Speaker 1: I talked to him about what is the cost of
Speaker 1: going against the church. There was this silence and he
Speaker 1: started crying. He said, you just become incredibly isolated and lonely.
Speaker 1: You're so interested in American history, you know, like you
Speaker 1: think that's our history. It's not. This is our history.
Speaker 1: This is what happened in an Australian side street.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to separate bathrooms. We would like to
Speaker 2: acknowledge the Gadigal people of the e Or nation, the
Speaker 2: traditional custodians of this land, and pay our respects to
Speaker 2: the elders, both past and present. I'm cam Dado, Maley daddo.
Speaker 2: It's great to have you with us today. Who me
Speaker 2: or just now you listener? And we are us.
Speaker 3: And it's and we are many. That's a song.
Speaker 2: It is a song I sing that I am, you
Speaker 2: are We.
Speaker 3: Are Australia or the rest of the world, as we
Speaker 3: were saying.
Speaker 2: Before, because we do go worldwide. It's a flat world
Speaker 2: now that we have the wonderful intraweb.
Speaker 3: Are you a flat EARTHERA No?
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm speaking metaphoric. Yeah, since the Internet's happened, because
Speaker 2: you can access stuff all.
Speaker 3: Over the world. Well, we listened to American podcasts and.
Speaker 2: You know, on an overseas trip, I can watch a
Speaker 2: live AFL NRL football game. That was cool, It's fantastic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: How's your jet lag? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm all right.
Speaker 2: We've just come back from an overseas jaunt catching up
Speaker 2: with our daughter. Yeah, he's been gone for nine months,
Speaker 2: so it was great to see her and her boyfriend
Speaker 2: Miles and hang out. So but I'll tell you, the
Speaker 2: jet lag is very strange. Like I said, I said
Speaker 2: to Ali this morning, I'm thinking that I'm going to
Speaker 2: do some vim Hoff ice bathing to reset my body.
Speaker 3: Because I think that's a good idea.
Speaker 2: That's that's the feeling I got when I was standing
Speaker 2: under the cold shower this morning. Game do a nice
Speaker 2: but see how that goes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going to sit by the heater.
Speaker 2: Very good. Yeah, we all have different ways. Hey, Today,
Speaker 2: with the help of a wonderful author and playwright, we're
Speaker 2: going to be talking about an Ossie icon, King's Bloody Cross, Yes,
Speaker 2: and what happens in King's Cross, King's Cross, Sydney. Yeah,
Speaker 2: of course, the Waystside Chapel. Yeah, it's located in the
Speaker 2: Cross and it's turning sixty. This has relevance I think
Speaker 2: for Australia white absolutely.
Speaker 3: You know, Ted Knoff's founded The Wayside in nineteen sixty
Speaker 3: four and look, it's been a controversial beacon of social
Speaker 3: justice and inclusivity. And it's a place where people have
Speaker 3: been welcomed for decades despite social taboos around race, class, religion,
Speaker 3: and sexuality. And this is what we're going to be
Speaker 3: talking about. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Alana Valentine has written a book published by the Amazing
Speaker 2: Folks of Pantera called Wed by the Wayside, into the
Speaker 2: stories of couples married at Waistside Chapel, many of which
Speaker 2: were turned away elsewhere, including political refugees, interracial and interfaith marriages,
Speaker 2: same sex couples. Now this is fifty years right, fifty
Speaker 2: years before same sex marriage was legalized, divorces, unwed mothers,
Speaker 2: bikey sex workers, and more.
Speaker 3: I can't wait to hear she's got some incredible stories
Speaker 3: to share. So let's welcome Alana into the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Welcome a lot of Valentine to the bathroom. How are
Speaker 2: you very well?
Speaker 1: Thank you?
Speaker 2: First question, where'd you get your suit from?
Speaker 3: Look?
Speaker 1: I made it. I sewed it with my own hands.
Speaker 2: It's so good.
Speaker 3: It's so cool. I mean, number one, how cool is
Speaker 3: her name, Alana Valentine? It sounds like something from a movie.
Speaker 3: And then she rocks up in like this incredible Tartan suit.
Speaker 3: Is that like a family Tartan?
Speaker 1: No, not that I know of. It is it is
Speaker 1: just most interesting looking tartan on the shelf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was purposefully red white and blue? Is it?
Speaker 2: Because you got the stripes right? So it's kind of American?
Speaker 2: It gives that stars and stripes feel.
Speaker 1: No, No, it was just a color combination. I was
Speaker 1: taken with that day.
Speaker 3: So I didn't pick up on stars and stripes American when.
Speaker 2: I say stripes red white and blue and tartan, and
Speaker 2: it's kind of like a homage to Scottish American roots.
Speaker 2: Maybe I don't know. It could be. Oh, mickey, you're
Speaker 2: so pretty, you know thing. It's really just a basle.
Speaker 1: Moment, the most attention grabbing.
Speaker 2: Happened. Well, it's great. Okay, So you're one of Australia's
Speaker 2: most acclaimed playwrights. Letters to Lindy Barbara and the Camp
Speaker 2: Dog Waystside Brides. It's described as verbatim theater. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: i'd never heard of verbatim theater, but I ran it
Speaker 2: by body last night and I said, do you know
Speaker 2: about verbatim? Think, oh, yeah, you know? She said, can
Speaker 2: you just explain verbatim theater?
Speaker 1: So verbatim theater it's on the HS see syllabus, which
Speaker 1: is why body would you go getting them young? You're inculcating.
