Speaker 1: Get everyone welcome to conversations. My guest today is a
Speaker 1: man who I recognize him and remember him as somebody
Speaker 1: heavily involved in the boxing industry. But he is a
Speaker 1: renowned journalist and a prolific author. Has written some amazing books,
Speaker 1: mainly about Australian personalities, heroes and the like. He's in
Speaker 1: town and Adelaide and has wandered into the studio to
Speaker 1: promote his new book at Kellerman, The Australian Mermaid. And
Speaker 1: my guest is Grantly Keyser. Grantly, how are you very well?
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for having me Cornsey. It's a
Speaker 2: real pleasure to be here. Thank you very much.
Speaker 1: You've just wandered down to Adelaide. You're a Sydney sided
Speaker 1: by birth. We don't know if I get them down here.
Speaker 1: Truly appreciative of our city.
Speaker 2: Oh good on you. I was actually born in Ballarate.
Speaker 2: I worked for twenty five nearly thirty years in Sydney
Speaker 2: and now I live in Queensland. Yes, I've been a
Speaker 2: bit all over the place. Why, Oh well, Queensland is
Speaker 2: where I grew up. I was born in ballaratte but
Speaker 2: I grew up in Queensland and I left there I
Speaker 2: left Sidney in about twenty years ago because it was
Speaker 2: getting too busy for me. But now every time I
Speaker 2: go back to promote books or do interviews or whatever,
Speaker 2: I find it's even ten times busy than it used
Speaker 2: to be. There's just so many people these days.
Speaker 1: Are you a full time author?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, very much. I write two books a year.
Speaker 2: We produce a big hardback book every Christmas, and in
Speaker 2: the middle of the year we do a paperback and
Speaker 2: the last few have been about amazing women. I wrote
Speaker 2: about the incredible Vivian Bullwinkle last year, a great nurse
Speaker 2: and a great Australian hero who went to school in Adelaide.
Speaker 2: But she's of course most famous for surviving a massacre
Speaker 2: of nurses in World War Two and coming back to
Speaker 2: Australian and she devoted the rest of her life to
Speaker 2: helping save other lives and honoring the nurses who didn't
Speaker 2: come back. So that was a great book last year,
Speaker 2: and this year I was just compelled to write about
Speaker 2: Anette Kellman, who is just one of the most extraordinary
Speaker 2: Australians of all time, and sadly, fifty years after she's
Speaker 2: passed away. A lot of people don't remember her. She
Speaker 2: was at one stage the greatest female athlete in the
Speaker 2: world and the highest paid movie star in the world.
Speaker 2: And she's Australian and she had a lot to do
Speaker 2: with Adelaide. She performed diving and swimming shows at at
Speaker 2: the Old City Bars in Adelaide. And when she took
Speaker 2: off overseas to make her name in England and the
Speaker 2: United States, she left from Adelaide. She came out to
Speaker 2: Adelaide and left from Largs Bay.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I felt a bit guilty actually, because I remember
Speaker 1: the name. And then the more I looked at your
Speaker 1: book researched her, My goodness, why do we not know
Speaker 1: a little bit more about this? Look, I guess the
Speaker 1: thing that hit me straight away with the salacious aspect,
Speaker 1: because she was a movie star as well, and she
Speaker 1: appeared new She was the first nineteen sixteen Yeah, in
Speaker 1: a movie that I could not comprehend.
Speaker 2: That incredible, it was. It's controversial now, It was incredibly
Speaker 2: controversial at the time, but the censors passed it because
Speaker 2: they said that she was celebrating the human form, just
Speaker 2: as the great masterpieces of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
Speaker 2: those great painters painted new women she was doing the
Speaker 2: same thing. So even though it was very salacious and titillating,
Speaker 2: and she sold millions of tickets to young men and
Speaker 2: teenage boys who flocked to the front row of the
Speaker 2: cinema to look at her form, she passed all the
Speaker 2: senses and when you look back at it, that's pretty
Speaker 2: much what she was doing. She was saying that women
Speaker 2: around the world, you're beautiful, be proud of your bodies,
Speaker 2: and you know, look after your health and fitness, and
Speaker 2: you can be a goddess like me.
Speaker 1: I saw a photo and I don't know whether it's
Speaker 1: in your book still from the movie. Yeah, her private
Speaker 1: part seem to be covered by her long hair. But
Speaker 1: how expressive revealing was it?
Speaker 2: Oh? Well, very much. She was totally newded Later in
Speaker 2: the life in her adies, she got a little bit
Speaker 2: touch the modesty as a very elderly woman. I heard
Speaker 2: several interviews where she said, I was actually wearing a
Speaker 2: body stocking. But there was millions of people that gave
Speaker 2: that movie very close inspection. It was one of the
Speaker 2: huge hit movies of around World War One, and no
Speaker 2: one ever saw any hint of fabric.
Speaker 1: So how did you wonder upon and ed Killerman.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, well I knew a little bit about Annette.
Speaker 2: I knew that she'd been a great swimmer, and coming
Speaker 2: from Queensland, of course, swimmings are used sport up there,
Speaker 2: and we had some great swimmers in the past, and
Speaker 2: I knew and ned had been a great swimmer, and
Speaker 2: I also knew that she'd appeared in movies. But a
Speaker 2: few years ago SBS produced a program called Australian Color
Speaker 2: I think it was, and they took all the old
Speaker 2: news real footage from the early nineteen hundreds and colorized it,
Speaker 2: so it really brought it to life, and some of
Speaker 2: it was Annet Kellman doing diving and swimming routines. And
Speaker 2: I knew that she was a controversial figure of those
Speaker 2: days and it'd sort of broken taboos, and I just
Speaker 2: wanted to explore more about her life, to get to
Speaker 2: know what she'd done. And the more that I delved
Speaker 2: into it, I just found her absolutely extraordinary. And I
Speaker 2: say this, if she was an American or even an
Speaker 2: english woman, we'd be all sitting down to watch streaming
Speaker 2: programs about her incredible fame and her great successes in life.
Speaker 2: And yet, sadly, fifty years after she passed away on
Speaker 2: the Gold Coast in virtual anonymity. She's just an asterisk
Speaker 2: in history, a name people might know a little bit about,
Speaker 2: but they don't really understand.
Speaker 1: She was sickly as a child though, Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: yeah she was.
Speaker 2: Her life stories it's so inspiring, you know. She had
Speaker 2: ricketts as a child and she could barely walk and
Speaker 2: she had to wear very painful steel and leather braces
Speaker 2: on her legs. But her parents heard that maybe salt
Speaker 2: water or swimming exercises might strengthen her legs a little bit,
Speaker 2: though they were more or less told by doctors that
Speaker 2: she'd never have really good mobility. But they took her
Speaker 2: down to a place called Cavel's Baths, which is right
Speaker 2: next to where the Sydney Opera House is now, and
Speaker 2: they had in those days a fenced off area as
Speaker 2: swimming bath Sea Baths, and the guy that ran it
Speaker 2: was a guy called Fred Cavell, who was an Englishman
Speaker 2: who attempted the English Channel a few times. And he
Speaker 2: had a big family of sons who are all champion swimmers.
