Albert Facey an ordinary man became who became an extraordinary best-seller

The roughly typed manuscript tied up with string didn’t promise much but it delivered a small publisher a bestseller

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The manuscript arrived at the publisher Fremantle Press with little to recommend it. Roughly typed and tied together with green and white waxed string, commissioning editor Wendy Jenkins didn’t expect much, but when she began to read she was hooked.

The words painted a picture of an interesting, perhaps colourful, but not extraordinary existence. It was a tale about a boy working as a farm labourer growing into an experienced bushman, trying a range of jobs, who heads off to war and returns to become a tramway worker, farmer and unionist. But it was the ordinariness, the rich record of day-to-day details from a real life in early 20th century Australia, that made it so compelling.

The author, Albert Facey, told his life story in plain, unadorned prose. It was the simple story of a person who had lived through childhood poverty, went to war and endured a hard life of boxing, labouring and working in public transport. Despite all he had been through, Facey considered himself very lucky to have led the life he had. His story was published under the title A Fortunate Life in 1981 and it became a bestseller.

Albert Facey in uniform during World War I.

Facey may have had many different professions in his life, but most had made him neither rich nor noteworthy. Yet the first and only time he tried to be an author, he was a huge success.

He was born Albert Barnett Facey on August 31, 1894, the son of Joseph and Mary Ann. Not long after his birth, his father left to work on the goldfields of Western Australia, taking Facey’s two older brothers, Joseph and Vernon, with him. In 1896 his mother received word that Joseph Sr had died and she left the two-year-old Facey and four other children with their grandparents to go to Western Australia. When Facey’s grandfather died his grandmother had financial difficulties so she sold her property and took Facey and his siblings to Western Australia to be with their mother. On the way Facey nearly drowned falling off a wharf before boarding the ship.

When he arrived in the west in 1899 he found his mother had remarried and refused to take Facey and his brothers in, accepting only his sister. Instead Facey went to live with an aunt and uncle in Kalgoorlie.

Albert Facey was an old man when he wrote his first and only book.

The uncle took up a selection near Narrogin in 1902. Although only eight, Facey was offered a labouring job on another property. It turned out to be a hellish existence, he was worked until exhausted, bullied by other children living there, paid no wages, given no new clothes and every Christmas witnessed a drunken brawl among the men working there.

On Christmas Day 1904, to prevent another fight, Facey stole some of the alcohol and poured it into a pigs’ trough, enraging one of the men. He whipped the boy so badly it left Facey scarred for life. When he was well enough, Facey ran away from the farm and returned to his uncle’s place. He worked for two more neighbours who also wouldn’t pay him, before finally a married couple named Phillips took him in, paying him well and looking after him. The couple were ready to adopt him but his mother wouldn’t give permission. It led to a falling out with the couple and he left.

Another couple took him in but, when he turned 14, he left them to live with his mother. Facey found a job working at a local store and stayed
as a border, teaching himself to read and write.

Dominic Sweeney as Albert Facey in the 1985 TV adaptation of A Fortunate Life. Picture: PBL Productions

Not happy with his job at the shop, he left to work in the country again. After a stint as a drover, he got a job with the Western Australian Water Supply board, then briefly as a linesman with a surveying firm before taking up with a travelling boxing troupe. He was travelling across NSW when war broke out in August 1914 so he quit the boxing troupe to go home to Western Australia and enlist. In January 1915, he was posted to the 11th battalion of the AIF.

His battalion was sent to Egypt for training and Facey went ashore at Gallipoli on April 25. He wrote: “Suddenly all hell broke loose; heavy shelling and shrapnel fire commenced. The ships that were protecting our troops returned fire. Bullets were thumping into us in the rowing boat. Men were being hit and killed all around me.”

His descriptions of the death and confusion at Gallipoli on the first day and the day-to-day conditions in the long months thereafter bring the campaign vividly to life.

Although in his book he claimed to have been injured at Gallipoli, his army medical records say he was suffering a heart problem and was invalided out of the military. He returned home in June 1916 and soon after married Evelyn Mary Gibson.

A Fortunate Life has been republished many times.

The book has never gone out of print.

He got a job working on the Perth tram system until 1922, when he left that job to take up a soldier settlement plot. Forced off his farm when the Depression hit, he went back to working for the tramways. He later became an active union member and was elected president of the Western Australian Government Tramways, Motor Omnibus and River Ferries Employees’ Union of Workers in 1945.

In 1945, two of Facey’s three sons returned safely home from serving in the World War II, but he learnt that his missing oldest son, Albert Barnett “Barney” Facey, had died in Singapore in 1942.

Over the years Facey honed his storytelling abilities with his children and as he recounted various episodes of his life he was encouraged to write them all down. Evelyn helped him but died in 1976. After writing out three drafts in exercise books by hand, it was typed up and submitted to a publisher. With a bit of polishing, but not so much that his clear, simple, authentic voice was lost, it was published in 1981.

It sold out of its initial print run at Fremantle Press and a bigger publisher bought the rights. Just as it was becoming a runaway bestseller, Facey died in February 1982, but his story had taken on its own life.

In 1985 it was adapted as a miniseries and the book has remained in print ever since. The publication rights recently returned to Fremantle Press and new editions were published. The book has recently been optioned for a possible new TV or film adaptation.

A Fortunate Life by A.B. Facey is available from Fremantle Press $29.99

Originally published as Albert Facey an ordinary man became who became an extraordinary best-seller