Big Blue Sky Read online

  Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers should be aware that this document may contain the images or names of people who have passed away.

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  First published in 2015

  Copyright © Peter Garrett 2015

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available

  from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 76011 041 3

  eISBN 978 1 92526 833 1

  Internal and cover design by Lisa White

  Cover photography: Sophie Howarth

  Design of illustration inserts by Bookhouse, Sydney

  Index by Puddingburn Publishing Services

  Typeset by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  I dedicate this book to Doris,

  the love of my life,

  and our three beautiful girls, Emily, May and Grace.

  CONTENTS

  Suite M1 52, Parliament House, Canberra, Friday, 28 June 2013, 5 p.m.

  1 Homebody

  2 Quiet at the back

  3 The place to be

  4 School of rock

  5 A weird mob

  6 Losses and gains

  7 Out and about

  8 The hurdy-gurdy men

  9 Lift-off

  10 Big moves

  11 Keep on the sunny side

  12 A continent immense in the world

  13 Forty thousand years

  14 The Australia Card

  15 The time had come

  16 ‘We’re all greenies now’

  17 One place left in the world

  18 Broome time

  19 Up for grabs

  20 Amsterdam and bust

  21 Wrong mine, wrong place

  22 I see motion

  23 Into the ring

  24 No time to waste

  25 Mad dance

  26 On the inside

  27 Art for everyone’s sake

  28 Day of reckoning

  29 Dying light

  30 The fall guy

  31 Great big singers

  32 The mixmaster

  33 It’s education, stupid

  34 Joker in the pack

  35 Are we there yet?

  Epilogue and pictures

  Acknowledgements

  SUITE M1 52, PARLIAMENT HOUSE, CANBERRA, FRIDAY, 28 JUNE 2013, 5 P.M.

  IT’S GONE ALL ghostly quiet and frozen still.

  Everything is in silent outline, like the mountains of the moon when it rises close, fat and yellow over Weereewa, the mystery lake up the road.

  Other than the background hum of machines on standby, and the tick of the clock bouncing off the walls in my office, there’s no sound. The phones have stopped ringing—in this giant cubbyhole of politics and power a sure sign that an endpoint has been reached. Double-strength fixed windows and solid doors muffle loud noise but there is none right now.

  The vast tiled courtyard below, where the prime minister’s press conferences take place, is at last empty. I can still see the faint outlines of body shapes, the spectral residue of human heat from the crowd here earlier: before the doors closed, before the changing of the guard, before the rats and angels went scurrying for the outside world.

  I’ve never suffered the affliction of loneliness; just lucky I suppose. I like people, but I like the measured beat of my own company as well. Still, there have been times when I’ve felt alone.

  Sitting in the gutter, sober, listening to the distant whoops and whistles of a New Year’s Eve party.

  Squatting on the edge of a dry salt lake in the Western Desert with no sign of another person.

  Standing in front of the microphone late into the night when everyone else has gone, the headphones replaying an orchestra of sounds as I try to find the words and melodies to match.

  At those times and others I’ve been a castaway on my own island, but they were nothing to what I’m feeling now. The previous afternoon I’d phoned Doris, my sweetheart of nearly thirty years, to tell her this adventure was finished. She was about to leave for a month to attend to distant family business. Bad timing, but at least we’d be seeing more of each other in the months and years ahead.

  I take a deep breath, and then another, and slowly look around the room.

  A massive wooden desk still groaning with paper and, behind it, racks of books and piles of reports, some small family photos.

  Hanging on the walls are my sustenance: photographs and art and memorabilia. There’s a big Freddie Timms painting that I look at every day. For me it’s got more power than a dozen Monets. He’s sung it into life and even if I don’t understand all its meanings—and I don’t—it’s ever strong. An elder from the Kimberley, Freddie was renowned for challenging the claims of certain historians who, discounting the oral evidence of local Aboriginal people, denied that some of his family had been killed by white troopers in a massacre barely a hundred years before. The great man surprised me by turning up at the office one day, with a group of community leaders from the east Kimberley, to seek support for education programs for their young. They sat directly under Freddie’s work but no one mentioned it; the talk was all business. On the way out, though, Freddie paused, glanced over his shoulder and said, ‘Not a bad painter that one.’ I know I won’t remember the scores of meetings, the endless sea of faces, the fine detail of every policy, but I will remember that old man’s wry humour.

  Like a newsreel in reverse, images are racing through my mind: a small blond-haired boy who is sure he knows the answer, thrusting his hand up again and again and again in grade six at Gordon West Public School; twenty years later balanced on the edge of a stage, looking out at a heaving mass of bodies swaying and singing in unison as ‘Lucky Country’ rings out across a huge field; on the street, megaphone in hand, calling for us to become a more independent nation and start caring for the fabric of the land; crammed into the boardroom of the Randwick Labor Club, shoulder to shoulder with supporters and family, as the votes come in and I’m chosen as a new member of parliament.