Speaker 2: And they taught little Annette, who was terrified of the
Speaker 2: water at that stage. They taught her to swim and
Speaker 2: she became not only did it strength in her legs,
Speaker 2: but being in the water, she sort of she wrote
Speaker 2: later that she sort of had a spiritual connection with
Speaker 2: the water. She really felt at home, like she was
Speaker 2: a fish, like a mermaid in the water. And it
Speaker 2: was only a few years later that she was setting
Speaker 2: all sorts of world records in swimming at one stage,
Speaker 2: and it's hard to believe now looking back. At one
Speaker 2: stage she had held every female swimming world record from
Speaker 2: one hundred yards to thirty six kilometers. She swam the
Speaker 2: Danube against the world's women swimming champion of the time
Speaker 2: and one into the Danube through Austria's.
Speaker 1: Sure going down street.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it was it was very dangerous that she related.
Speaker 2: Often they would go over through eddies and all sorts
Speaker 2: of things, over very shallow water, over very sharp rocks,
Speaker 2: so you had to be very very careful doing the swimming.
Speaker 2: And the times that she attempted the English Channel, she said,
Speaker 2: if it was just a matter of swimming thirty eight
Speaker 2: k's from Dover to Calais, it wouldn't have been a problem.
Speaker 2: But she had to face all these changing tides and
Speaker 2: and really rough conditions on their times that she attempted,
Speaker 2: so she was also you know, sports science wasn't the
Speaker 2: thing that it is these days. She was sponsored by
Speaker 2: Cadbury's chocolate, which was really taking off in England at
Speaker 2: the time, and her father would be feeding her through
Speaker 2: a big funnel from a boat hot chocolate. She was
Speaker 2: trying to swim the channel, or sometimes giving a half
Speaker 2: a chicken teat she'd be eating half the chicken with
Speaker 2: one hand and swimming with the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's any vision of that her swimming style, there's.
Speaker 2: Not so much vision. There's a vision of her swimming
Speaker 2: later in life, but there's a lot of photographs from
Speaker 2: her channel attempts. And her father had a very severe
Speaker 2: heart condition at the time and she was always so
Speaker 2: grateful to him. He didn't last all that long, but
Speaker 2: he was always out on the channel with her as
Speaker 2: her coach and I guess as her mentor and manager,
Speaker 2: really trying to inspire to keep going.
Speaker 1: Saying you said she left from Adelaide too, Yeah, well
Speaker 1: what was she doing in Adelaide?
Speaker 2: Well, what happened? She performed in Adelaide. She'd performed at
Speaker 2: the City Bars, which are down in King William Street
Speaker 2: down there, not there now, but she she she planned
Speaker 2: to go from Melbourne, but she went. She had she
Speaker 2: was getting offers to do all these sorts of shows
Speaker 2: all around Australia at the time, and she had a
Speaker 2: show in Bendigo, like diving shows, diving shows and swimming shows.
Speaker 2: I guess aqua ballet synchronized swimming we call it now.
Speaker 2: She was the she was really the originator of those
Speaker 2: kind of shows. And she was doing a show in
Speaker 2: Bendigo and it was quicker to get the train down
Speaker 2: through Balleratte to Adelaide to catch the train to catch
Speaker 2: the ship going to England from from Adelaide. So she
Speaker 2: left from Adelaide.
Speaker 1: Yeah, grantly. Keyser is my guest, folks. Renowned journalist and author.
Speaker 1: Of course, his new book is called Annette Kellerman Australian
Speaker 1: Mermaid Back shortly. If you just turned into conversations greatly Keyser,
Speaker 1: renowned journalist and author. I remember greatly heavily involved in
Speaker 1: the boxing world when he did you manage Jeff.
Speaker 2: Jeff No, I was very, very lucky in my life.
Speaker 2: I sounds ridiculous. I'm actually in the Australian Boxing Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame and I wouldn't brew a great honors. Some
Speaker 2: people say, oh, he's a good fight, but I wouldn't
Speaker 2: brewis are great. But I used to help Johnny Lewis
Speaker 2: in the gym. He's the great, great trainer of champions.
Speaker 2: He trained six world champions. And I was training at
Speaker 2: the gym with Johnny and he sort of got me
Speaker 2: on as his right hand man. And we had a
Speaker 2: really great team of young amateur fighters at a place
Speaker 2: called the Newtown Police Youth Club in Sydney, which isn't
Speaker 2: there anymore. It's now high rise apartments. But in those
Speaker 2: days it was a police boys club that did a
Speaker 2: lot of great things for the community.
Speaker 1: I still have them police boys here, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: Here and there, yeah, but I don't think they're quite
Speaker 2: as big as they used to be. But we had
Speaker 2: Jeff Finnick, who went to the Olympics in nineteen eighty four,
Speaker 2: should have won the gold medal, but then knocked out
Speaker 2: the Olympic gold medalist when they had a fight in
Speaker 2: a couple of years later when Jeff was world champ,
Speaker 2: and along came a guy called Jeff Harding who was
Speaker 2: as tough as nails. And I tell this story in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty nine, Donnie La Londe, a great fight from Canada,
Speaker 2: was due to fight a world champ, Dennis Andres. Instead
Speaker 2: elected to fight Sugar Ray Leonard for a huge, multi
Speaker 2: multimillion dollar payday, which was enormous money in nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 2: So Jeff Harding, our young professional fighter who had been
Speaker 2: to the kom Off Games, we took him over to
Speaker 2: Atlantic City to fight the world champ, Dennis Andres, and
Speaker 2: the shift, the promoter of the fight was held in
Speaker 2: a big casino. It was promoted by the casino owner,
Speaker 2: and he was this fairly shifty, real estate shonkiest bloke
Speaker 2: he'd ever meet, had a dreadful reputation, and his name
Speaker 2: was Donald Trump, and his reputations even worse now. But
Speaker 2: he wields a lot more power than he did, as.
Speaker 1: When you say, shonky, what experience did you have with it?
Speaker 2: Well, you know. He co promoted the fight with a
Speaker 2: guy called Bob Aram who's still promoting fights these days.