Speaker 1: But basically it's theater that's drawn from life. So usually
Speaker 1: most verbatim theater will have a community or a group
Speaker 1: of people that the playwright will actually interview as part
Speaker 1: of their process of making a play. And it's sort
Speaker 1: of on a spectrum. You get like what's called pure
Speaker 1: of abatim, where it's absolutely based on the transcripts. So
Speaker 1: there was a play recently here about Matthew Shepherd who
Speaker 1: was merdered in America, very famous play, the Laramie Project,
Speaker 1: that's verbatim. So all the theater makers went to Laramie
Speaker 1: and interviewed people and typed it up put it in
Speaker 1: a play. So here we have pure of verbatim like that,
Speaker 1: or will have plays that what I call massage verbatim.
Speaker 1: So you go and you speak to people, but you
Speaker 1: you sort of collapse characters. You might make up a
Speaker 1: few scenes things like that. So it is actually a
Speaker 1: wonderful kind of document tree theater, but sivved through the
Speaker 1: brain of a dramatist.
Speaker 2: Okay, And I imagine people are really more complex than often fiction.
Speaker 1: You're so right, You're so right. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: people are contradictory. They have, you know, things that you think, well,
Speaker 1: how can you be that both at once or three things?
Speaker 1: And you know you deal with that all the time,
Speaker 1: meeting people, real people every day. Marriage very true.
Speaker 3: And we've actually said that like some of the stories
Speaker 3: of how couples meet each other, you go, you put
Speaker 3: that in a movie and people would go, that's a
Speaker 3: lot of crap, but it really happened, Like some of
Speaker 3: them have been incredible the stories, haven't they.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, yeah, So was this process of your
Speaker 2: researching in interviewing? Is that? Is that what inspired your book?
Speaker 2: Were by Wayside? Yes?
Speaker 1: It was. The additional kicker was that my mother was
Speaker 1: married remarried at Wayside in ninety sixty nine herself, and
Speaker 1: she's been for many, many years, and so I suppose
Speaker 1: I developed this real passion to speak to her about
Speaker 1: why she'd chosen Wayside and why it was so popular then,
Speaker 1: you know, Ted Nooffs did maybe thirty thousand weddings while
Speaker 1: he was at the chapels. Yeah, and so I guess
Speaker 1: the answer is that I was interested in it as
Speaker 1: social history, but I was also just wanting to have, frankly,
Speaker 1: a vicarious experience of interviewing these women of that generation
Speaker 1: and age as a substitute for not being able to
Speaker 1: speak to my own mum.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and what did you find out more about your
Speaker 3: mum through the research of this book?
Speaker 1: I did? I did, Ali, I found this generation of
Speaker 1: women who particularly they are on the pivot of kind
Speaker 1: of like in the early days, like in ninety oh two,
Speaker 1: ninety seven percent of marriages happened in a religious ceremony.
Speaker 1: Now today in twenty twenty one, eighty one percent done
Speaker 1: by celebrants. So there's been this and you know the
Speaker 1: graph that where that change is over the sixties is
Speaker 1: just that kind of full crum where people were going, well,
Speaker 1: my parents want a religious seami, but I don't really
Speaker 1: you know, what will I do? And they are looking
Speaker 1: for alternatives and Ted Knoff's was sort of one. I
Speaker 1: was told the only show in town if you were
Speaker 1: a divorcee, no one would marry you. So I did
Speaker 1: find out things about Look, it's that thing of just
Speaker 1: the way women of that age can be quite you know.
Speaker 1: My mother used to say, oh, it was just convenient
Speaker 1: up the corner, and they wouldn't tell you, you know where storytellers.
Speaker 1: So we want but why and don't was the problem.
Speaker 1: So I found that in a lot of these women,
Speaker 1: they're very sort of matter of fact some of them,
Speaker 1: but then they're also amazingly emotional about why, what the
Speaker 1: cost of those choices were, because often they had to
Speaker 1: go against and it was men as well, had to
Speaker 1: go against their parents who sometimes disowned them, if they
Speaker 1: were Atholics marrying Protestants, if there were Baptists marrying Jews.
Speaker 1: You know, that's what was happening up at the Chapel.
Speaker 1: It was this amazing place where Ted Knoff's, who founded
Speaker 1: with his wife Margaret Knovs in nineteen sixty four, said
Speaker 1: if you are in love, I will marry you, and
Speaker 1: you know nothing else.
Speaker 3: That is the most beautiful thing. I just and the
Speaker 3: fact that obviously same sex marriage was not legal then,
Speaker 3: but he was still doing that in Obviously they weren't
Speaker 3: able to go out in the real world and call
Speaker 3: themselves husbands and husbands, but under his eyes. And I
Speaker 3: guess and that made them feel under the eyes of
Speaker 3: God in a way, being a reverend that they were married.
Speaker 1: Yes, I had this wonderful contact with a man called
Speaker 1: Kumar Ponisami and his parents. One was a Hindu, his
Speaker 1: father was Hindu, his mother was a Christian. And they
Speaker 1: got married at the Wayside Chapel and they were big
Speaker 1: in the fashion industry in Sydney. They worked for Joseph Brenda,
Speaker 1: who was a very famous Jewish entrepreneur. He set up
Speaker 1: sort of Katie's and all of these other sort of
Speaker 1: fashion brands. And so when they went to the chapel,
Speaker 1: it was this amazing sort of social thing. They had
Speaker 1: all the you know in Hindu weddings, you have all
Speaker 1: those amazing flowers that they put around. Well, they had
Speaker 1: them all over the car, they had them all over themselves.