  My staff are now gone, the younger ones dispatched early, before emotions spilled over. My ever-loyal deputy and my chief of staff are the last to leave, but leave they must: to go to homes in other cities; to catch their breath with loved ones; to gather their thoughts and try to make some sense of what has just happened; to grieve and rage against the injustice, the bloody ordinariness, of the past few days.

  I poke my head into the long corridor, all heritage colours and solid furniture. To the left are the public areas of Parliament House and the labyrinth of meeting rooms and backbenchers’ suites. To the right lie the ministerial wing and the offices of my colleagues. There is no one; no people, no movement, just an eerie silence.

  I feel like I’m on a giant abandoned raft driftin
g across a familiar stretch of water. For the last time, I walk the wide corridors, slowing to take in the paintings that hang on the walls. Some of Australia’s best art is here, morsels that feed your spirit in the crazy times, although I know most people rushing by take little notice.

  I head down the stairs and past the cabinet room and the prime minister’s suite.

  Solemn guards look up and nod. ‘Good afternoon, Minister—sorry, er, Mr Garrett.’

  I walk past the offices of the ministers for Defence, Employment, Environment, Resources and Energy, and up the stairs past Trade, Health, before finally returning to School Education, Early Childhood and Youth.

  It’s time to finish packing my bags. The leader of the nation has gone, and soon her conqueror will occupy the office below with his minions and their plans. For now I am in the gap between, the calm before another storm, with giant plastic bags full of shredded paper dumped in the corridors the only sign of the revolution just passed—other than the parade of talking heads offering postmortems of victory and loss on the television screens in every room. Thankfully, the volume is turned down.

  Although only twenty-four hours have passed, already the howling cesspit that is the House of Representatives feels like a lifetime ago. It’s darkening outside when I leave the vacant office, stepping over cardboard boxes and abandoned files, flicking the lights off as I go. A pause to reflect and give thanks—no regrets.

  The door is heavy. I pull it closed and it thuds behind me.

  After a mourning day that’s gone on forever, it’s the loudest sound I’ve heard.

  1

  HOMEBODY

  The kangaroo tail glints in the sun

  As the freckle boys paddle out at Curly

  Mascot smells sweeter than eucalypt gum

  I’m coming home to blue hills in the morning

  It’s a journey that’s lasted as long as my youth

  I never was one to quit early

  But the miles of white lines are a sign of the times

  I’m coming home to blue hills in the morning

  I wish all my friends could see with my eyes

  What I can’t re-create just by telling

  Acres of red roofs in early sunlight

  Out of the gullies massed wings taking flight

  I’ve seen wars and dark places glass castles of kings

  Jewels and junkyards, the craziest things

  The satellite salesman’s glittering nose ring

  I’m coming home to blue hills in the morning

  Yes, I yearned to see sandstone cliffs washed by the dawn

  Longed for the white cradle that guards the lagoon

  To the arms of my sweet love I’m coming home soon

  Coming home to blue hills in the morning

  BLUE WAS THE colour of my earliest years.

  The clearest big blue skies that soared whichever way you looked.

  The blue dresses my mum wore, fifties-style, fresh from the copper tub, drying crisp on the clothesline that stood, arms out like a solitary soldier, in the middle of the backyard.

  I’m the first of three boys, and boys wear blue. No wonder I like Miles Davis, and Brett Whiteley, and being outside.

  I grew up in Australia, the lucky land for most, born in a quiet suburb on the edge of a city picking up speed and starting its spread. Sydney, the prettiest, take-your-breath-away town in Australia, bordered by the Pacific Ocean on its eastern side and to the west by the Blue Mountains we could just see from our home.

  Such good fortune: big patches of bush splashing in the valleys and across the spiny sandstone ridges, the most brilliant harbour in the world—surely—with beautiful beaches stretching north and south, only half an hour away.

  And there, a succession of arcs of white sand between rocky headlands, tranquil lagoons, rolling surf—a child’s perfect playground. Splash in the clean blue water, swoon in the soft warm sand, with the gentle swishing sound of waves washing in and out. Clear light cascading in from all sides.

  ‘When I’m dreaming, I dream in blue.’

  I strain to drag back early memories: low murmuring voices—my mum and dad’s—in the kitchen; a toy Sydney Harbour Bridge, made of steel like the real thing; the smell of freshly washed linen; and, later, the radio.

  Radio has been my lifelong companion. I was surrounded by its crackling hum from an early age, particularly the live broadcasts of the Test cricket matches between Australia and England. If it wasn’t on in the kitchen, it was blasting out of someone’s garage or echoing over the back fence. The pop of ball on bat, the sudden eruption of the crowd if a wicket fell, and always the pitter-patter, ambling commentary. Even today, when I care less about who is winning or losing, I have it on. It’s a comforting noise. I must have heard the broadcasts of countless games, the vibrations and timbres of a day on the green, while still in the womb.