Speaker 2: And Bob Aaron promoted everyone from Muhammad al Li to
Speaker 2: the current great fighters in the world today, like Terrence
Speaker 2: Crawf for fifty sixty years. And he always maintains that
Speaker 2: Donald Trump ripped him off for a couple of million
Speaker 2: dollars over a sponsorship deal that he pocketed the money
Speaker 2: and Aram never saw it. When we got there. I
Speaker 2: flew down there with Jeff Phinnick from New York and
Speaker 2: we flew through really bad weather in a very small
Speaker 2: plane to this place called Atlantic City. It's a resort town,
Speaker 2: gambling town or casinos, and the heavens sort of parted
Speaker 2: through the clouds and we looked down and we saw
Speaker 2: this big, huge ship with Trump written on the side
Speaker 2: that was his private yacht. And then when we landed,
Speaker 2: just about every building had Trump on the top. Trump Casino,
Speaker 2: Trump boardwalk Hall, at the Trump taj Mahal. And believe
Speaker 2: it or not, like he he built his reputation, I
Speaker 2: guess on the show The Apprentices, this business genius, he
Speaker 2: actually bankrupt. He went bankrupt with casinos in Atlantic City.
Speaker 2: You know, it's like it's like going bankrupt selling ice
Speaker 2: creams on the Gold Coast, you know, like it's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But he had a terrible reputation as a guy that
Speaker 2: just didn't pay debts and just dudded people. And you
Speaker 2: couldn't believe anything he said. So was making the President
Speaker 2: of the United States be too political.
Speaker 1: Amazing haws. He has supporters. Yeah there, yeah, and it killum.
Speaker 1: And let's get back to I mentioned the swimming style. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I didn't think three style swimming sort of
Speaker 1: became in vogue until Juke can't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well it was Alec Wickman was. Wickham was a
Speaker 2: pioneer of the free style in Australia, and so were
Speaker 2: some of the cowle boys who helped coach a Net,
Speaker 2: so freestyle was sort of taking off there. Alec Wickham's
Speaker 2: relative as Tracy Wickham, who was a great swimmer many
Speaker 2: many years later, of course, but Alec Wickham was a
Speaker 2: great swimmer at the turn of the nineteen hundreds. But
Speaker 2: a Net favored a lot of swimmers at the time
Speaker 2: favored a thing called the trudgeon, which you don't see
Speaker 2: much anymore. Was a little bit like a side stroke.
Speaker 2: Someone likened it to a cat curled up on a
Speaker 2: couch and then stretching out with one arm going over
Speaker 2: and pulling back. It was a very yeah, kind of
Speaker 2: like a side stroke where the arm comes over the
Speaker 2: head and then pushes pulls back. Yeah, very unusual stroke,
Speaker 2: and it's probably no wonder. You don't see it much anymore,
Speaker 2: but it was very popular at the time.
Speaker 1: How efficient would it have been?
Speaker 2: Well, you know people wham the English Channel using it,
Speaker 2: so it was really yeah, yeah, it's of course freestyle
Speaker 2: seems a much much better way of swimming than that,
Speaker 2: but it was very popular for a long long time.
Speaker 1: How did your research, Annett Killerman, Well, I was given
Speaker 1: the fact that you know, it's fifty years since.
Speaker 2: I was very fortunate and I can't understate how famous
Speaker 2: she was in her day. I mean, newspapers covered around
Speaker 2: the world, New York and Britain and Australia covered just
Speaker 2: about everything she ever did, and it also wrote some memoirs,
Speaker 2: and she exaggerated a little bit some of the tales.
Speaker 2: She was telling her story to Hollywood in the nineteen
Speaker 2: fifties and so some of the stories she told were
Speaker 2: a little bit exaggerated, but I could cross reference them
Speaker 2: with different newspaper reports. And I was also very fortunate
Speaker 2: that the State Library in New South Wales has a
Speaker 2: lot of her collection. The Powerhouse Museum in Sydney also
Speaker 2: had a display some years ago of more than two
Speaker 2: hundred of her show costumes. Costumes that she would wear
Speaker 2: in movie and the great stage shows that she did.
Speaker 2: But going through her own personal collections. And I've been
Speaker 2: so lucky with so many of the books I've written,
Speaker 2: you know, like with people like John Monash, or the
Speaker 2: Great Governor of New South Wales, Lockwom Macquirite, actually have
Speaker 2: their personal effects that I can go through and it's
Speaker 2: almost like a spiritual connection.
Speaker 1: They're in archives, different archives.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I wrote the book, a very large book
Speaker 2: on John Monash about twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: That's the Great Australian in general, the great General.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was one hundred and eighty five boxes of
Speaker 2: his memorabilia at the National Library in camera and I
Speaker 2: was able to go through and hold in my hand,
Speaker 2: you know, the little pocket diary that he had on Gallipoli,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty five April, twenty six April, marking off
Speaker 2: the days, you know, bombs overhead. I hope I get
Speaker 2: out of it, you know, like quite extraordinary and even
Speaker 2: the most intimate things letters he wrote to girlfriends, And
Speaker 2: you know it's just I really love what I'm doing
Speaker 2: because I have that connection with people of the past
Speaker 2: and with a net. I went through so much of her,
Speaker 2: so much of her personal collection of letters and memorabilia,
Speaker 2: you know, even down to the very last bank book
Speaker 2: she had. Not long before she passed away. She had
Speaker 2: fifteen dollars and forty two cents left in the CBA
Speaker 2: account at Southport. She went down and took fifteen bucks out. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's all she had. She was an age pensioner at
Speaker 2: the end of her life, living on the Gold Coast
Speaker 2: in a flat or are. It's quite amazing. She in
Speaker 2: her heyday in the nineteen twenties, and even before that
Speaker 2: she had a big mansion just outside New York where
Speaker 2: the movie business was centered in those days before World
Speaker 2: War One, and then later on she had a big,
Speaker 2: very big sort of glass and steelhouse outside Hollywood at
Speaker 2: Santa Monica in California. But she gave most of her
Speaker 2: money away during World War Two, helping raise money for
Speaker 2: the Red Cross. She put on all these huge stage
Speaker 2: shows in Sydney and other parts of Australia to raise
Speaker 2: money for the Red Cross and the war effort, and
Speaker 2: she funded those shows herself. So much of her fortune
Speaker 2: was dissipated and the end of her life, as I
Speaker 2: was able to go through all her things, even receipts
Speaker 2: for things like when she was eighty eight she got
Speaker 2: a hearing aid from OPSM and she had to pay
Speaker 2: it off in installments of a couple of dollars a week.
Speaker 2: You know, quite amazing, and you know, I just had
Speaker 2: that feeling of empathy for her. Here was a woman
Speaker 2: who was and I can't state that she was one
Speaker 2: of the most famous women in the world the turn
Speaker 2: of the nineteen hundreds and the early nineteen hundreds, and
Speaker 2: yet she was quite happy.
Speaker 1: Watch how could she achieve that worldwide fame? Was it
Speaker 1: through silent movies or of something else.