Speaker 1: She was married in this amazing sari. They had a
Speaker 1: dyed pink poodle as their excessory six this man. They
Speaker 1: had a poodle. Yeah, it was it was just an
Speaker 1: extraordinary wedding. And then they told me that one of
Speaker 1: the truck drivers for Katie's was a woman called Maria
Speaker 1: and she married her partner Vicki in ninety sixty nine.
Speaker 1: And as you say, they didn't the state would recognize it.
Speaker 1: But there's this beautiful photo of Vicky Maria with this
Speaker 1: very traditional wedding cake and they're in the real like
Speaker 1: they're in a real you know, ones in a suit
Speaker 1: and ones in a beautiful dress, and you can see
Speaker 1: that they want to do that thing I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: which is genuflect to their tradition but also be bold.
Speaker 1: But the Kumar's parents were the witnesses for that wedding.
Speaker 3: Beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it was great, and I have actual evidence,
Speaker 1: like I've got photographic evidence that Ted was doing these
Speaker 1: amazing weddings. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so your connection really comes through your mom, is
Speaker 2: that's right?
Speaker 1: That's right?
Speaker 2: And so and you said your mom passed away a
Speaker 2: long time ago and you didn't have these answers. Yeah,
Speaker 2: what took you to the wayside? How did you find it?
Speaker 2: With that connection to your mum and wanting to know
Speaker 2: more about your mom?
Speaker 1: So what happened was so I found this photo and
Speaker 1: people who have been married there, I mean, what's interesting
Speaker 1: came is that they that when I said I was
Speaker 1: writing this play about everyone, I'm not talking just a
Speaker 1: couple of people. Everyone would say, Oh, my sister's brother's husband,
Speaker 1: my mother, my grandfather, my next door neighbor. Everyone I
Speaker 1: met had a story about way Side. So I went
Speaker 1: up there. As you say, I kind of saw this
Speaker 1: photo of my mum and there's this famous wire sign
Speaker 1: that says the Wayside Chapel, so she was photographed outside it.
Speaker 1: So I went up there and I met Graham Long.
Speaker 1: He was the pastor at the time of the Wayside
Speaker 1: Chapel and he had presided over quite a huge renovation
Speaker 1: of the chapel, so it was a little bit different
Speaker 1: to what it was in ninety sixty four when it
Speaker 1: was set up. But he told me this amazing story
Speaker 1: about how they still conducting weddings, like because people know
Speaker 1: now that Wayside has amazing outreached a street people and
Speaker 1: the homeless and all of that. So I spoke to
Speaker 1: a couple of people who've been married there recently whose
Speaker 1: friends said to them and why are you getting married
Speaker 1: in a homeless shelter, And it's like, no, there's actually
Speaker 1: all these other things that Wayside do. But he told
Speaker 1: me this beautiful story had a bride. They dressed her
Speaker 1: from a dress in the op shop. She was ready
Speaker 1: to go down the aisle and she started crying and
Speaker 1: Graham said to a why you Oh, I always thought
Speaker 1: my dad would give me away, So he said, can
Speaker 1: you hang on a minute, And he literally went out
Speaker 1: into the street in Hughes Street, waited for the next man,
Speaker 1: who was about sixty to walk past, and said, would
Speaker 1: you come in and give away this bride? And he
Speaker 1: luckily chose a very dap a gay man who immediately
Speaker 1: came in and said to this woman, stop that crying.
Speaker 1: I'm going to it. You've got luck your best today
Speaker 1: and walked her down the aisle as if he'd known
Speaker 1: her all his life. And you know, to be honest,
Speaker 1: that became a metaphor for me of what Wayside is
Speaker 1: for people who, you know, maybe their families rejected them,
Speaker 1: maybe culturally they don't want to go to the traditional
Speaker 1: sort of place. They find a family at Wayside. And so,
Speaker 1: to answer your question, Hamor, and it's that thing of well,
Speaker 1: I was kind of seeking an interest in that as well,
Speaker 1: because obviously my mother was dead, so I sort of
Speaker 1: was looking for those stories. But I was also looking
Speaker 1: for a way to connect with not just the past,
Speaker 1: but with the present.
Speaker 2: Did that story that you just told, was that something
Speaker 2: that's happening recently or had that happen back way back
Speaker 2: there that's happened recently?
Speaker 1: So that was like Graham long was as you know,
Speaker 1: John Owen is the pastor there now he's been there
Speaker 1: for several years. Yes, Graham, I started this research in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen, so it happened twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, because I do have a connection with Wayside
Speaker 2: as well. Yes, so John who's now Yeah, I met him,
Speaker 2: but I did that TV show Filthy, Rich and Homeless,
Speaker 2: and I ended up at Bondi and was basically living
Speaker 2: behind the pavilion for I was there for four nights,
Speaker 2: four or five nights there. The Wayside was where the
Speaker 2: guy that was sleeping beside me in a one man tent.
Speaker 2: He was involved in a court case because he had
Speaker 2: a boat. He was living in far North Queensland and
Speaker 2: his boat was run over by a runaway tug bow
Speaker 2: that was unmanned and he was sleeping in it in
Speaker 2: his boat and the tugboat went over the top of him,
Speaker 2: and so he lost everything terrible. So he was now
Speaker 2: living in the back of the pavilion, sleeping next to
Speaker 2: me and going up to the Wayside Chapel with his
Speaker 2: computer to speak with his lawyer and they would meet.
