By Jane Rocca
Mary Moody, Author, 66, widowed
My father Theo was an alcoholic and womaniser. He was an intelligent and charismatic man who worked as a foreign correspondent in Washington and New York during World War II, and then for [publisher] Australian Consolidated Press for three decades. He came back to Sydney to edit The Daily Telegraph in the 1950s.
Mary Moody, Author 66.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Dad had a violent, unpredictable temper when he drank. As a young child, I remember being terrified of the shouting and his aggression. As a result, I grew up with enormous vulnerability around aggressive men. I avoided them as much as possible in my adult life.
Dad would wake me early on Sunday morning to go fishing. We would go to the jetty at Sydney's Balmoral Beach. Mum would fry the fish we caught for breakfast. They were happy memories. But most of the time, Dad was preoccupied with his work.
He was a bookworm. My brother Daniel and I weren't allowed to speak when he was reading. We couldn't talk if the news or horse-racing was on. We spent a lot of time outside, because we had to be very quiet around him.
I have a brother, Jon, and sister, Margaret, from Dad's first marriage, and nearly 20 years older than me. Dad's first wife gassed herself when she found out he was having an affair. When he met Mum, she was just 21. She took on his two young children and had three of her own, though one child died.
Margaret left home when I was two and Jon became a merchant seaman who came back twice a year to visit. Daniel and I were allies in a difficult home situation.
When I wrote my first memoir, Au Revoir, my brothers read it and told me that our home life wasn't that bad. Margaret, who lived in Canada and died three years ago from Alzheimer's, said I was kind to Dad – she remembers it being a lot worse. My brothers managed to remove themselves from what was happening and I don't think they were as frightened of my father's yelling.
Daniel and I are both journalists. Dad used to tell us, "Always write in the most straightforward way – don't try and be clever or use words the average person won't understand."
My first kiss happened at 15 on a Eureka Youth League camp [for young Communists]. A boy convinced me to go outside and kissed me on the mouth. I wasn't expecting it. My parents were members of the Mosman Communist Party. We read Karl Marx on the camps. It was quite radical.
I didn't menstruate until I was 17 and was physically immature. I loved hanging out with the guys and became their pal and got on better with them than with girls. I used to climb out my bedroom window to hang out at the milk bar at Mosman Junction with the boys.
I liked dangerous boys – the fun and reckless ones. One guy stole his dad's car when we were teens and we would drive around with no seatbelts. I don't know why it appealed. We also had music in common.
My first sexual experience was a rape. It was at a party with a boy nobody knew but who I got chatting to. He convinced me to go and look at something outside and jumped me. I got over it. I think I have a lot of my mother's resilience.
I started a relationship with a boy called David after that. We lived together for three years from the ages of 18 to 20. He was lovely and gentle. He moved to England and I was supposed to meet him but never did; I started working at The Australian Woman's Weekly and then at Channel 9.
Soon after, I met my husband David Hannay, a filmmaker and producer who was 11 years older than me. We didn't marry until 22 years later, after I'd had three children [Miriam, Aaron and Ethan]. He was like a father figure and a career man. I was 21 when we met. We were together for 44 years. We went through some rocky times.
In my 50s, I had an affair while living in France for six months. Our relationship nearly ended after that, but it didn't. David never once threw it back at me. Once the affair was over, it was over.
My father killed himself when I was 21. Mum came to live with us for 26 years after that. David used to say she was like the aunt who came to dinner and never left. Having her there made it possible for me to keep working. David was away a lot and it meant I had intelligent company.
David died 2½ years ago from cancer. A large part of me died, too. I lost my sense of self and self-confidence. It is slowly coming back. I would never go into another relationship but I won't dismiss a little fling.
I live with my son Ethan, his wife Lynne, and their three children. After David died, I sold our farmhouse. It's nice to be close to the children and I have 11 grandchildren to keep me occupied.
Mary Moody will conduct an 11-day memoir-writing workshop in France in May 2017; worldexpeditions.com.