‘He was the perfect husband’: Quentin Bryce reveals devastating loss of partner of 57 years
The moment he knew he wanted to spend the rest of his days with her was “imprinted” on his memory. That moment was the beginning of an incredible love story that lasted almost six decades.
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In Dame Quentin Bryce’s house, which is exactly how you might imagine it – stirring notes of Puccini’s Bevo al tuo fresco sorriso floating down the hallway, fresh flowers in cut-glass vases, stacks of books on tables (On Beauty by Umberto Eco, The Art of Clarice Beckett), vivid oils and watercolours on the walls – there is a small dresser tucked discreetly away in a corner of the lounge room.
On it, framed photos tell the story of an extraordinary public life – Bryce chatting with Nelson Mandela; smiling with Prince Harry; striding down a hallway with Barack Obama and Julia Gillard; standing next to the Queen, both women in signature bright colours.
In another room – and on a far more visible wall – a different set of photos tells another story, that of the former governor of Queensland and governor-general of Australia’s private life.
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Far less formal, they show Bryce as a snowy-haired, rosy-cheeked child; with her parents and sisters at the family home in Ilfracombe in Central West Queensland; as a fresh-faced law graduate; a young mother cradling each of her five babies; and later, right in the thick of things with her 12 grandchildren.
And in many of the photos – both the public and the private ones – a third, extraordinary story is told; that of her 57-year marriage to Michael Bryce, who died on January 15 this year, aged 82. The late architect and designer is beside her in most of the photos – one half of an enduring double act.
From her couch in her lounge room – “Are you all right?”, she asks, “Would you like a pillow behind your back?” (Bryce’s parents Norman and Edwina raised their daughters to be polite, and it continues to show) – Bryce reflects on navigating a new sort of life, one without her much-loved husband in the frame.
“I am in a time of transition in my life, just like many people are,” says Bryce, 78, who also looks exactly how you might imagine her – straight back, warm smile, immaculate in a jumper and trousers by Carla Zampatti, her great friend.
“We all have these periods in our lives, times of significant change. For Michael and I, coming back here to live in Brisbane (in the western suburbs) seven years ago was one of them.
“Returning to Brisbane (after Bryce was succeeded as governor-general by Sir Peter Cosgrove on March 26, 2014), it was very nice for Michael and I to be among family and old friends after such a long period in public life.
“We’d had the most remarkable time, but it was quite easy for us to let it all go, because we were able to travel everywhere and say goodbye and thank you to so many people who had been with us. Being able to have that sense of completing a job properly, no matter what job it is, makes it far easier to move on to the next phase.”
Not quite as easy is the loss of her husband. Michael Bryce was by all accounts her greatest supporter; never envious, nor at all threatened by his wife’s remarkable career, the award-winning architect and designer once cheerfully told an interviewer about the early days of their union “I was the soccer mum”.
The couple first met as children, both attending Camp Hill State School, before reconnecting years later while both were at university; Michael studying architecture, his future wife law.
“I saw this skinny girl with white hair. It was all curly and sticking up. She was tanned and walking through a hotel foyer.
Even today, it’s like a picture imprinted on my mind. I knew from that moment I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her,” he would later say about meeting Quentin Bryce – then Strachan – again.
They would marry at Brisbane’s St John’s Cathedral in December 1964, and Michael, a former aide-de-camp to Colonel Sir Henry Abel Smith, Queensland’s 17th governor, would establish his own architecture firm, with a particular interest in design.
His own brilliant career would see him become president of the Industrial Design Institute, a fellow of the Australian Institute of Architects, patron of the Australian Design Alliance, and be inducted into the Design Hall of Fame.
He was the principal design adviser to (among many other things) the 2000 Olympic Games, the graphics and signage for the Queensland Cultural Centre, the 1982 Commonwealth Games and the Australian Wallabies logo. Alice Hampson, the federal president of the Australian Institute of Architects, told ABC Radio that Michael was “the most extraordinary design talent, who revolutionised the thinking about design in Australia”.
A mentor to many architecture and design students at universities throughout Australia, Michael had a keen interest in child safety and acted as ministerial adviser for the Child Accident Prevention Foundation.
Meanwhile – in between having their five children (Jack Bryce, Revy Bryce-Browning, Rupert Bryce, Chloe Shorten, Thom Bryce) – the tall, skinny girl with the white, curly hair would become (also among other things) the first female member of the academic staff of the University of Queensland Law School, the inaugural director of the Women’s Information Service, the state director of the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, the federal sex discrimination commissioner, and in July 2003, Queensland’s 24th governor.
When it was announced in April 2008 that she would be appointed as Australia’s first female governor-general, Michael in turn announced: “I am relinquishing all of my practice and income to ensure my wife has a clear run.”
And from their home in a quiet, tree-studded street, Bryce calls the loss of her greatest cheerleader “the most enormous transition I’ve faced”.