Speaker 2: And he said to me one night he goes, come
Speaker 2: up to the Cross, We'll go to Wayside, We'll get
Speaker 2: a free feed. And it was just to me and
Speaker 2: seeing the why sign. The people up there were so
Speaker 2: kind and it was just, I know what you're saying,
Speaker 2: that feeling of inclusiveness and yeah, we'll take you in
Speaker 2: and you're okay.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think I mean in the book, I say
Speaker 1: that I think Margaret and Ted opened a magic portal
Speaker 1: to people's better sense of themselves. Like when you walk
Speaker 1: into that place, you go, I can be something more
Speaker 1: than society tells me I can be. And all of
Speaker 1: the people since have kept that portal sort of open.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's interesting too, Like what you're talking about
Speaker 1: is that mix of middle class and street But it's
Speaker 1: not just a place where street people go. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of very wealthy patrons for Wayside. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of people who go there to get married who are,
Speaker 1: like I said, sort of they want it for a
Speaker 1: society kind of wedding. Jane Powell got married there. Ida
Speaker 1: Butchers got married there, she did, Yeah, and Andy Gibb
Speaker 1: got married there. You know, so there's quite a lot
Speaker 1: of people who sort of like you, probably wanted to
Speaker 1: identify with the work that Wayside's doing. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, the part of it too though, as you said before,
Speaker 2: where people will go, oh, isn't it like a homeless
Speaker 2: thing for you to be bringing this back around to
Speaker 2: relationship and love and weddings and communion in that way,
Speaker 2: I think it's really it's really beautiful. As you know,
Speaker 2: we are a relationship podcast. Yes, so can you you
Speaker 2: go through your in your book where by the way,
Speaker 2: so some of the relationships and some of the stories
Speaker 2: incredible stories you're able to share a couple of your favorites.
Speaker 1: I will first of all, I will tell you that
Speaker 1: it is interesting to me how many of the people
Speaker 1: who I spoke to were still married after fifty years,
Speaker 1: and almost all of them had had, you know, from
Speaker 1: mild sort of disapproval to uta cutting off from their
Speaker 1: family and never seen again all along that spectrum they
Speaker 1: But I wanted to I always wanted to do a
Speaker 1: sort of survey of what would be the percentage of
Speaker 1: people married at wayside who are still married compared to
Speaker 1: the general population. Now that's not to say that people
Speaker 1: should stay in marriages that don't work, of course not.
Speaker 1: But it is just really interesting to me that people
Speaker 1: who married for love in that way, you know, are
Speaker 1: still together fifty years ago. So the first couple I'll
Speaker 1: talk about is a man called Sean Smith and his
Speaker 1: wife Joan. And Joan was an English Protestant and he
Speaker 1: was an Irish Catholic, and he was adopted in Australia,
Speaker 1: and he told me this great story about it was
Speaker 1: so hard at that time to cross that divide that
Speaker 1: he went to pick up a date. It wasn't Joan,
Speaker 1: was someone else, and the father came out with a
Speaker 1: shotgun and said, if you're a Catholic, you can get
Speaker 1: off my land and don't come back. So I'm sure
Speaker 1: some of your listeners might remember how vituperative that Catholic
Speaker 1: Protestant divide.
Speaker 3: Sort of was.
Speaker 1: So there's quite a lot of stories in there about that. Sean,
Speaker 1: like any Irish Catholic, was a great raconteur. I've got
Speaker 1: to say I just literally had to push record and
Speaker 1: he just told me this fantastic story. He was actually
Speaker 1: his mother was in one of those Magdalen laundries in Ireland.
Speaker 1: If you were an unmarried mother, you would be put
Speaker 1: into these Catholics sort of. They're called laundries, but they're
Speaker 1: actually like homes. So he was adopted out of that,
Speaker 1: given away by his mother, and he told me the
Speaker 1: whole story of going back to Ireland and finding his mother.
Speaker 1: But the story of their marriage was that he'd I
Speaker 1: think he'd been in jail for breaking and entering, and
Speaker 1: he had befriended the deaf people in jail, and when
Speaker 1: he got out Joan, who's not deaf but was friends
Speaker 1: with other deaf people. She and he had gone on
Speaker 1: a date and then decided that they were going to
Speaker 1: get married after many months of dating, and they lived
Speaker 1: in their car. He said to me during the interview,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we graduated up to a tent after a while,
Speaker 1: which I thought was kind of hilarious. The other story
Speaker 1: I'll tell you about as a woman called Ursula Zufo
Speaker 1: who married what she called a serial bigamist, so he
Speaker 1: had married when she found out eventually that she'd married him.
Speaker 1: Because some of your listeners may remember group certificates you
Speaker 1: used to get posted them for your tax So she
Speaker 1: opened this envelope with his group certificate in it had
Speaker 1: a different name, and he said, oh, well, you found
Speaker 1: me out. And the police told her later that he
Speaker 1: was a serial bigamist. He'd married like four or five
Speaker 1: people in Canada, then come out to Australia and married
Speaker 1: four or five more. She had to then, when she
Speaker 1: wanted to get married again at Wayside to her bo,
Speaker 1: who was an Italian man, she had to prove that
Speaker 1: she wasn't really married. So they had to find the
Speaker 1: very first wife, who happened to live in Redford and
Speaker 1: so I know, it was fantastic. So she said he
Speaker 1: was an Italian so he knew some people, which I
Speaker 1: didn't ask any further about. But they found the first
Speaker 1: wife and she had to go to court and say, yes,
Speaker 1: I'm the only wife. The rest of you are just
Speaker 1: mugs basically, So yeah, that was a wonderful story. She
Speaker 1: ended up getting married to Sergio, and she refused to
Speaker 1: get married in a Catholic church, and as an Italian Catholic,
Speaker 1: that was very hard. But they proved that she wasn't
Speaker 1: really ever legally married and they got married by ted Noff's.
