The Elusive Australian Character

Trying to define the spirit of my protagonist in my latest book, The Seduction of Sunni Sinclair, I researched Australian women who became figures of folklore during their lives. Jeannie Gunn wrote about her life in We of the Never Never, and we claim Nancy Wake, the heroic spy and resistance member in WW2, for Australia, though she’s a Kiwi. Nellie Melba and Dawn Fraser were highly spirited and full of fun but oh so different. Germaine Greer, Cathy Freeman, the determined and persuasive Barangaroo--they led the world to better understand tolerance. Paralympic Louise Strang, Sister Elizabeth Kenny, and Jessica Watson risked everything, gave life all they had to offer, and were all Aussies to the core. They were pioneers who sharpened or changed our behaviours and our values, mainly for the better.

Men also boost our folklore for their larrikin tales, Bob Hawke, Ron Barassi, C J Dennis, Erroll Flynn, Bart Cummings, and, for their cultured performances, Li Cunxin, who claimed us, so we reciprocated and adopted him, and David Malouf. All different, so where is this elusive Australian character?

We are not all heroic figures. There are many shades to our Aussie culture, and there has always been a dark side. Criminals stand tall in our folklore. We erected a bronze statue at Uralla to Captain Thunderbolt, the “gentleman bushranger”. Even killers writ their names large in our folklore: Ned Kelly, Ben Hall, and Ivan Milat. It’s a side we prefer not to be part of, a side we steer away from as though it’s contagious, and maybe it is. Contagious.

And in my search for Australian characters, I remembered a name associated with the darkest corners of our history: Sydney’s arch-criminal, Matilda (Tilly) Devine, no relation to the Waltzing Matilda, the much-eulogised sheep rustler. Tilly, the female gangster, was active between the wars in the nineteen twenties and thirties. She was a strong woman, able to exert control over men, outmanoeuvre them, and live independently of them--her biography will never be read in our schools, though, times being what they are, don’t bet money on it.

Tilly was the big-city, organised crime boss. She started her career as a street sex worker, ramped up to brothel ownership and then rounded up her career with a razor gang to compel donations to her growing collection of jewellery and property. With her razor gang by her side, she terrified her countless male competitors, stole their thunder, and made a name for herself in Sydney’s society. By the forties, she was a folklore figure in Sydney as famous as Ned Kelly but with the added handicap of the Taxation Department on her tail. She allegedly shot her husband while growing her business model to include, allegedly, coercion, drugs and corruption of police and politicians and extended her brothels in Palmer Street by renting houses allegedly owned by the Church.

As Sunni, the protagonist in my book, who escapes the fictional razor gang boss, Kitty Balushi, to become her own legend, says, ‘That’s a lot of alleging for one person.’ Tilly never utters a word, never plays a part, never appears in the fictional flesh, but she hovers over the pages of my book like a giant black cane toad.

So, did I find my true Aussie character? I think maybe I did. My Sunni is not like Tilly. My Sunni is Sydney’s notorious, warm-hearted, adventurous, emotional, empathetic, witty, tolerant, ambiguous and highest-paid call girl. My Sunni is the glamorous escort catering to the wicked desires of the wealthy and powerful who escapes Sydney’s gangland to reinvent herself as the hard-working publican up to her glamorous elbows in soap suds. My Sunni is a one and only, her own unique Aussie person on the way to becoming a part of our folklore. And that’s research.