Speaker 2: Even before that, she was a great well, she was
Speaker 2: a great female athlete. So she was the first really
Speaker 2: well known female athlete in the world. And the things
Speaker 2: that she did was were quite extraordinary. But then she
Speaker 2: had huge stage shows in both London and in the
Speaker 2: United States, different parts of the United States, and she
Speaker 2: would perform at places like the Big Theaters in New
Speaker 2: York for six month runs, doing massive shows on stage
Speaker 2: with lots of glass tanks and diving into tanks, and
Speaker 2: she'd have backup swimmers by her and they'd be like
Speaker 2: mermaid aquatic shows on stage. And so her fame was
Speaker 2: extraordinary and that's what led to the movies.
Speaker 1: But one of them did she really worked with Charlie Chaplin,
Speaker 1: oh very much.
Speaker 2: And Charlie Chaplin Buster Keaton used to be on her
Speaker 2: undercard shows.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: She would be performing these big she would be the
Speaker 2: headline act and underneath would be young Buster Keaton, you know.
Speaker 2: Or she would be doing a show in New York
Speaker 2: and Charlie Chaplin would be on the preliminary show, the
Speaker 2: sort of the entree show.
Speaker 1: Charlie Chaplin would have hit on her, tried to work
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: I think lots of people tried to work her. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: She was married for nearly sixty years and the man
Speaker 2: that she was, they were together for nearly seventy years,
Speaker 2: quite amazing, which is very unusual in Hollywood days. And
Speaker 2: it's remarkable that later in life you were just saying,
Speaker 2: weird did she live? She turned her back on all
Speaker 2: that great fame and fortune for quite some time. She
Speaker 2: actually lived on a little fishing shack and a place
Speaker 2: called Newry Island in the wit Sundays on the Great
Speaker 2: Barrier reef. And I met some of her relatives in
Speaker 2: the course of writing the book. Who whose parents knew her?
Speaker 2: In those days. This is in the nineteen thirties and forties,
Speaker 2: nineteen thirties, and they said that, you know, Nette had
Speaker 2: have friends on all the other islands in the Sundays
Speaker 2: as well, that she'd know. But she'd never take a boat.
Speaker 2: She'd always swim to the other islands to see it.
Speaker 2: Often several miles of swimming through the ocean. White, quite amazing.
Speaker 2: The sharks up there, the sharks, and there's stingers and
Speaker 2: all sorts of things. But yeah, she would often swim, swim,
Speaker 2: She would swim. She was an extraordinary person. And if
Speaker 2: you see her later in life, she remained super fit
Speaker 2: well into her eighties. There's photograph in the book of
Speaker 2: her doing ballet exercises, and she's well into her eighties
Speaker 2: and she's as limber as she was when she was
Speaker 2: in her twenties.
Speaker 1: You opened the book by describing a movie scene with
Speaker 1: Esther Williams. Yeah, and she wasn't all that happy that
Speaker 1: Esther Williams was having an affair with the lead male
Speaker 1: act of Victim Mature. How on earth would you have
Speaker 1: research that?
Speaker 2: Well? Esther Williams told all Esther, Esther was very much
Speaker 2: on kiss and tell. Yeah, even at the time things
Speaker 2: were happening. She was very very forward with her lovely
Speaker 2: talk with her talk about a love life air and
Speaker 2: it was no prude, but she was very happy that
Speaker 2: Hollywood was making the movie about her. But if you
Speaker 2: know the move, if anyone seen the movie, it's not
Speaker 2: really the story of Antt Kelleman's life. It's a vehicle
Speaker 2: to show these hundreds of swimming girls in bathing costumes,
Speaker 2: diving and cavorting in the water like fish and seals
Speaker 2: and looking really glamorous and beautiful. And it's a real
Speaker 2: cavalcade of color. It was made by the same man
Speaker 2: who made The Wizard of Oz and the choreographer was
Speaker 2: Buzzby Berkeley, like a legend on Broadway. But didn't really
Speaker 2: tell the true story of Anette's life. And that's why
Speaker 2: I felt, you know, she was really deserving of her
Speaker 2: book that stated everything that she did in her life.
Speaker 2: And I really think that the fame and the great
Speaker 2: deeds that she did really deserve to be recognized in
Speaker 2: this day and age.
Speaker 1: Grantly Keyser as my guest, folks. His new book is
Speaker 1: called Annett Kellerman Australian Mermaid. I'd heard the name of it,
Speaker 1: had no idea of the fame backshort, welcome back to conversations.
Speaker 1: Everybody who had just tuned in. My guest in the
Speaker 1: studio happens to be in the studio often we're on zoom.
Speaker 1: But Grantly Keysa is in town to promote his new
Speaker 1: book called Annette Kellerman Australian Mermaid, and have you been listening,
Speaker 1: you would learn a lot about Annett We probably didn't realize.
Speaker 1: And I'm fascinated that a bit disappointed in myself, but
Speaker 1: I didn't know more about her. She was disappointed that
Speaker 1: the movie of her life starring Esther Williams and Victim
Speaker 1: Mature didn't really that portrayer as she wanted to be portrayed.
Speaker 2: That's right. She was very disappointed in the casting of
Speaker 2: Victim Mature as her husband because her husband, Jimmy Sullivan,
Speaker 2: who she was with for just about seventy years and
Speaker 2: they were married for nearly sixty years. Victim Mature, if
Speaker 2: anyone remembers him, was a great star of sword and
Speaker 2: Sandal epics. He's a big south By fighting the gladiators
Speaker 2: and whatever, very very serious soul kind of guy, whereas
Speaker 2: and It's husband, Jimmy Sullivan was a very genial, happy,
Speaker 2: sort of lovely guy, and the movie portrayed her husband
Speaker 2: as a slick, carnival hustler hustling people, and he was
Speaker 2: the absolute opposite of that, and they had a remarkable
Speaker 2: marriage and a remarkable life together. Jimmy Sullivan just started
Speaker 2: out as a gopher more or less for Anette's father
Speaker 2: who was acting, who's a manager at the time, and
Speaker 2: it took some years. He had an enormous crush on
Speaker 2: her net from the moment that they met, because Annette
Speaker 2: at the time was like.
Speaker 1: The whole world had an enormous crush on.
Speaker 2: It, and its reputation was as the perfect woman, and
Speaker 2: that was her billing that Harvard University gave her that time,
Speaker 2: because she was such a glamorous and such a super
Speaker 2: fit athlete. She was like wonder woman fifty years or
Speaker 2: sixty years before the movies, and he had an enormous
Speaker 2: crush on her. It took her some years to realize
Speaker 2: that the love of her life was right before and
Speaker 2: they eventually got married and were together through highs and
Speaker 2: lows and enormous fame, and then at the end, Jimmy
Speaker 2: Sullivan was just as happy to live in a little
Speaker 2: flat at the northern end of the Gold Coast. And
Speaker 2: back in the nineteen sixties the Gold Coast wasn't the
Speaker 2: high rise and luxury hotels. It was mostly caravan and
Speaker 2: fishing shacks. But he was very, very happy with that life.
