Jennifer Byrne Presents
Jennifer Byrne Presents: Di Morrissey
First Aired: 11/10/2011
JENNIFER BYRNE: Hello and welcome to tonight's special, which is also a salute of sorts to one of Australia's publishing icons. Two decades in the biz, our bestselling female author with a legion of loyal fans. Her latest book, The Opal Desert, has just been published, and this month also marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of her very first, Heart Of The Dreaming. 19 novels in 20 years. It's the right time to catch up with the one and only Di Morrissey. Won't you please welcome her?
DI MORRISSEY: Thank you, thank you.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Now, Di, 19 novels in 20 years - what happened to symmetry?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes, 19 novels. I took one year off the year that I knew my mum was dying and spent that time with her, which I'm really glad I did. It was very special.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Let's talk a bit about your mum, actually, because she was an enormously influential figure for you, wasn't she?
DI MORRISSEY: A fabulous role model, unbelievable. I look back now and think, 'How would I have coped with losing your husband and 18-month-old baby boy in an accident, when...'
JENNIFER BYRNE: It was a drowning.
DI MORRISSEY: It was a drowning at Pittwater when I was ten. And we were left virtually penniless. And Chips Rafferty, who lived over there and was a friend and mentor, kind of got up a collection. And my mother went to her sister in America. She'd never had the opportunities in life to do what she wanted. And she fell into this new thing called television. And she came back to Australia and became our first woman film and television director. So it was... extraordinary. So I figured out then you can actually do anything and you can achieve things without the cushion, sometimes, of a university degree or influence or money.
JENNIFER BYRNE: You said, for your mother, a tragedy, a terrible shock, also, to have to become the sole provider. What about for you? It must have been like an ejection from paradise, in a way.
DI MORRISSEY: Oh, yeah. It was. I think I was something of a lost soul in that because we lived in that rather isolated area you didn't have friends and neighbours to hand easily. They would come at weekends and you had to row... I'd row my little dinghy across the bay to go and visit Chips or... So I, then, retreated into books. That was where books became my escape and my world and my love. Because we had very little money, I really only got a new book every birthday and every Christmas.
JENNIFER BYRNE: And what were your favourites?
DI MORRISSEY: Oh, I was totally into Enid Blyton and Pixie O'Harris, Marmaduke The Possum, all of those.
JENNIFER BYRNE: And Mary Grant Bruce, those sort of books, too?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes. Seven Little Australians. So I was also... Chips insisted that I concentrate on... 'Whatever you do in life make sure it's Australian.' So my reading, also, was influenced by that. But when I didn't have a book to read it just seemed logical to me that I made up my own stories. So that's what I did to entertain myself.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Just a direct question about your mother. A number of your books actually start with a woman who has just been widowed or a woman alone. Is that... your tribute to your mum and the story's their journey?
DI MORRISSEY: It wasn't deliberate. I suppose...
JENNIFER BYRNE: But it's true, isn't it?
DI MORRISSEY: It IS true. And someone also pointed things out to me that I have a lot of stories of women looking for... girls looking for their fathers. Because I didn't know until the accident that my father was my stepfather, that he was not my biological father. So that came as a huge shock and there's a whole other story about the trip of discovering who my father really was, because my mother just, really... She was professional in work, but she was so... You didn't have counselling and things in those days, so she could not share a lot of stuff. It was too painful to talk about. So it just became like a taboo subject. So for years I had no idea. I'm still finding out...
JENNIFER BYRNE: May I ask, who is your father?
DI MORRISSEY: Well, he was a local man in a country town. And they were, obviously, desperately in love, and he went away and came back from war a changed man. And my mother could never watch Anzac Day marches. She would never talk about the war, because it so changes men. And, obviously, when he came back a very broken man the marriage fell apart. And I was so little I had no... I didn't know anything about it. So it only came to light with the accident. So I guess I didn't plan... I suppose it would be very interesting for me now to go back and re-read these 19 novels, because I never do. Once it's done I don't read it again.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Ever?
DI MORRISSEY: No, no. Because I wouldn't put myself through that. 'Oh, why did I say that?'
JENNIFER BYRNE: They're not that bad, Di, really! They're not that bad.