“Marrying Michael in 1964 was the defining event of my life,” she says. “My marriage was the key to everything, to how my life developed.
“He was the perfect husband for me. He gave me a great deal of freedom to be myself, and never held me back.”
Bryce smiles. “I was so fortunate to have him. He was the most wonderful husband and father. As one of my daughters reminded me when I was writing Michael’s eulogy, he was never a man who went to work and then went to the pub or the club; no, he came home and cooked the dinner. And he came home smiling.
“I was so thrilled that towards the end of his life he was recognised by his peers for his own contributions to his field; I was really, really so happy for him.”
As in all pairings where one has a higher public profile than the other, there were times when Michael was not greeted quite as enthusiastically at events as the glamorous governor-general on his arm.
But, as in all pairings where both parties also know they are equal, they could laugh about it. On her couch, Bryce is laughing now.
“Michael used to joke with me that one day he would write a book and call it: ‘And you are?’ She leans in, holding out a hand and imitating introductions being made.
Bryce leans back on the sofa and says “we really did have the most wonderful time together,” then, a few moments later, adds: “All transitions are testing, in some way. They can be scary, they can be exhilarating. Some are harder than others. This is the most enormous transition I’ve faced ... I find it just terribly hard to talk about.”
What Bryce finds easier to talk about is the nature of grief itself; how it can knock the breath out of you, and what it takes, after you have been brought to your knees, to get back up again.
“I’m of course very well aware that there are many people, men and women, experiencing this great loss and sadness, and what I have learnt is the importance of showing up for them.
“It is very true that grief is very isolating, and I’ve really seen first-hand how important it is to show up for someone who has lost someone.
“I have had that, and I am so grateful. From my family to my friends, to the hundreds of letters I received from all over the world talking about Michael, it just made a very isolating time seem far less so. I learnt from this time that we have to check up, and we have to show up.
“For me, my response, with the help of all that support, to the depth and sadness of loss which we all must face at some time, is to get busy, keep going, put your foot out the door and go on. Some women I know have a saying,” Bryce says, as she straightens her shoulders on the sofa: “Get up, get dressed and get out.”
Bryce is doing just that. Every morning she walks through the streets of what she calls her neighbourhood “patch” – “I enjoy it enormously and try to incorporate a couple of hills” – and also does pilates regularly. In summer, she swims laps of her pool and “gets battered about by the waves” in the ocean.
“What a feeling the sea is,” she smiles.
Her social life is robust, lively and centred on another great love of her life (after family – “always family”), the arts.
When Qweekend catches up with Bryce, she has been out three nights in a row to: Opera Queensland’s The Marriage of Figaro – “absolutely magnificent, I felt enormous pride watching every member of the cast”; the opening night of Queensland Theatre’s one-woman tour de force Prima Facie – “very compelling theatre”; and a Brisbane Music Festival performance by chamber music quartet Orava – “four wonderful musicians, I really enjoyed it”.
Where some might find this schedule exhausting, Bryce finds it exhilarating. “Oh, I’d go anywhere for a concert,” she says, smiling broadly.
“With every year that passes, I find myself appreciating music more; it energises me. Reading and music are my constant companions, and I can spend hours looking at a painting, just being swallowed up by it.”
For some weeks now, the artist Bryce has been quietly contemplating is Queensland landscape, still life and portrait painter William Robinson, regarded as one of Australia’s best contemporary artists, and, along with his wife Shirley, her great friend.
He is the only living Australian artist to have a gallery named after him, the William Robinson Gallery at Old Government House in Brisbane, and Bryce has latterly been amateur guest curating (it is Bryce who adds the “amateur” with some emphasis) a major exhibition of his works.
Titled Lyrical Landscapes it is being shown at the Gold Coast’s new Home of the Arts. It features epic, large-scale landscapes from Robinson’s Creation Series.
The works were produced over a 16-year period and each painting has been carefully paired by Bryce and the exhibition team with a piece of music to reflect its particular textures, tones and spirit.
For Bryce, curating both the paintings (stunning images of the Gold Coast hinterland) and the music to accompany them has clearly been an absolute delight.
“Bill’s paintings are visual poetry,” Bryce says, picking up a book on Robinson from her coffee table and flipping through its pages.
“See this one, Springbrook with Lifting Fog, I had it on the wall in my Canberra office (it was on loan from the National Gallery of Australia). Look at that light. And the colouring. Look at that,” she says, brushing the page with her fingertips, “just look at it.”
Bryce herself looks for a long time, swallowed up. But life is not all books and plays and music for Bryce.
Instead, it is often, as it always has been, about the work.
The work of advancing women, of protecting and uplifting children, of supporting Indigenous communities, education, arts and literacy programs, of highlighting scientific and health research initiatives.
The same things, she says, that have driven her all her life drive her still.
And while the pace may have slowed down a little since her time as governor-general, when she was a patron, ambassador, spokeswoman or advocate for a dizzying 350 organisations, she remains deeply committed to many.