Speaker 1: One of the ones that really affected me was a
Speaker 1: woman called Isabella Tran who married a Vietnamese man in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies when there were no Vietnamese in Australia.
Speaker 1: She said, bank accounts didn't even know how to have
Speaker 1: three names in the filling in form, you know. And
Speaker 1: she said he was a certain number of students. He
Speaker 1: was there at the University of Canberra studying and he
Speaker 1: asked her out and they eventually got married. And she
Speaker 1: talked with real pain that her grandmother, who was from Queensland,
Speaker 1: said that it was the thing that would kill her
Speaker 1: that she decided to marry a Vietnamese.
Speaker 2: Thing to hold on to it.
Speaker 1: Heavy thing to hold onto.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There's a woman called Sally Dolman who was a Quantus
Speaker 1: flight attendant and she married her partner, Jeff, and then
Speaker 1: told a really harrowing story about her baby who who
Speaker 1: was burned. They had to be in a sort of
Speaker 1: a facility for six months with the the child, and
Speaker 1: he lived and he's now one of Australia's best visual artists.
Speaker 1: I guess the thing to say is about these marriages
Speaker 1: is that people often talk not just about the happiness
Speaker 1: but about the hardship. And you'll know that from being
Speaker 1: at Wayside. People don't kind of divide their lives into
Speaker 1: this was good and this was bad. They sort of
Speaker 1: almost took about it all as a continuum and when
Speaker 1: you interview people you get both. You know, they don't
Speaker 1: just stop at the wedding. But yeah, amazing resilience in
Speaker 1: the couples. I've met and learned a lot about my
Speaker 1: mother because of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, beautiful. From listening to these stories and hearing the experiences,
Speaker 3: what more did you learn about this amazing Ted Knoff
Speaker 3: because he sounds incredible what he was doing. And do
Speaker 3: you know more about his history where he came from
Speaker 3: as well?
Speaker 1: Yes, So they set the Waisa Chapel up in nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty four. He had been in America and working with
Speaker 1: in Chicago, working with street people there, so that notion
Speaker 1: of a Chris outreach to the poor was sort of
Speaker 1: he'd brought that back to Australia and to be honest,
Speaker 1: he came into and way such chapel still has some
Speaker 1: contention about the amount of social justice work that they
Speaker 1: do and what is the line the book talks about
Speaker 1: how Ted was charged with heresy three times, so two
Speaker 1: times officially, and what heresy is is it means that
Speaker 1: you it was actually technically called unfaithfulness to the doctrines
Speaker 1: of the faith, meaning that you're not keeping to the
Speaker 1: exact letter of some of the most important tenets of
Speaker 1: the faith. And what was amazing for this was that
Speaker 1: there was a man called John Hall, a reverend who
Speaker 1: had just graduated from the seminary, and he asked the
Speaker 1: Methodist Church it was then, to charge Ted with this
Speaker 1: because he said that Ted's theology was not what the
Speaker 1: Methodist Church believed. And I realized that no one had
Speaker 1: ever found John Hall and talk to him, because I
Speaker 1: was going through all the newspaper articles and I rang
Speaker 1: the Westside Chapel and I asked John, I said, do
Speaker 1: you know how I get in contact with John Hall?
Speaker 1: Is he even alive? And a friend of a friend
Speaker 1: of a friend. Next day I was speaking to John
Speaker 1: Hall and I was yeah, and I was expecting this,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of fire and brimstone, having to hold
Speaker 1: the phone out from my ear, and he wasn't. He
Speaker 1: just he was just fantastic. I said, did you ever
Speaker 1: meet Ted? And he said, oh, yeah, yeah, Ted and
Speaker 1: I got on. Well, we just I just completely disagreed
Speaker 1: with his theology and didn't think he should be part
Speaker 1: of the church. And I was like, it would be
Speaker 1: better for my story if you were a real you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like ever worship. But no, he was an
Speaker 1: extremely exciting man. He said, Oh, nobody's ever really rung
Speaker 1: me before. Yeah, it's interesting Ted. I mean I also
Speaker 1: spoke to Matt Knopf's whose Ted's grandson, and Matt Noffs
Speaker 1: you will know, is still doing amazing work with the
Speaker 1: homeless and you know, youth, particular young people who have
Speaker 1: drug problems. He's written a book about addiction, and he
Speaker 1: and his brother Rupert have been very supportive of my
Speaker 1: investigations of Ted, And yeah, it's it's been amazing kind
Speaker 1: of connecting with what Ted was trying to do. I
Speaker 1: he died very early of a stroke. Ted and at
Speaker 1: fifty eight, I think he was he wasn't very old,
Speaker 1: but he you know, I think it broke him the
Speaker 1: attacks from the church. I mean, Ted knew how to
Speaker 1: get his mates and his friends, and he had a
Speaker 1: lot of sectarian as it were, or secular supporters. But
Speaker 1: I think it broke his heart. The church turned on
Speaker 1: him because they basically were saying, this is not in
Speaker 1: line with our theology, and he used it to gain
Speaker 1: a lot of publicity and support. But in his heart
Speaker 1: of hearts and Matt said this, he thinks that it
Speaker 1: broke him. Yeah. But what's been amazing for me, if
Speaker 1: I can just say, is that young people who came
Speaker 1: to the play and who I hope will read the
Speaker 1: book sort of would grab my arm and say, we
Speaker 1: didn't know that there was somebody in the past who
Speaker 1: was trying to do this stuff and who was marrying people.
