Open Writing

This was a time of big changes in my life. I had moved from daily journalism into government public relations and was studying part time and after working hours at the University of Western Australia.

My first unit in the proposed arts degree was anthropology and it was most stimulating. I got a C pass.

The course required me to complete two units in one year, so I undertook English and Philosophy, gaining a B in English and a C in Philosophy.

Alex remarked that if I did two units in a year again, she and the baby, Leon, were leaving.

I was living at Kelmscott at the time and left the car at home with Alex, going in by bus, then out to the university by bus and returning by bus to Kelmscott. It was very late before the family could dine under this travel routine.

I solved the problem by buying an old car, a Vauxhall Viva, with my tax rebate, so I could now commute under my own steam. I also subdivided the block at Kelmscott and used the funds to pay off the house mortgage.

I came home one evening and found Alex in a pair of jeans, no make up, and tired and dispirited. She had been working in the garden all day – gardening had been her passion.

“What’s up?” I said.

“I hate my life,” she said.

My heart sank like a stone. What to do?

I was good friends with a reporter on the Sunday Times, who had been best man at our wedding and I told him about the problem.

He must have mentioned it to his chief of staff, Peter Finn, who had known Alex at the West.

An incident occurred at the Sunday Times that resolved the situation. The women’s editor had split with her husband and gone on annual leave and the acting women’s editor had gotten into a wild brawl with some aborigines at the Shaftesbury Hotel, which was just across the road from the Times.

The proprietor called Murray James, the managing editor of the Murdoch Group in Perth and he crossed the road immediately and fired the acting women’s editor on the spot.

This was on a Thursday, with a paper due out late Saturday night – and no women’s editor.

Peter Finn called me and asked if Alex would help them out. I told him I would speak to her first them come back to him.

When I told her, she argued that there would be nobody to look after Leon and she didn’t feel very confident.

I said I would look after him – she’d be working only on the Saturday and it would help her get part of her life back.

She agreed. I called Peter and she was hired. The Sunday Times were marvellous to her. They also gave her their weekly magazine, TV Week, to cover as the correspondent for Western Australia. She could do all this from home and took calls regularly from famous singers, Rolf Harris’s mother and numerous TV personalities and show business people.

A few days later, I bumped into her old boss from the West, Viv Goldsmith, who asked how Alex was going. I told him about the Sunday Times.

“I want her here,” he said.

I thought about it. “She could give you a Sunday,” I said.

Alex ended up working Saturday for the Times and Sunday for the West and from home through the week for TV Week. The West also gave her books to review and appointed her their television columnist.

I breathed a huge sigh of relief. She was as busy as buggery but nevertheless rehabilitated.

It had been a lot of drama but we got through it.

**

To read earlier epsiodes of Richard's life story please click on http://www.openwriting.com/archives/western_walkabout/