From her office at the Queensland University of Technology overlooking the City Botanic Gardens, she continues to work with, lend her name to, and advocate for many causes and organisations, including the LGBTI community, the Gallipoli Medical Research Foundation, the Justice Reform Initiative, and the Indigenous Literacy Foundation.
She is an active member of the Australian Genomics Independent Advisory Board and a strong voice in the domestic violence sector. And she is still, to the bottom of her (purple) bootstraps, a feminist.
“When I hear of young women who reject feminism, who say ‘well, we don’t need that anymore’, I don’t respond well to it in my heart. But it does show the success of the Australian women’s movement that they are able to say that because of all the hard work down the line; most especially for their opportunities in education choices, employment choices, child care choices. Women every day in Australia are exercising rights that have been fought for. The older I get, the more I value the struggle that so many women took on. But of course it’s not enough. For so many women around the world, it is extremely challenging to develop their full potential. For so many women, domestic violence is a constant. I listen to the numbers of women suffering from domestic violence, or existing on the poverty line, or living on the edge of exhaustion, and I know we have much change to drive. And we need to take better care of our mothers. The first question women are asked when they have a baby is: ‘When are you going back to work?’ It’s wonderful that we have all these choices, but we still aren’t getting it right in terms of support, in poverty, in domestic violence and in the exhaustion that women are still experiencing in large numbers. All of these things still need to be fought hard for, every day.”
And when Bryce does fight for all of those things, she will look, as she always has, impeccable doing it.
Both celebrated and occasionally criticised, Bryce’s wardrobe has been much talked about over the years – there are entire blogs and Pinterest boards devoted to it; one is simply called The Fabulous Outfits of Quentin Bryce.
And they are fabulous, and also usually Australian made. Often wool (a nod, perhaps, to her father’s wool-scouring business all those years ago in Ilfracombe) and bright – hot pink fuchsias, sunflower yellows, fire-engine reds.
At official functions when Bryce was governor-general, and often the only woman in a battalion of men in suits, she stood out like a shimmering peacock in a flock of grey pigeons. Bryce’s sartorial choices often had a message in them; for her official portrait in Parliament House she asked to be painted in purple, the suffragette’s colour, and at her governor-general swearing-in ceremony she pinned a brooch of purple silk flowers with green leaves and white stems to her yellow dress in another nod to her suffragette sisters.
Today, she is wearing, as mentioned earlier, a jumper and trousers by Carla Zampatti, the great Australian designer who passed away in April. Another transition, losing a lifelong friend.
“Oh, she was just great in every way”, Bryce says.
“I was introduced to her 40 years ago, and she was just gorgeous. So full of life, so charming, so sophisticated and so fun. She had that alluring accent and this wonderful story behind her of someone who came here as this migrant girl and just took us all by storm. I love her clothes, and I will continue to wear them. It’s important to support our designers, and we have had some wonderful ones – Kim Hodges, Juli Grbac, Keri Craig, Daniel Lightfoot … so much talent here.”
And while Bryce loves fashion, she’s not particularly attached to any outfit; on leaving Yarralumla, the official residence of the governor-general in Canberra, she donated most of her vice-regal wardrobe to a women’s centre and she’s cheerfully given away “almost all” of her hats to charities.
“But I have kept a few outfits to give to my granddaughters,” she smiles.
Which brings us to Bryce’s own, personal North Star.
The part of her life that is not in transition. The part that has remained steady and fixed as things churn and change around her. Quentin Bryce’s greatest love is her family, and while during her time as governor-general she was known as “GG” by her staff, the media and the public, in her family and by her grandchildren she is instead known as Dee Dee. Bryce chuckles.
“They all call me Dee Dee. I’m not sure how it started but one of them said it and it stuck. I’m not at all averse to grandma, I like grandma, but Dee Dee it is.”
Recently, Quentin “Dee Dee” Bryce spent the day with her youngest grandchild, Sylvie, the three-year-old daughter of her son Rupert and his wife Rachel.
“We had the whole day together, and we like to plan it all out, so we had some scootering down the street, some nail polish put on fingers – bright orange, of course, lots of reading in the garden, some trampolining, and Corn Flakes and blueberries for lunch. That’s my idea of perfect, spending time with my family,” Bryce says.
Bryce is in constant contact with her children and grandchildren. Those who live in Brisbane pop around regularly and vice versa. Pre-Covid she saw them all, all the time. And when she lost her husband, their father and grandfather, they put their collective arms around her.
“They were all there for me – all 22 of them,” Bryce says.
“They were wonderful.”
There’s another photo in Bryce’s house.
It is one taken a year or so ago of her and Michael sitting on the front steps of their home. Their arms are interlocked and she is leaning into him, laughing.
This photo is in a prominent place in her kitchen, a daily reminder of her belief that family is everything. That love endures. That even in transition, when things change and a new sort of life must be forged, that someone will always be your idea of perfect.
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