It was just months after I’d lobbed into “Lizzie” Bay [Elizabeth Bay, Sydney] in 1993 when my old flatmate from St Kilda, Dale Langley, rang and nagged me to go to her sister’s place in nearby Edgecliff to attend an election-night party. Didn’t think I’d know anyone there but forced myself to go. Turned up on the doorstep, pale-skinned, all in black. Very “Melbourne”.
Wendy Harmer and her husband, Brendan Donohoe.Credit: Courtesy of Wendy Harmer
It was the “unlosable” election. All the then opposition leader John Hewson had to do was stay upright and victory was surely his. Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating was weary, swinging at shadows; the polls and pundits had all but written him off. I’d be going home by midnight to two cats, no matter who was in power.
To the beat of Midnight Oil, Lenny Kravitz, Pearl Jam and Hunters & Collectors, the frenetic throng was crammed on the balcony dancing. It was a balmy March evening. After a desultory perusal of the dips and chips, I settled in front of the TV with a warmish bottle of riesling in the only quiet corner I could find. My dates would be Kerry O’Brien and Antony Green from the tally room in Canberra.
And then he walked in … tall, broad-shouldered, sun-kissed blond curls, tanned from his head to his toes. He must have come with someone. I looked about, couldn’t see anyone. He sat down next to me, smelling of sea salt, and whispered the magic bellwether words, “Eden-Monaro”. His knowledge of politics was encyclopaedic and, as the results rolled in from across the nation, he knew the name of every player on the field and had a witty take on all of them that kept me laughing.
That night, Keating said his win was “the sweetest victory of all … a victory for the true believers, the people who in difficult times have kept the faith”.
Then we danced.
Brendan James Donohoe was also sure that I’d arrived at the party with a date so, reluctantly, we left each other.
And then he walked in … tall, broad-shouldered, sun-kissed blond curls, tanned from his head to his toes. He must have come with someone.
WENDY HARMER
A week later, after finding out my address, he made his way to my gate. It so happened that my other dear friend from share-house days back in St Kilda, Michael Trudgeon, had rolled up in his vintage Porsche to visit at exactly the same time.
Thinking that it was the end of any romantic overtures, Brendan left his box of organic fruit and vegetables outside my door, which included a calling card from his home delivery company Cleanfoods and a flyer on a forthcoming information night on the danger of pesticides. I might want to mention it on radio?
Aha! So that’s what he was after. Free publicity! I knew a man like him wouldn’t be interested in me.
It wasn’t the first time I’d sabotaged my love life. One night at an ARIAs after-party, I was talking with Jimmy Barnes when James Reyne interrupted our conversation. “Want to know something, Jimmy?” he said. “Wendy would never go out with me, because she thought I was too dumb.”
In Melbourne in the mid-’80s, James Reyne, then the lead singer of Australian Crawl, was the most desirable man in rock, a national pin-up boy. I was a lowly, plain-looking, stand-up comedian. We’d sometimes find ourselves backstage together and he’d ask me on dates. Seriously? I suspected he must have been doing it for a bet and turned him down.
Only recently, we laughed about it. “I really did want to go out with you,” he reassured me. “All the people in the comedy scene were so alternative and cool. I had this thing where I thought no one took me seriously because I’d come from Countdown and everyone thought, ‘F--- him.’ ”
And in another, much-regretted failure of confidence, when my good friend Deborah Conway invited me to be in the music video of her mega-hit It’s Only the Beginning in 1991, I declined because I thought I’d look too fat in tartan golf pants. I watch that clip now and want to hit myself over the head with a nine iron.
Wendy Harmer and Brendan Donohoe on their wedding day.Credit: Courtesy of Wendy Harmer.
A few months after the election-night party, Brendan and I met again. I was MC for a fundraiser in aid of writer Bob Ellis after his house had burnt down. Brendan had spent money he didn’t have to get there. He was even lovelier than I’d remembered. Again, I couldn’t tear myself away from his amused, bright-blue eyes. We sorted that we were both single.
At the end of the evening, as he walked me to my car, he held out his arm and I stepped under it. A thought came to me unbidden. I’m home. It was an insistent voice. I’d never heard it before, with anyone.
We woke up together next morning. No more entrants – we have a winner!
Within three months, in my flat in Elizabeth Bay, Brendan got down on one knee and proposed marriage, proffering a plastic ring from a soft drink bottle.
“I’m a faithful old dog,” he said. “I will never leave you. Ever.”
This time I was certain it was true. They were the words I had waited my whole life to hear.
He was so different from the musicians and writers I’d been dating, who were often self-absorbed and given to bouts of melancholy. Brendan’s outlook was always “clear, sunny, with a slight chance of rain”. His belief that the future was bent in the arc of justice, and that we could all make a difference, was infectious.
From the passenger seat of his battered avocado-green Renault 16, I could see the road below through a giant hole in the floor. He lived in Collaroy, on the northern beaches, in an old shack on the side of a hill he shared with a couple of mates. Over his bed he’d strung up a fishing net containing all the treasures he’d collected from the beach: bits of driftwood, shell-encrusted buoys, bleached bones. The walls were adorned with Bob Marley posters and surfboards were stacked in every corner.
On still nights, the sound of thundering surf lulled me to sleep. In the morning, I was woken by the cacophony of rainbow lorikeets in the Norfolk Island hibiscus.
He was so different from the musicians and writers I’d been dating, who were often self-absorbed and given to bouts of melancholy.
WENDY HARMER
A “drifter surfie”, you may be thinking. Not a bit of it. Brendan was a qualified town planner and had recently finished up after 10 years with the National Trust of Australia (NSW), campaigning against the demolition of priceless heritage buildings, bridges and wharves. (He was the first to nominate the Sydney Opera House for state heritage listing.) On weekends, he drove me around the Sydney suburbs, knowing that on the radio I’d need to be acquainted with my new city. We discussed plot ratios, setbacks, height limits and rezonings. We had lots to talk about: the surfie town planner and the comedian urban affairs reporter. Other times, we’d take off from the city to the country and spend our time poking about in historic churches, courthouses, jails, gardens and homesteads.
I mean, what’s the likelihood of falling in love over the headstone of the bushranger Ben Hall in Forbes Cemetery on Bogan Gate Road?
Brendan came to visit my old haunts in Melbourne and I was struck by how “vivid” he seemed: Sydney blond sandstone and sparkling blue ocean in contrast to drab grey bluestone and the brackish-brown Yarra River.
All my friends approved and it wasn’t too long before invitations came with the hopeful inquiry, “And will Brendan be coming too?”
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But I did miss my old town. One night I took him to the top of Mount Dandenong to survey the glittering carpet that was Melbourne. “Look at it – so beautiful,” I breathed. He muttered, “What a total dump!” and stalked back to the car. Katoomba-born and Sydney-bred, like a mollusc on a rock he will never move south.
Brendan’s friends were gobsmacked. Their treasured, eccentric mate going out with some big-time, smart-mouthed celebrity? It wasn’t until I started turning up at dinner parties and barbecues that they believed we were a real thing and conceded, “Well, it might work.”
Before I agreed to marry him, a giant obstacle: Brendan had never seen me perform stand-up live.
He’d watched me on The Big Gig and thought “nice legs”, never missed the show. But this was a test. So many men didn’t want to take me out for breakfast after I’d eaten them alive for dinner. This would probably be the end of it.
Backstage afterwards, there he was, with an enormous bunch of red roses and declaring that if he’d only seen me years before, he would have found me and proposed.
I said yes. Mad if I didn’t.
Edited extract from Lies My Mirror Told Me (Allen & Unwin) by Wendy Harmer, out October 31.
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