Speaker 2: And they were together until he's passing in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 2: And then and Nett passed away four years later. And
Speaker 2: after Annett's husband died, and Net's younger sister, called Marcel,
Speaker 2: she lived just around the corner and a little firebro
Speaker 2: house that's the suburbs now called Labrador or Ravy Bass,
Speaker 2: sort of on the board of there, and she lived
Speaker 2: just around the corner. And so when Nett moved in
Speaker 2: with her and a little firerow house, this this famous
Speaker 2: glamorous movie star of bygone times living with her widow's
Speaker 2: sister in this little house. And they did a radio
Speaker 2: interview or recorded an interview with a film story in
Speaker 2: just not long before and it died and I were
Speaker 2: talking about the great movie days and Charlie Chaplin and
Speaker 2: Buster Keaton and May Wester and all those people. And
Speaker 2: while the interview's on, you can hear and Net's sister
Speaker 2: doing the dishes in the sink right behind her, and
Speaker 2: she'd be calling out, hey, mips, that was Charlie Chaplin.
Speaker 2: That did that, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that was him. You know. Did she have children, No,
Speaker 2: both her and didn't. I think Annette was so in
Speaker 2: love with the stage in the days when the child
Speaker 2: bearing days that she didn't have children, but she was.
Speaker 2: She was a wonderful mentor to many many young people,
Speaker 2: young swimmers and young divers and young show people coming
Speaker 2: along who sort of regarded her as a maternal kind
Speaker 2: of figure.
Speaker 1: Which you've known the Olympic champions of the Dawn Frasers.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, she met Dawn Fraser in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 2: She came out for the Melbourne Olympics as a special
Speaker 2: guest of Robert Menzies, the Prime minister at the time.
Speaker 2: So she also raced against as a youngster in Sydney,
Speaker 2: she raced against some of the girls who went on
Speaker 2: to the Olympic Games, Fanny Durak and Amena Wiley. She
Speaker 2: beat them in races as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, she didn't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. Well, when Annette was swimming, when the
Speaker 2: net was at the peak of her swimming prowess, women
Speaker 2: weren't swimmers at the Olympics. Wasn until sometime later.
Speaker 1: You make the point about how she championed the cause
Speaker 1: of the women who wanted to reveal a bit more
Speaker 1: themselves on the beaches.
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, that's right. She was the first. I think
Speaker 2: that she was the first great fitness influencer for women.
Speaker 2: I mean, very common to day on Instagram and things
Speaker 2: like that, but she was sending out fitness manuals for
Speaker 2: women right from about nineteen ten, and she had thousands
Speaker 2: and thousands of followers around the world. She was so
Speaker 2: popular that the fitness manuals so popular she set up
Speaker 2: an office on Broadway and she was sending out these
Speaker 2: regular catalogs and books on fitness. She wrote books on
Speaker 2: physical fitness and training and diet. And she also had
Speaker 2: like she reached millions of people because she had newspaper
Speaker 2: columns in the Australian press, in the British press, and
Speaker 2: the American press, and they were all those newspaper publishers
Speaker 2: were so keen to promote her as the one great
Speaker 2: icon of female fitness, and it did so much, I think,
Speaker 2: to empower women around the world to throw off the shackles.
Speaker 2: She used to say that, you know things when she
Speaker 2: was coming along, that most women walk corsets and cover
Speaker 2: their bodies up. And she was very very much for
Speaker 2: celebrating the human form, as we.
Speaker 1: Saw in the nineteen sixteen movie where she took everything off.
Speaker 2: Yeah it was. It wasn't just in that movie. She
Speaker 2: revealed herself in all the films that she made, and
Speaker 2: I think she just had an absolute great time celebrating
Speaker 2: the human form and encouraging other women to you be
Speaker 2: like this too, you can be like me.
Speaker 1: And when she died, poor well she died. Yeah, famous names,
Speaker 1: those famous places.
Speaker 2: Certainly and reduced circumstances. But she was happy to be.
Speaker 2: I think she was happy just to live a quiet
Speaker 2: life after all the fame. But you know, I was
Speaker 2: talking about the possessions that I went through of and
Speaker 2: it's in the archives. One of them was this really
Speaker 2: beautiful letter from the head of the International Swimming Hall
Speaker 2: of Fame and he writes to her, and it had
Speaker 2: become so anonymous or forgotten, I guess in the late
Speaker 2: in the nineteen seventies he had to put out he
Speaker 2: was in Florida, but he put newspaper advertisements in the
Speaker 2: Austra and Press, asking if anyone knew the whereabouts of
Speaker 2: the famous swimmer and film star and Neett Kellman. As
Speaker 2: someone did, they gave him her address on the Gold
Speaker 2: Coast and the little firebrough house where she was living,
Speaker 2: and he wrote the most beautiful letter to her. He'd
Speaker 2: set up, he said, and we want to induct you
Speaker 2: into the International Swimming Hall of Fame. We've got Johnny
Speaker 2: wise Muller who played and was an Olympic gold medalist,
Speaker 2: and Buster Crabb who was an Olympic gold medalist and
Speaker 2: played Flash Gordon in the movies, those nineteen thirties movies.
Speaker 2: We've got both of them lined up to induct you
Speaker 2: at the ceremony. He'd lined up Esther Williams to meet
Speaker 2: Annette in Los Angeles when the flight came over. He'd
Speaker 2: also lined up a big interview with her on national
Speaker 2: television there with Barbara Walters, the famous American journalist, to
Speaker 2: talk about the great days of working with Chaplin and
Speaker 2: Buster Keaton and those guys in the movies and what
Speaker 2: she did to empower women's liberation. I guess you would
Speaker 2: call it in those early days. And at the end
Speaker 2: of the letter he says more or less, he writes,
Speaker 2: I'm begging you, please come on it. I don't know
Speaker 2: your circumstances, but you absolutely must come because nobody, he says,
Speaker 2: nobody did more for the image of swimming in the
Speaker 2: world than you did in the early days. And she
Speaker 2: was so toughed did she go Sadly, her health was
Speaker 2: in very rapid decline at that stage, but they did
Speaker 2: induct her into the Hall of Fame, and she was very,
Speaker 2: very very proud that they had done that. How well
Speaker 2: was she when she passed she was nearly ninety. Yeah,
Speaker 2: good life, a good life, and a life really well lived.