Speaker 1: We just thought the past is like this, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of like this horror show of tree and discrimination.
Speaker 1: And it's just really exciting for people to be engaging
Speaker 1: with the fact that those kind of changes come from somewhere,
Speaker 1: and to be honest, people sacrifice their lives in a
Speaker 1: way to make those changes happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the church could use a ted nofs today, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, the church would probably really want a ted
Speaker 2: nos based on the fact that that congregations are getting
Speaker 2: smaller and smaller.
Speaker 1: Yeah, forty four percent of Australian's Christians now or identify
Speaker 1: on the Census I think fifty five percent identifies some
Speaker 1: religion in Australia.
Speaker 2: So, yeah, do you know what it used to be.
Speaker 1: Oh, it used to be much used to be much
Speaker 1: much higher. Yeah, I don't know the exact figures, but
Speaker 1: I do know that that twenty four percent is I
Speaker 1: think it's one of the first times it's dropped below
Speaker 1: sort of the fifty percent.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 1: I did interview Bill Cruz, who runs the Exodus Foundation,
Speaker 1: and he was Ted's sort of two ic or second
Speaker 1: in command. He did a lot of work up at
Speaker 1: the Wayside Chapel and he there was a really painful
Speaker 1: moment where I interviewed him and I talked to him
Speaker 1: about what is the cost of going against the church
Speaker 1: because he also had a statue of Korean comfort women
Speaker 1: that they said to him, you got to take it down.
Speaker 1: You know, he's got a church in Ashfield. There was
Speaker 1: this silence and he started crying. He said, you just
Speaker 1: become incredibly isolated and lonely, and so you're getting it
Speaker 1: from inside the church and from outside. So I think
Speaker 1: Bill Cruz is kind of yeah, my contemporary Ted Knoff's.
Speaker 1: But look, there are people in all religious organizations trying
Speaker 1: to liberalize and kind of make more just. It's just
Speaker 1: that they don't sort of get the airtime. And especially
Speaker 1: I think there's always this useful polarity between the right
Speaker 1: wing religious and the LGBTQI community that is kind of
Speaker 1: played up. There's a lot more people in the center
Speaker 1: and across the margins, you know, than sort of I
Speaker 1: don't know. Sometimes the media give credit for.
Speaker 3: What has researching the book, Has it taught you anything
Speaker 3: about love or marriage?
Speaker 1: It's taught me that, yes, that things that start off
Speaker 1: rocky the only way can be up. Sometimes. You know,
Speaker 1: a lot of these people met in difficult or really
Speaker 1: circumstances that had a lot of hurdles. It's taught me
Speaker 1: about the fact that we are more than our individual love,
Speaker 1: you know, if I can put it that way. What
Speaker 1: I mean by that is that how we get married
Speaker 1: and how we think about our relationships is also about
Speaker 1: the times. And one of the things the book does
Speaker 1: is that it says, well, okay, compare this to your
Speaker 1: first meeting and your planning for your wedding and what
Speaker 1: you prioritized. There's a story right at the end of
Speaker 1: two people who got married in twenty eighteen, Claire Kahalen
Speaker 1: and Peter Owen, and they deliberately got married at Wayside
Speaker 1: because they wanted a connection to their local community. And
Speaker 1: they were saying, like, we don't want to put all
Speaker 1: our money and all our planning into these big, sort
Speaker 1: of glamorous weddings. We want, actually, we want to be
Speaker 1: connected into the place where we live. So that was
Speaker 1: really interesting to me. It was like they were much
Speaker 1: more aware of the sort of symbolism of getting married
Speaker 1: at wayside. Yeah, I really liked that. But I guess
Speaker 1: the thing I've learned most is that we are individuals
Speaker 1: and we make individual choices, but we are also people
Speaker 1: of our time. And you know how you got married,
Speaker 1: why you got married, and whether it lasts or not,
Speaker 1: and what are the is shoes around It are as
Speaker 1: much about what's going on around you as it is
Speaker 1: about what's inside the relationship. I've listened to the podcast
Speaker 1: and know you sometimes talk about that, like what the
Speaker 1: culture of the wedding is and what the expectations of
Speaker 1: the couples are, and I think sometimes you know, it
Speaker 1: was really exciting. There's there's a moment in the book
Speaker 1: I say I was heading into a field of flower children,
Speaker 1: which is what it was, you know, in the sixties,
Speaker 1: they were very hopeful about the ability to change the
Speaker 1: world through love. Yeah, and there's a moment in the
Speaker 1: book where I talk about in Australia, are our revolutions
Speaker 1: kind of more quiet like that, Like people don't of
Speaker 1: course they go out on the streets sometimes, but maybe
Speaker 1: they don't always do that. They just they vote with
Speaker 1: their you know, their feet, They go to Wayside to
Speaker 1: get married instead of you know, having a big different
Speaker 1: to America. Is what I was trying to see. How
Speaker 1: does religious change happen in this country in a different
Speaker 1: way than it happens in America, you know, where it's
Speaker 1: more sort of in public and there's a lot more
Speaker 1: legal things involved. But yeah, here people just kind of
Speaker 1: quietly went to Wayside in their thousands, because it wasn't
Speaker 1: until July ninety seventy three that there were celebrants in
Speaker 1: the country. So that's why it's been this big change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it makes so much sense to me that so
Speaker 3: many of the marriages have lasted, as you were saying earlier,
Speaker 3: because it feels like there's so much more consciousness about
Speaker 3: coupling with your partner when you're doing it at Wayside
Speaker 3: because yeah, you fought the extremes of the outside world,
Speaker 3: whether you're same sex or different religions or different nationalities
Speaker 3: or whatever, and the fact that you've still chosen for
Speaker 3: the pure essence of love. And I mean, I know
Speaker 3: that's what we should all be choosing when we get married.