  Years later Mum maintained she’d become so tired of keeping an eye on me once I started crawling that she put me in a large peg bag and hung me out on the line with the washing. We couldn’t quite believe it, but maybe it explains why I don’t have a fear of heights.

  We always listened to the world’s longest-running radio serial, a soapie about life in rural Australia. It came on before lunch every weekday, introduced by a melancholy classical theme, strings with French horns, repeated and supplemented with oboes, and then the sombre English accent voiceover: ‘The ABC presents Blue Hills by Gwen Meredith.’ I remember those words more clearly than the lyrics to some Midnight Oil songs. When you’re very young, you take it all in, especially sound—and whatever your mum is doing. And it sticks; it makes you who you are.

  …

  I have my birth certificate in front of me.

  When and where born: 16 April 1953, Sydney Sanitarium and Hospital, Wahroonga.

  Father: Peter Maxwell Garrett, Departmental Manager, born Rabaul, New Britain.

  Mother: Betty Collin, born Murwillumbah, New South Wales.

  I hardly knew my dad’s parents. His father, Tom Vernon Garrett, was a returned serviceman who had been granted land outside the town of Rabaul at the end of World War I. Rabaul was on the island of New Britain, which later became part of Papua New Guinea. He owned a copra and cocoa plantation there called Varzin. He was lost at sea in World War II, along with nearly a thousand other Australian civilians and Allied prisoners of war, on board the Japanese merchant ship SS Montevideo Maru. Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, fighting had raged across the Pacific. Rabaul fell in early 1942, followed by a mass evacuation of what was left of the army and locals. En route to China, the Montevideo Maru was mistakenly torpedoed off the coast of the Philippines by an American submarine, the USS Sturgeon. It went down in minutes. It was Australia’s greatest maritime tragedy, and is still little known. I wrote about it in the song ‘In the Valley’.

  Tom Vernon’s father, my great-grandfather, was the Test cricketer Thomas William (Tom) Garrett, famous as the youngest to play in the first game against an English team in 1878 (the first game, that is, if you don’t include the Aboriginal cricket team that toured England in 1868). A medium-pace bowler, he was a stayer, and captained New South Wales till he was fifty. After a long career in the public service, notably as the first public trustee of New South Wales, he went on to work as a solicitor until he was in his eighties. His father, also named Tom Garrett, was a newspaper publisher who, in an interesting career segue, later became a conservative politician; at one point he was the New South Wales Minister for Lands.

  My father’s mum, Nora, was sickly, and regularly came down from New Guinea to Sydney to convalesce in hospitals and boarding houses. I saw her once during one of these visits. She had long, elegant hands like my dad.

  My father had grown up on the family plantation in New Guinea, but with the outbreak of war he and his twin brother, Tom, were sent to Mosman High School in Sydney. Dad, who—like his mother—suffered poor health, was hospitalised on and off for most of the war y
ears. After the war, there arose the question of which brother would stay in New Guinea to run Varzin, there being room for only one boss. The matter was settled by the toss of a coin—my dad lost. I later discovered that the brother who missed out on the property would be entitled to a share of the profits, but only a dribble made its way to the unlucky twin. Dad then found work as an office boy in a chemicals company called Henry H. York & Sons. After spending years as a salesman he rose to the position of general manager of the Sydney branch of the same company, BASF, which was established after Henry York was split into three following the war.

  Dad was a man of natural charm; tall, with thinning hair and a generous moustache, he stood out in the crowd, especially when wearing one of his trademark cravats. Despite his various ailments—including a bung leg and relentless bronchial troubles—he was keen on and good at sport, hard to match in backyard cricket. He coached my under-eights soccer team, though he’d never played. To the end of his days he loved golf and, like the raven-haired beauty he married, was extremely social.

  My mother had grown up in the Southern Highlands town of Bowral, one of the few bits of cool-climate country within cooee of Sydney. She was a warm, high-spirited person, and belonged to one of the earliest generations of women to graduate from Sydney University, in 1949. She worked all over Sydney as a social worker for many years.

  Her parents, Len and Emily Collin, were permanent fixtures in our lives, especially after they moved from Bowral to Sydney to be closer to our family. Before their relocation, we spent mid-year holidays and occasional weekends visiting them in their home in Aitken Road, next to Bowral High School.

  The drive took forever. The back seat of the FH Holden was a big mobile playroom we could roam around on, as there were no seatbelts. I would range between my brothers—Matthew, still a baby tucked up in a bassinet, and Andrew—as we wound out through the suburbs towards Liverpool and then over the Great Dividing Range. Eventually, my favourite landmark would come into view. This was a huge Port Jackson fig in the Razorback Range near Picton. Erected next to the tree, in full view of the passing traffic, was a sign bearing the slogan of Sydney department store Anthony Hordern’s: ‘While I Live I’ll Grow’. As a young boy I found this message, framed by spreading branches, deeply reassuring. The tree itself seemed timeless, and its sighting meant we would soon be careering down the hill, past the villages of Bargo and Mittagong, and into Bowral.