Speaker 2: And she, as I say, until she got very ill
Speaker 2: at the end, and her husband had passed, And of
Speaker 2: course that's sort of knocked the wind out of her
Speaker 2: sales quite a bit. He'd been like her best friend
Speaker 2: for seventy years. Until then. She was swimming every day,
Speaker 2: walking on the beach and doing her ballet exercises. There's
Speaker 2: a photograph in the book. As I say, she's in
Speaker 2: the late eighties, still as limber as she was in
Speaker 2: the twenties.
Speaker 1: So when we look at all those old MGM, the best,
Speaker 1: the greatest of the years, and we see those Spectacarresta
Speaker 1: Williams swimming shows and I don't know how they did
Speaker 1: it or how they even filmed, and how the girls
Speaker 1: can breathe and perform. It's all because of Annett Kellman,
Speaker 1: is it?
Speaker 2: Well? She was the one who instigated that, you know,
Speaker 2: even the sport of synchronized swimming. She more or less
Speaker 2: started that with her stage shows the Cavalcade celebrating the
Speaker 2: human form and female athleticism, and it was the forerunner
Speaker 2: of that, and she really lived up to the tag
Speaker 2: at the human Mermaid, the Australian Mermaid.
Speaker 1: Grantly Keiser is my guest, Folks, This book is called
Speaker 1: Annette Kellerman Fascinating Australian Mermaid so much we didn't know
Speaker 1: about it back shortly. My guest in the studio is
Speaker 1: Grantly Keyser, renowned journalist. I remember him, a journalist heavily
Speaker 1: involved in boxing and reporting on boxing and managing boxes,
Speaker 1: a significant author. I counted sixteen books, Grantly, are you
Speaker 1: saying there's more like five?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's well over twenty now because the last couple
Speaker 2: of years I've been writing, the last few years I've
Speaker 2: been running two a year, so the numbers stack up
Speaker 2: pretty quickly. But I just love doing it. You know,
Speaker 2: I love immersing myself in Australian history. And I always say,
Speaker 2: you know, whenever I'm doing events or talking at libraries
Speaker 2: and things, or you know, in this country, we have
Speaker 2: so many phenomenal stories, even in my own family. So
Speaker 2: many people sit down and watch it an American TV
Speaker 2: show about American historical figures or British historical figures. I
Speaker 2: watch it for hours. You know, we have so many
Speaker 2: great stories about our own people in this country. We
Speaker 2: should be celebrating them and the people we live in.
Speaker 2: You know, like I wrote a book about Matthew Flinders.
Speaker 2: You know, there's over a hundred major geographical landmarks around
Speaker 2: Australia that bear his name, and just about every town
Speaker 2: and a city we've got a couple in Australia has
Speaker 2: a Flinders Street or Flinders Road or whatever. And yet
Speaker 2: I guarantee most people in Australia wouldn't even know that
Speaker 2: Australia got its name from Matthew Flinders. He drew up
Speaker 2: a map. He was the first man to circumnavigate the
Speaker 2: whole continent of Australia, and he drew a map that
Speaker 2: said Australia or terrorists on it, and that's how we
Speaker 2: got our name. But most people would know that. They
Speaker 2: might drive down Flinders Street every day, or walk down
Speaker 2: Flinda's Street, or see the Flinders University or the Flinders Range,
Speaker 2: but they don't really know much about this incredible man,
Speaker 2: you know, this man who was as a child his father.
Speaker 2: And that's why I try and in all my books,
Speaker 2: I try and humanize these subjects. You know, Matthew Flinders
Speaker 2: isn't a statue out the front of a train at
Speaker 2: the Flinder's train station. He was a living, breathing person
Speaker 2: who's got relatives who are very live in England, are
Speaker 2: very proud of their ancestor. One of them helped me
Speaker 2: with the book, Rachel Flinders. She's a schoolteacher in England,
Speaker 2: very very proud that her great great great grandfather actually
Speaker 2: named a continent. It's not a bad feather in your
Speaker 2: family cap. But you know, as a child, Matthew's dad
Speaker 2: took him out and showed him the Aurora Borealis up
Speaker 2: in the sky and Flinder's you know, like you could
Speaker 2: just see, you could just imagine his mind exploding at
Speaker 2: wanting to know more about the universe and the world
Speaker 2: around him. And so that's the sort of ideas I try.
Speaker 1: To bring all that's the tenth century. Yeah, you wonder
Speaker 1: how on earth they could pursue those the danger of
Speaker 1: actually getting on a ship and sailing with great bravery.
Speaker 2: You know. You look at his map of Australia that
Speaker 2: he drew in about eighteen oh four or eighteen o three,
Speaker 2: eighteen oh four. He drew the map and he made
Speaker 2: all those calculations of where every little inlet and bay
Speaker 2: and range was while on a ship, rocking around, holding
Speaker 2: on to a railing so he didn't fall over, and
Speaker 2: holding a spyglass to his eye or some other sort
Speaker 2: of navigational instrument as he's making calculations, you know, and
Speaker 2: then going back and jotting them down on a map.
Speaker 2: It's quite incredible of the bravery that was all.
Speaker 1: These things, given the fact we've got the satellite satellite
Speaker 1: imagery these days. Yeah, how accurate, very accurate.
Speaker 2: There's not that much difference. I mean, obviously with depths
Speaker 2: of water and things, there's been modern technology to help
Speaker 2: with those kinds of things. But for a guy that
Speaker 2: was on the move all the time on a moving ship,
Speaker 2: they are very very accurate, the maps that he drew.
Speaker 1: Why am I thinking of Peter fitz Simon when I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you? He has a similar first flour Australia. Yeah,
Speaker 1: heroes he does. Yeah, do you collaborate with him?
Speaker 2: Not really? Are you a rival or not really? Rival?
Speaker 2: He was planning, I know he was planning a book
Speaker 2: on Matthew Flinders and I sort of gazumped him. And
Speaker 2: he's a little bit and that he just about finished.
Speaker 2: I think that he says it's coming out in a
Speaker 2: couple of years, so we'll wait to see. But if
Speaker 2: you no need to buy his, you just go out
Speaker 2: and get mine. All the bookstorts.
Speaker 1: Did you wrot write a book about the number? Not
Speaker 1: so much Ned Kelly, but the policeman who share Ned.
Speaker 2: Kelly actually did two books. I wrote one about the
Speaker 2: Kelly family called Missus Kelly, which was centered around his mother.
Speaker 2: Because you know, I think a lot of writers who
Speaker 2: had come before hadn't really looked at the fact that
Speaker 2: Ned Kelly was a character with a family, with people
Speaker 2: who loved him despite all his sins and these crimes.
Speaker 2: You know, the effect that his family had on him
Speaker 2: and the effect he had on his family. I mean,
Speaker 2: his criminality got his mother into all sorts of trouble.
Speaker 2: She went to jail, and she was actually in jail,
Speaker 2: the same jail where he was hanged. You know, imagine
Speaker 2: that morning. You know, she was in the laundry where
Speaker 2: the sons being hanged in the at the same time.