Speaker 3: But I feel like in that dynamic and in that
Speaker 3: little place in the world, it's really conscious. So I
Speaker 3: think it's just it's sprinkled with so much magic. I'm
Speaker 3: ready to get married again.
Speaker 2: At the Wayside we did, so we've been we've been
Speaker 2: married two times. We got the first time, we got
Speaker 2: married in the church and at another Sydney institution, the
Speaker 2: Garrison Church, and that's that's where we wonder why we
Speaker 2: why we ended up getting married there.
Speaker 3: It was just really pretty.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 3: There was not much else about it. Really. We were young.
Speaker 2: Because I was I was born in Melbourne. I grew
Speaker 2: up in Melbourne.
Speaker 3: So no, why we I really don't know why we
Speaker 3: got married, which is interesting because also again going back
Speaker 3: to the Wayside, you chose the Wayside for a very
Speaker 3: specific reason where we just got married because it was
Speaker 3: a nice church and it was the oldest church in Sydney.
Speaker 2: That was cool, beautiful. It's a gorgeous church. And looking
Speaker 2: back at those pictures and you go, okay, we're going
Speaker 2: to do a traditional wedding. That was That was a
Speaker 2: great place to do it still is. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: a stunning place. But then we got married. We renewed
Speaker 2: our vows in a circle of stones with a celebrant
Speaker 2: and in the shadow of a TP everyone's standing around
Speaker 2: in a circle. We were in a meeting.
Speaker 3: It's very flower Child. Apparently absolutely everyone had flower Lason
Speaker 3: And yeah, so maybe it.
Speaker 2: Is a chance to renew it and get conscious again. Hey,
Speaker 2: what do you hope and who do you hope? Of
Speaker 2: course you want everyone to read the book. Who are
Speaker 2: you writing this for?
Speaker 1: Look, when I had the play on, I really thought
Speaker 1: it would be Ted's cohorts, like you know, people sort
Speaker 1: of in their sixties and seventies Belvoir sort of main
Speaker 1: audience that would come. And like I mentioned before, what
Speaker 1: gave me the most joy was the as the weeks
Speaker 1: went on, because on for like nearly six weeks, it
Speaker 1: was like younger people coming and saying, why don't we
Speaker 1: know this about our history? Why aren't we told? And
Speaker 1: you know, I might make some schorelous statement about well,
Speaker 1: you're so interested in American history, you know, like you
Speaker 1: think that's our history. It's not. This is our history.
Speaker 1: This is what happened in an Australian side street. So
Speaker 1: look to answer your question, I would really love a
Speaker 1: young audience for this. I've done a few kind of
Speaker 1: really interesting interviews like Hani Sir, and you know, young
Speaker 1: people who want to find out where the radicals were
Speaker 1: in our past, and where the visionaries were, and who
Speaker 1: were the leaders who were saying to politicians this is
Speaker 1: not good enough anymore. You know, people maybe thinking about
Speaker 1: getting married and maybe thinking about why you do that,
Speaker 1: why you make that commitment, and why you choose to
Speaker 1: use your money and your time at particular places rather
Speaker 1: than others.
Speaker 3: It'd be a great subtle gift to to give to, like,
Speaker 3: you know, parents that were very strict one who they
Speaker 3: want their child to marry, and you just kind of
Speaker 3: slip that in and go just just read this book,
Speaker 3: you know, and then they can maybe get some ideas
Speaker 3: and be inspired by love is love and be a
Speaker 3: bit more accommodating to their child and who they choose
Speaker 3: to marry.
Speaker 2: Is that sort of like the message that you want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, certainly there are people who made
Speaker 1: that choice and it was not only a difficult choice,
Speaker 1: but in some cases a fatal choice, you know, Like
Speaker 1: there were people who told me about violence that was
Speaker 1: put on people because of like Bill Cruise told me,
Speaker 1: he's had people come to the wedding and try and
Speaker 1: disrupt it. He's had to have security at the weddings.
Speaker 1: You know, all of that. So it's not like I'm
Speaker 1: telling the gorgeous stories, but there's also can be a
Speaker 1: cost to kind of not having anything more to do
Speaker 1: with your family ever. So I want to celebrate that
Speaker 1: you can make that choice and still find an alternative
Speaker 1: family or people who are your tribe. You don't have
Speaker 1: to stick to those old ways, that there are people
Speaker 1: who will support a new vision.
Speaker 3: Do you hope that the play will come back again
Speaker 3: now that the book is coming out?
Speaker 1: May you be a prophet of future possibilities?
