through a magazine.

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