DI MORRISSEY: Oh, really? Oh, I'm so glad you think so. So I'm just not going to go there. It's where I was at that time in my life. And so I'm always keen to do better, go further, do more with the next one, so I keep going up. But, in retrospect now and talking to people, I can see that I play out, although it's fiction, I sometimes play out aspects that... What I write about is what really interests and makes me passionate, whether it's the environment, or, obviously, a girl in her '50s coming to terms with... 'I'm a little girl, and I just want to know who my father is'.
JENNIFER BYRNE: That is a very common thread - the truth of family, the hidden secrets of a family. You write about that all the time.
DI MORRISSEY: Yes, I think so because it's not just me. I just know, in everybody's life, often whether you know it or not, but there are secrets. And I'm a great believer in being honest. I've always decided that you just have to be honest with your children. A lie, a secret will eventually come out, so it's just easier to live with the truth.
JENNIFER BYRNE: But you can cause terrible damage with the truth, too.
DI MORRISSEY: You can. There's the issue of the little white lie of what... It's maybe what's withheld. But I think when someone really wants to know that then you need to tell them.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Are you glad you found out the truth about your real father or would you have liked it to be concealed?
DI MORRISSEY: I'm just sad... No, this is the first time I've ever talked about it. I'm just sad that I never got to meet him. He died three years before I found out. And it was really only through... And I discovered I have half-siblings. And so it was through one of my half-sisters, who are very private and don't want it publicised. But she began a family search, and she was just absolutely gobsmacked when she discovered who I was, because... My father had told his second family. I just assumed he was an awful man that had treated my mother badly. And then I meet his children and discover that he was the world's most fabulous dad. And I was so jealous and so, 'Oh, if only, if only,' but the girls always knew about me because he told them that somewhere they had a half-sister, an older sister, and on his deathbed said 'Please find your sister.' And they told me... It was a great gift they gave me. He asked about me, he thought about me... I was in his life.
JENNIFER BYRNE: How long ago did this happen?
DI MORRISSEY: Over the last four years.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Extraordinary, extraordinary.
DI MORRISSEY: Mm. It's like you turn 60 and suddenly I felt like I was 6. 'I just want to know who my father is,' you know? It was hard. And it's happened after my mother died, which is probably right. I think it would have been painful for her. So life and fate have a strange way of stepping in at the right time.
JENNIFER BYRNE: But he thought of you as he died, and he was a good man.
DI MORRISSEY: Yes. And that I hold dear, so that's nice.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Your first job, Di, was as a cadet. You worked at Sir Frank Packer's old Consolidated Press. Which, of course, we all think we know about now, anyone who's seen Paper Giants. I take it this was in the pre-Ita days? It was before Ms Buttrose?
DI MORRISSEY: No, Ita came in my last year. Ita and I worked together when Ita was the social editress and I was...
JENNIFER BYRNE: Editress!
DI MORRISSEY: Editress.
JENNIFER BYRNE: You're not allowed to say that now.
DI MORRISSEY: That was what her title was in those days. And I was the social reporter sent out to cover functions. And I had no idea who anyone was in Sydney society, and I always brought back 'not top-drawer' people.
JENNIFER BYRNE: (Laughs) You collected riffraff?
DI MORRISSEY: Yeah! I had a talent for going into a ball of 500 exclusive people and going to the one man who was there with the wrong woman. 'Can I take your photograph for the social pages?' 'No.'
JENNIFER BYRNE: What was it like? Because I went into journalism in the '70s, and it was pretty... There was a lot of testosterone in the air then. But you went in the Mad Men era. Was it like that?
DI MORRISSEY: Well, I was working for the top women's magazine. And it was run by a group of extraordinary women. And I learned so much from them, and they were so supportive and so nurturing. It was just an amazing time. They were all these kind of mother hens, but they were very tough on... You had to rewrite and rewrite and rewrite until you got it right. You were taught all kinds of things. But then they would say, 'Who's this boy that you're going out with tomorrow?' 'You're going to go and interview Lord Saville, so you have to dress appropriately, behave appropriately'. There was a thing called ethics and integrity and politeness...
JENNIFER BYRNE: That's definitely the old days.
DI MORRISSEY: (Laughs) Yes. So... But it was great. And I think, because I knew I wanted to write books and just assumed I would write books one day because it was what I wanted to do, the journalism was a means to an end. And it stood me in such great stead. It really, really was the best training for a novelist, I think.
JENNIFER BYRNE: But, of course, the books had to wait. You went into the next stage of your life, which was as a diplomat's wife. You married, you had two children... And, really, that whole time you didn't get near a typewriter.
