CBRBingo: Reader’s Choice subbing in for Rep
I first heard about this book from a newspaper article with a heading about spies in the suburbs, and was tantalised by the idea of a family of spies living in the same leafy, sleepy suburb of Brisbane as me. I then heard an engaging radio interview with Sue Ellen Doherty that focused on the hijinks of her and her siblings tagging along with their dad as he cultivated his network of informants, and monitored the activities of potential subversive elements. The highlight was her story of a family beach holiday with the Petrovs, high profile Soviet defectors, who needed to be kept out of sight when the Melbourne Olympics provided cover for KGB operatives to enter the country.
I bought the book expecting more of the same, and it delivered. Sue Ellen, older brother Mark, and little sister Amanda grew up knowing that their father Dudley was a spy, working for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Their mother had also worked for ASIO, although she was no longer on the payroll. Dudley trained the children in spycraft and used them as cover as he surveilled trade unionists, immigrants from Communist countries, and even the local UFO club. Who would notice that a father taking a photo of his children was actually focussing on the background, or think that the children eating icecreams on a bench were memorising number plates?
But there is so much more to this book. Journalist Sandra Hogan digs beneath the surface to uncover how Sue Ellen’s life was shaped by her childhood and shattered when her father suddenly died of a heart attack when she was 17. For decades, although she had seen the body, Sue Ellen refused to believe that her father was actually dead. She convinced herself he was away on a job, and would resurface, like he always did.
When Dudley died Joan told the children they were legally bound to never speak about ASIO business again. So they drew on the techniques they had used to keep the family secrets and locked it all away. But this meant forgetting everything they had done together as a family. They had nothing real to speak to each other about, and couldn’t speak to anyone else. The exciting, colourful people from their ASIO life were gone and all other connections were dropped. “They needed urgently to create new lives for themselves, far removed from the ones they had shared.”
When ASIO published a history of its early years, Dudley and Joan’s work was no longer an official secret and Sue Ellen was freed to speak. To tell her story to Sandra Hogan. But also to reconnect with her siblings and let their childhood out of the box of secrets locked inside her.
“For decades the child spy had lived in deep cover inside the woman, waiting to be reactivated.”