Speaker 3: But it makes so much sense, you know, to have
Speaker 3: that in combination I think would be really beautiful. So
Speaker 3: thank you, Aliet.
Speaker 1: It's also that thing you probably noticed that and you're
Speaker 1: from Melbourne Camp, so you know, it's that thing of
Speaker 1: stories from Sydney don't necessarily travel to Melbourne or to
Speaker 1: Brisbane whereas they should. You know, we do stories from Ireland,
Speaker 1: the stories from America.
Speaker 2: Have you ever thought about that? Why it's so bordered?
Speaker 2: You know what it cloistered in you Sydney people. It's
Speaker 2: like wait a second. But you know when something happens
Speaker 2: nationally or we all band together.
Speaker 3: We do.
Speaker 2: It's just this, it's just this parochial state. I mean,
Speaker 2: you're so prolific, is there? Are you always working on
Speaker 2: the next when you if you've got a pipe that
Speaker 2: you're plugging, you know you've got something new going into
Speaker 2: the pipe, something finishing at the end of the pipe,
Speaker 2: and purple something, you know, something actually happening in the pipe.
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean that's the life of a person working
Speaker 1: in the arts. You've got things going on because not
Speaker 1: everything happens at the same time. But I'm very excited.
Speaker 1: There's actually like a lot of plays are now being
Speaker 1: made into books and that's because people are interested in
Speaker 1: those the recess search that playwrights do. I have been
Speaker 1: commissioned by a company in Woollongong to write about the
Speaker 1: Linked Cafe Siege, and I've interviewed Thomas Sinn who's the
Speaker 1: partner of Tory Johnson who died in that siege, and
Speaker 1: also his mother. So that's actually they're singing in that.
Speaker 1: It's just very exciting to deal with these sorts of
Speaker 1: social issues in it's creative nonfiction, I guess.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what an interesting tale to tell and how I
Speaker 2: mean visual it is also because there it is like
Speaker 2: you said when you said the side street in Sydney. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a side street in Sydney that's on
Speaker 2: one of the most colorful streets in the in the world,
Speaker 2: you know. And then to have it at that time
Speaker 2: with all the all the like the Flower Child, the
Speaker 2: sixties and the seventies and the music. I can see
Speaker 2: it see it all on screen.
Speaker 1: Well, there's lots of stories too about like you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes the Americans would get married at waystside on their
Speaker 1: R and.
Speaker 2: R and of course to come in the sailors would
Speaker 2: come in, it's right.
Speaker 1: And there's one there's a photo of one African American
Speaker 1: man in a sort of floppy white hat marrying his
Speaker 1: partner in a floppy white hat. But yeah, there were
Speaker 1: lots of those Vietnam veterans were married at wayside, so
Speaker 1: you've got the whole. There was lots of bikeies. There's
Speaker 1: a guy called Skull Wiggans who got married at wayside
Speaker 1: and you know then they zoomed off on the bike.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think people will be amazed by the
Speaker 1: tapestry of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Is there photos to go.
Speaker 1: With their shores? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I know, because I'm like visualizing at all. I like
Speaker 3: to actually get to see the people that you're reading about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, amazing. The book is wed by the wayside Alana Valentine,
Speaker 2: thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Yeah, best of luck with it all. I just think
Speaker 3: it sounds like there's so many layers to the book clearly,
Speaker 3: and I think it's going to be a huge hit.
Speaker 3: I know I'm going to be talking about it for
Speaker 3: a while. It sounds awesome.
Speaker 2: Lovely meeting you, Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 3: I cannot wait to read that book. That just absolutely
Speaker 3: lights me up. The idea of what she's written about, Yeah.
Speaker 2: And so many stories in there, and the time that
Speaker 2: it happens, and how relevant it is today in what
Speaker 2: we're looking for and people are looking for something for substance,
Speaker 2: you know, and heart. She's such a smart lady. Some
Speaker 2: of the words she used it, I'm like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to have to look up what pejorative means. She's great,
Speaker 2: she's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. And the Waistside Chapel is such
Speaker 2: a beacon. It is for so many and as I
Speaker 2: probably used too many words, but in my experience of
Speaker 2: the Waistside Chapel, but they do. They also have another
Speaker 2: part down at Bondi as well, which is where I
Speaker 2: found a lot of great humans down there, such great
Speaker 2: stories and full of hope.
Speaker 3: I was going to ask, I don't think. I don't.
Speaker 3: I think this is the case. But Ted Noffs should
Speaker 3: have like the Order of Australia for the work he
Speaker 3: was doing with the waste.
Speaker 2: He doesn't already.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if he does or not. But
Speaker 3: as you say, like to be that kind of a beacon,
Speaker 3: to be that kind of to go against the church
Speaker 3: in so many ways, he's brave, very brave, and to
Speaker 3: be ostracized the way he was. But to continue to
Speaker 3: marry people because they were in love, that's there is
Speaker 3: no greater reason than that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree. We will see, let's go find
Speaker 2: it out.
Speaker 3: We'll go and research, we will, we'll research ted.
Speaker 2: We'll do a verbatim play about that. I think it's
Speaker 2: already done. Alana Valentine's written it in her book wed
Speaker 2: By the Wayside, which crosses state boundaries. So wherever you're listening,
Speaker 2: wherever you're listening around the world, certainly inside of Australia,
Speaker 2: it's a separate bathrooms. Web By the Wayside is going
Speaker 2: to be relevant to you because it's about Lam from correct.
Speaker 3: All right, thanks so much for listening everyone, Sus