DI MORRISSEY: I tried to sit down and write when I was living overseas and had the luxury of staff and people to help with the children, but, you know, I just couldn't make it work. And I would sit there with this blank piece of paper, and the maid's going round going, 'Ooh. Memsahib is writing,' so everyone has to keep quiet. And I couldn't do a thing. And I kept trying, and I thought, 'Well...' I just had an instinct that certain things happen at certain times in your life and it would come. I really think that this yearning became so strong that that, really, was the third person in the marriage in that I really wanted to write. And I could feel... I was 35 and I could feel that if I didn't do it soon I'd never get around to doing it, and I'd be one of those people going, 'Well, of course, I always wanted to write a book one day...'
JENNIFER BYRNE: There's a lot of them around.
DI MORRISSEY: You know, doing that? And so I went to London to visit an old childhood friend - Nick Tate, who'd just got married, he's an actor. And Nick's house was full of actors and writers. And Tom Keneally was sleeping on the sofa, which he kindly gave up for me. And Tom walked me round London, explaining what writing meant and places meant and things he'd done. And he just opened up my eyes somehow. And then I came back into that crowded house, sat in the kitchen with actors and people all around you and just started to write. And then it was very hard to go back. You make that step sometimes...
JENNIFER BYRNE: Isn't that interesting? So with all the comforts and ease it didn't come?
DI MORRISSEY: I couldn't do it. I ended up divorcing and then I had to do it, I had to make this work. I've left a really wonderful man to pursue this crazy dream, which everybody said, 'You're never... Good luck,' you know?
JENNIFER BYRNE: How old were you when your first book was published?
DI MORRISSEY: I think I was 41.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Yeah. Was it an 'all or nothing'? Did you think 'If this one doesn't work...'
DI MORRISSEY: Oh, no. No, no, no. I already had that lateral thinking. 'If this book doesn't work, then it's the wrong subject, it's the wrong timing. I'll just write another one.' So...
JENNIFER BYRNE: Why were you so sure? What made you so sure?
DI MORRISSEY: I couldn't think that it wouldn't. It just had to happen. And I just had some... I just had this sense inside me that... Corny. Destiny. ..that I just knew I would write books one day and how it was going to happen or how it was all going to come about... And, again, it was luck and circumstance and finding a friend who became a literary agent who read something I'd written, gave it to Pan Macmillan, who, then, commissioned me... So I was commissioned. Not only did I not have to go through rejection slips and flogging my work around, I was commissioned. So luck is such a huge thing.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Let's talk about the genre. You don't like being called a romance writer at all, passionately.
DI MORRISSEY: No, no. 'Cause I'm not! (Laughs)
JENNIFER BYRNE: You don't like it being called chick lit. So what genre do you belong to?
DI MORRISSEY: The Di Morrissey genre.
DI MORRISSEY: Um, it's... I hate being put in boxes. And I have to say that the publisher has been incredibly supportive, because once you do one thing well they want more of the same, it's like sequel movies and stuff. Whereas I could see, in my naivete, my second book I wanted to be completely different. I mean, to keep the same elements, but not do the same thing.
JENNIFER BYRNE: It's obvious. Why wouldn't you write a series?
DI MORRISSEY: Yeah. I don't know...
JENNIFER BYRNE: The selling's half done.
DI MORRISSEY: In instinct, my instinct said, 'Don't do that.' And I think, also, that I would get incredibly bored if I had to write the same thing over and over again. And a gentleman in publishing kind of looked at me and said, 'Well, of course, you've only got a maximum of ten years here. That's generally the run for a woman writer. You generally ride out by ten.'
JENNIFER BYRNE: A woman writer runs out at ten?
DI MORRISSEY: And I narrowed my eyes and went, 'Well, just watch me, buddy.' So I decided that I would make everything different. I think the books have grown. I like to think that my writing has grown, that the subject matter has grown as I have and that their adventures, they reflect strong themes. I mean, I was writing about reconciliation before we even knew about Pauline Hanson. The timing all came out at the same time, which was incredibly lucky. I'm very passionate about the environment. I'm quite an activist in my own modest way. I work very hard for certain causes and things. And I think my readers know... I had a girl say to me - she'd just read Plantation - and now every time she goes to the supermarket she's so careful about buying nothing with palm oil in it.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Yes, yes. But you're not just 'quite' an activist. This is in your introduction to Silent Country, which you wrote in 2009, about 2 years ago?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes.