Speaker 2: They were in the same jail together, and she was
Speaker 2: only really in jail because she got caught up in
Speaker 2: some of his plans. He brought police attention to them.
Speaker 2: And yeah, so he had a very very disastrous effect
Speaker 2: on all people around him. Was a hero villain, well,
Speaker 2: a little bit of both. I mean, I think you
Speaker 2: can be a bit of both. I always kind of
Speaker 2: think that those kind of a quait ned Kelly in
Speaker 2: my mind, to an outlaw motorcycle gang leader. Now, you know,
Speaker 2: I think he was head of a criminal, small criminal empire,
Speaker 2: a horse stealing empire and a cattle stealing empire. But
Speaker 2: he had a lot of noble, gallant sort of qualities
Speaker 2: about him as well. You know, he was never known
Speaker 2: to have heard a woman. He was extremely brave or
Speaker 2: perhaps even fool hardy, but there was certainly a great
Speaker 2: disregard for other people's lives. When he was enraged, and
Speaker 2: I think he had an extremely violent, dangerous temper.
Speaker 1: When you compare him to a motor cycle gang leader.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, like a leader of a criminal enterprise. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's the way I see him. Maybe the old style, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: It's a bit more sinister to these days with the
Speaker 1: you know, the drug.
Speaker 2: Being Oh yeah, yeah. But you know, at different times,
Speaker 2: I mean, ned Kelly thought nothing of stealing people's horses,
Speaker 2: even if there were farmers that needed the horses. He was,
Speaker 2: he was involved in lots.
Speaker 1: Of having said that there's a lot of bikeers you
Speaker 1: go to war with, is that's right?
Speaker 2: That's right? And I think I think you can be
Speaker 2: both hero and villain. I don't think it's as I
Speaker 2: don't think it's really black and white. He was a
Speaker 2: dangerous person, but he had lots of good qualities as well,
Speaker 2: as you know, there's probably lots of people in jail
Speaker 2: with lots of good qualities as well.
Speaker 1: How do you go about your research?
Speaker 2: It was very very long process with with a net
Speaker 2: and people like John Monash I mentioned earlier and others.
Speaker 2: I've got so much archival material and that really does
Speaker 2: help me with Vivian Bullwinkle. I wrote her story last
Speaker 2: year and I was so proud to so proud and
Speaker 2: happy to do that. Her closest relative, her nephew, John Bullwinkle,
Speaker 2: Lovely Chap lives at the New South Wales Southern Highlands
Speaker 2: down Barrel Bundanoon Way. He gave me so many letters
Speaker 2: and diaries pertaining to Vivian, including this wonderful letter. I've
Speaker 2: mentioned it before in talks I've given. It was written
Speaker 2: by a guy in an age care home. He was
Speaker 2: eighty five years old and he'd been on Banker Island
Speaker 2: with Vivian when the nurses were massacred. The Japanese also shocked.
Speaker 1: Just recount that story briefly though, and they were rounded up.
Speaker 2: And in nineteen forty two there were a group of
Speaker 2: Australian nurses tending to wounded Australian soldiers in Singapore. And
Speaker 2: because the Japanese were known to use rape as a
Speaker 2: weapon of war and they raped their way through a
Speaker 2: hospital in Hong Kong, the Australian High Command ordered all
Speaker 2: the nurses out of Singapore. Sixty five of one group,
Speaker 2: including Vivian, got on a ship called the viy in
Speaker 2: a brook took off for Singapore, hoping to get to
Speaker 2: what's now Jakarta was called Betaviy in those days, because
Speaker 2: the Japanese weren't there and they thought that would be
Speaker 2: a safe haven. They got halfway there when they were
Speaker 2: hit by Japanese dive bombers and their ship was actually
Speaker 2: blown out of the water. Some of the nurses drowned
Speaker 2: in the water. Some of them washed up on all
Speaker 2: different parts of this place. Banker Island, where Vivian and
Speaker 2: twenty one other nurses washed up, they encountered almost immediately
Speaker 2: a group of Japanese soldiers who marched them back into
Speaker 2: the water and machine done them all in the back
Speaker 2: and all of them were killed except Vivian, who were
Speaker 2: shot in the back, but somehow managed to survive, and
Speaker 2: she crawled up the beach and hid in the jungle
Speaker 2: for a few days, and eventually she was eventually captured
Speaker 2: by another group of Japanese soldiers and she spent the
Speaker 2: next three and a half years in prison camps with
Speaker 2: some of the other nurses who had survived in absolutely
Speaker 2: hellish conditions until the end of the war until they
Speaker 2: were rescued. But some of the other people who had
Speaker 2: washed up were also shot and bayoneted by the Japanese,
Speaker 2: and there was a man who survived. His name was
Speaker 2: Eric German, and at the age of eighty five, he
Speaker 2: wrote a letter from to Vivian from a nursing home, saying,
Speaker 2: you may not remember my name, but I'm sure you
Speaker 2: remember that awful day on Banker Island more than fifty
Speaker 2: years ago. And at the end of the letter he says,
Speaker 2: both of us have have had many, many great years
Speaker 2: since then, and he is to many more. You know,
Speaker 2: he is a man of eighty five, had been shot
Speaker 2: and bayoneted by the Japanese, and he's writing to a
Speaker 2: woman who had been shot machine gunned in the back
Speaker 2: and somehow survived. It was just a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1: You just wonder how on earth they survived? Do you
Speaker 1: even you hear the stories of the you know, the
Speaker 1: Burma railway, and then this lady's been shot and still survived.
Speaker 1: How serious was the wound?
Speaker 2: Well, did you the bullet went straight through it. She
Speaker 2: felt that she'd survived because she was the tallest of
Speaker 2: the group and most of them got hit in their
Speaker 2: vital organs, whereas she got hit a little bit higher
Speaker 2: at mister lungs and heart and she was very, very
Speaker 2: very lucky to survive. She was lucky to survive the
Speaker 2: bullet wound and then the subsequent she felt that she
Speaker 2: was in the water for quite some time and she
Speaker 2: felt the salt water may have helped helped preserve her
Speaker 2: Wow by cleaning the wound.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she did gain fame and not fame, and I
Speaker 1: was gonna say notoriety, but fame later on when people
Speaker 1: truly appreciated and she was decorated too, I.