JENNIFER BYRNE: I'll just read it. 'There has come a time when we can no longer remain silent, but speak up for our country, which is being sold, abused, mined, depleted, drained, overworked, overloved, its plants and animals becoming endangered and exterminated faster than we can renew them. Our country is silent, so we must speak and act to save it.' That is a call to arms. Were you not concerned that some people might think, 'She should stick to writing. We don't want to be lectured, thank you very much,' and it would actually affect your readership?
DI MORRISSEY: Ah, but that is a little author's statement at the front. Because it actually refers back to the 'silent country'... about Stanner, the anthropologist who first called it the 'silent country', but...
JENNIFER BYRNE: I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying it's a risk.
DI MORRISSEY: I think, by now, I think my readers know enough that there's nothing polemical, I don't preach. My editor jumps on me from a great height if it does get to that, 'cause I want to pour in everything I know about how bad destruction of the habitat is in Malaysia for the orangutan population and what's happening with the palm oil plantations, etc, etc. But I don't want to lose my readers...
JENNIFER BYRNE: Your editor wants a novel.
DI MORRISSEY: She goes, 'No, no. All of that can go. You've made your point perfectly well here and that's enough.'
JENNIFER BYRNE: I would say there's two other very strong threads through your books, apart from the issues which come and go. One is the sense of place, of landscape. So which comes first when you're writing or choosing a novel - is it the place or is it the story?
DI MORRISSEY: It's the place.
JENNIFER BYRNE: So the place dictates the story?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes. And the place chooses me. I don't put a pin in the map and I don't say, 'Ooh, I think I'll set my next book wherever.' There's generally a circumstance or it's something I've been leading up to without knowing it or I'm invited to go somewhere. I joined Tim Winton to save Ningaloo, I went toad-busting in the Kimberley. And I began to see what was happening in the Kimberley and went, 'No, no. I have to write about this.'
JENNIFER BYRNE: So, in fact, they were a consequence of your environmental activism?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes, yes. Some are. But, otherwise, it's just the place. When I first walked into Broome in the early '80s I just went, 'This is the most extraordinary place on the planet. I have to come back here.' And then, in '94, Broome just came into my head and I knew it was time to go to Broome.
JENNIFER BYRNE: And you wrote Tears Of The Moon?
DI MORRISSEY: Tears Of The Moon.
JENNIFER BYRNE: The second thing, I think, or common thread is, basically, women without men, which is an irony given that you're often described as the 'romance writer'. But, in fact, a lot of your women are without men. And I would refer to Opal Desert, your last - far from being a romance. The man is kind of offstage towards the end. It's a story of women.
DI MORRISSEY: It's women's friendships. And women with no emotional support, so women turn to each other. And the books are, essentially... I think the heroines are always women overcoming obstacles, and either becoming strong women or finding a means of survival. And I have to say that I find that it does strike a nerve because I've had so many woman say to me that the books have given them the inspiration to take hold of their lives after a disaster or after something terrible happens. Or the fact that they've never tried, they will go out and do things, and I get extraordinary...
JENNIFER BYRNE: A bit scary, isn't it?
DI MORRISSEY: I do. I feel a real responsibility that if you have a voice how you use it is... Yeah, there is a responsibility there. So I'm very careful about not lightly being flippant or advising... not telling every woman, 'Well, if he's a pain in the neck just go. It'll be alright.' But there is a semblance of that. And it's the same reason that I feel people trust me, and I like to think that my integrity and credibility is high. So I will never do endorsements or advertisements or anything that doesn't fit with how I feel about...
JENNIFER BYRNE: I find that interesting, that you'll stand up for a cause, but you won't stand up for a product.
DI MORRISSEY: No. No, not at all. And I had offers to do ads because I'd been on television, and I desperately needed the money. I desperately needed the money when I was full-time writing, living on what were then very modest advances for the year, and it was a great temptation. And my kids were like, 'Just take the money. Go and sell the toilet paper or whatever it is.' And I'm going, 'No.' I knew again - instinct - that that would not be the right thing to do.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Do you plan to keep on doing this for the next 20, 30 years?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes, yes. Darling Morris West died at his desk with a pencil in his hand trailing at the end of a sentence. And I would like to think that for a writer that is a pretty nice way to see out your time. It is concerning me now that I feel I'm on the wrong side of the hourglass. I can see I'm in my 60s and how many more books am I going to be able to do? And I've got so many standing in the wings.
JENNIFER BYRNE: How do you choose if you've got that many ideas pressing behind you?
DI MORRISSEY: They just, somehow, step forward at the right time. And it's always the right time. I have started a book and then had his overwhelming thing - 'No, I shouldn't be writing the Byron Bay book. I should be going to Vietnam.' And I just booked a... 'Why are you going to Vietnam?' 'I don't know, but it seems like the right time to go to Vietnam.' Then when I went to Vietnam I said, 'I'm not writing about the war or having war stuff in it. It's a modern story. Da-da-da...'
JENNIFER BYRNE: This is Monsoon?
DI MORRISSEY: Monsoon. And it just happened to be the 40th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, and my wonderful uncle, who had served in Vietnam as a war correspondent, said, 'You must go.' And that opened up a whole other dimension to the book when I met those vets who live in Da Nang and stay there and are damaged men. And how they had brought men over and how Long Tan had never been celebrated or commemorated. And, as a result of that book, I've had so many men - the vets and wives - say they now, for the first time, have an understanding. And the biggest compliment I got from anyone was from the fellow that runs the memorial, the Australian vet there, who said, 'It's like Di was here with us in the rubber plantation on that day.' I got it right. And I thought, 'Oh, that's what you do this for,' when you get that.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Di, you do a lot of writers tours and you talk to your audience a lot. I don't see you at a lot at the major literary festivals, the writers festivals.
DI MORRISSEY: I don't get asked, because... I mean, I have been early on and I found it the most painful experience.
JENNIFER BYRNE: What happened?
DI MORRISSEY: I was treated a little bit like, 'Oh, yes. You're the token populist person that we have to have, but there are all of these other serious writers there from overseas, literary luminaries, who have to be...' Some were quite pleasant, but most of them went, 'Oh, yes. You write that,' and really had nothing to say to me. And I thought, 'Why am I here?' And I know Bryce Courtenay had the same issue. So we just decided, 'I don't need to go to Sydney and Melbourne Writer's Festivals.' Kununurra? I was there. Mudgee? I was there.
JENNIFER BYRNE: (Laughs)
DI MORRISSEY: Oh, yeah. You get me out in the scrub. And country people are so great.
JENNIFER BYRNE: And they do like to contribute to your books, don't they? You said that they come up and they make suggestions, and they tell you there's not enough of this and too much...
DI MORRISSEY: Everybody does.
JENNIFER BYRNE: ..sex or... Is that right?
DI MORRISSEY: Yes. Everyone has always got a suggestion and input, I suppose. Because they take the books so much to heart and the characters and stuff. So that feedback is always wonderful. But there are some extraordinary... The bond between me and my readers... on an individual level whether we ever meet, is very strong, is huge. And that is really wonderful. I mean, I get that from emails and letters and people who stop me and we talk. And I'm no-one without my readers, so...
JENNIFER BYRNE: It's really interesting listening to you talk about the influences and who you listen to, because most literary authors will cite other authors. They'll say, 'Yes, I read Dostoevsky when I was eight.' It's not phony, that really is their genuine...
DI MORRISSEY: Yeah, yeah.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Whereas you cite people, whether it's your readers, Chips Rafferty, Dorothea Mackellar, it's people.
DI MORRISSEY: But it's true. Well, it's real life, I suppose. But, equally, maybe I'm making up for lost time when I was such an isolated, lonely child that didn't have playmates or brothers and sisters that now people interest me. But I think that's what is at the heart of every story, it is the character and the... To get inside people and to be able to write about them you also have to know people. So people feel, whenever I meet readers, they immediately just hug me because they feel like they know me so well, we're family. And I feel the same. So in that sharing, they also... People open up their hearts and tell me stories, which I suppose, like all writers, find their way into the books.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Di Morrissey, it's been such a pleasure. Congratulations on 20 years.
DI MORRISSEY: Thank you, Jen!
JENNIFER BYRNE: May there be many more babies...
DI MORRISSEY: Can I come back in another 20 books?
JENNIFER BYRNE: You betcha.
DI MORRISSEY: Thank you, Jen.
JENNIFER BYRNE: Ladies and gentlemen, won't you thank Di Morrissey?
DI MORRISSEY: Thank you.
JENNIFER BYRNE: And next month will be our very last book club of the year, so do please join us on 6th December for our one-hour summer special. John Birmingham and Sandra Yates are our guests. And, until then, very happy reading. Goodnight to you.
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