Speaker 2: Think, oh she was. She received many, many awards and
Speaker 2: it's remarkable. Thirty years after the end of World War Two,
Speaker 2: she was the matron at Fairfield Hospital in Melbourne and
Speaker 2: she got a call asking if she'd go back to
Speaker 2: a war zone, you know, after all the horrors that
Speaker 2: she experienced, and she did. And the operation was to
Speaker 2: bring back orphan children from from Saigon, the fall of Saigon,
Speaker 2: and she she got on a Conus jet that flew
Speaker 2: to Bangkok and then a Hercules aircraft that flew up
Speaker 2: to Sigon. And when they arrived at Saigon, it was
Speaker 2: there was machine gun fire and bombs going off, and
Speaker 2: all the horrible horrors that she'd experienced in single came
Speaker 2: back to her. But they arrived and they found all
Speaker 2: the little babies lined up, all the orphan babies lined
Speaker 2: up in shoe boxes, and they put the shoe boxes
Speaker 2: on the plane and brought them back to Australia.
Speaker 1: Famous that story, is it.
Speaker 2: Not, Operation Baby Lift? Yeah, it's amazing how many lives
Speaker 2: they saved.
Speaker 1: So what's your next project.
Speaker 2: Well, while I'm in Adelaide, I'm doing some more research
Speaker 2: about Mary Penfold and the birth of Australian wine and
Speaker 2: so that book will be out at Christmas time. And
Speaker 2: it's the story of Mary Penfold who left a very
Speaker 2: comfortable life in England to come to the frontiers, still
Speaker 2: a frontier place in those days, Adelaide in eighteen forty four,
Speaker 2: and she built up a great wine business.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty fours, eight years after yeah, colony was founded.
Speaker 2: Yep, Yeah, and they planted some iron grapes they brought
Speaker 2: from the south of France, her and her husband, and
Speaker 2: Mary's sort of never really got the recognition. She was
Speaker 2: actually the winemaker and the person that turned it into
Speaker 2: a very very.
Speaker 1: God the vineyards up McGill up at McGill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, amazing from those humble origins she presided over
Speaker 2: a company that really just grew and grew and grew,
Speaker 2: and by the time that she retired from the business,
Speaker 2: she was way up in years, getting up towards eighty.
Speaker 2: Penfolds was producing a third of the wine in South Australia.
Speaker 2: So she turned into a very, very big operation. But
Speaker 2: it's also the story of Australian wine right across the board.
Speaker 2: I mean, the very first fleet that came out in
Speaker 2: seventeen eighty eight, they brought wine cuttings as well to
Speaker 2: establish vines in New South Wales.
Speaker 1: Would she have had any idea that a bottle of
Speaker 1: grange would sell whatever it sells for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, thousand bucks or thereabouts, maybe more.
Speaker 1: Did she have any idea that they.
Speaker 2: Were mostly making wine for medicinal purposes in those days?
Speaker 2: And then you know, they realized it was pretty good
Speaker 2: stuff and they started bottling and selling it commercially, and
Speaker 2: they were exporting it. Before too long, they were exporting
Speaker 2: it overseas.
Speaker 1: Australiers went really into them. They had more like the
Speaker 1: ports and the well fortified wines.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. A lot of the colonists saw wine
Speaker 2: as a real sophistication as a real civilization rather than
Speaker 2: the grog in the early days that you know associated
Speaker 2: with the first fleet. In those early days of convicts
Speaker 2: and drum drinkers and gin drinkers, Wine was seeing seen
Speaker 2: as civilization coming to the frontier.
Speaker 1: She must have had a husband, yea.
Speaker 2: Her husband was doctor Christopher Raws and Penfold and there's
Speaker 2: Raws and retreat Penfolds make that. But he he is
Speaker 2: often seen as the as the brains behind it was
Speaker 2: actually Mary Penfold. She was the woman who was the
Speaker 2: driving force.
Speaker 1: So that when is that out?
Speaker 2: That will be out at the end of October, just
Speaker 2: in time for Christmas.
Speaker 1: I passed before. It's like saying which one is your
Speaker 1: favorite child? You must have a favorite book, a favorite
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: I've loved them all. I loved. I loved writing story
Speaker 2: of Hudson Fish, the guy who started a quantas I
Speaker 2: loved writing story of him. But I love writing the
Speaker 2: Hudson Fish story because his it. Hudson Fish is the
Speaker 2: guy that started quantity, started with two little biplanes and
Speaker 2: a place called long Reach in Queensland in the middle
Speaker 2: of the desert, and his two children still alive. His
Speaker 2: daughter Wendy, she was just so happy that her father
Speaker 2: had been forgotten. He started his airline nineteen twenty called
Speaker 2: it the Queensland and Northern Territory Air Service. It was
Speaker 2: just an air taxi service for people who going stations
Speaker 2: way out in the middle of nowhere. And she was
Speaker 2: just so proud that her father had been forgotten for
Speaker 2: so long was being celebrated in a book. And I
Speaker 2: was very very proud of that, not just because it
Speaker 2: was a great story about one man's drive. He was
Speaker 2: a war hero from World War One. He came back
Speaker 2: to Australia and he thought he didn't have a job.
Speaker 2: He thought he'd go rabbit trapping to make a few quid. Instead,
Speaker 2: he started an airline that you know, when he was
Speaker 2: running it was the greatest and most respected airline in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: But how did he make that quantum leap from that
Speaker 1: small air service to one of the most respected airlines
Speaker 1: in the world.
Speaker 2: He started well, he started off as it was just
Speaker 2: doing aerial taxi work for a while between places like
Speaker 2: long Reach, clon Curry, those places way out west in Queensland.
Speaker 2: But eventually they got the contract to bring the mail
Speaker 2: from London. The mail would come from London to Darwin
Speaker 2: little aircraft wild pick them up in Darwin and bring
Speaker 2: them to the rest of Australia. Then he got the
Speaker 2: contract to actually bring the mail all the way and
Speaker 2: he got government support to make it an international airline.
Speaker 2: Before too long, Quantas in the nineteen thirties was making
Speaker 2: international flights.
Speaker 1: How long would it have taken to get them?
Speaker 2: Well, several days, yeah, and how dangerous, very dangerous yea.
Speaker 2: And Hudson Fish risked his life many many times to
Speaker 2: get that little airline going. And you know, Quatus has
Speaker 2: been very controversial the last few years. They had a
Speaker 2: managing directors making millions and millions of dollars. Hudson Fish
Speaker 2: for ten years lived in a house with a tin
Speaker 2: roof in Long Reach, was hotter than hell. And every
Speaker 2: set he made out of the airline he poured back
Speaker 2: into it. So I was very very pleased with Hudson Fish.
Speaker 1: But I love it.
Speaker 2: It's called Hudson Fish. Fish is spelled fysh. Yeah. But
Speaker 2: you know, a Nick Kellerman, what an amazing woman. I
Speaker 2: was so proud to tell her story as well.
Speaker 1: Great chat gradly, thank you for coming in and made
Speaker 1: the book go well.
Speaker 2: All the best My pleasure Thank you very much for
Speaker 2: having me corner.
Speaker 1: Antley Keyser, the author of Annette Kellerman Australian Mermaid, and
Speaker 1: lots of other books about Australian Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us,