My life as an ASIO spy kid

ASIO spies Dudley and Joan Doherty’s dedication to Australia’s fight against Soviet infiltration in the Cold War even included enlisting their three young children.

Dudley and Joan Doherty during their courting days in Sydney.

From holidaying with the Petrovs to staking out Russian spies, suburban life for the Doherty family in the 1950s looked a little different from most.

Dudley and Joan Doherty were not the first couple to both work as ASIO agents.

But what made them unusual was their decision to enlist their three young children in their work to help rid Australia of Soviet agents and sympathisers in the fight against communism.

The Dohertys are the subject of the latest episode of the In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters, available today.

Journalist Sandra Hogan has told the story in a new book, With My Little Eye, with the help of one of the three Doherty children, Sue-Ellen Kusher.

With My Little Eye author Sandra Hogan (left) and Sue-Ellen Kusher, nee Doherty.

The Doherty family.

Sue-Ellen Doherty as a child.

From a young age, the three kids were taught spy tradecraft, including memorising number plates, faces and conversations.

They were used as photo props at union rallies, with Dudley pretending to take happy snaps of his smiling kids, while secretly photographing suspected communist sympathisers parading behind them.

Sue-Ellen remembers her father would often drive laps of a block when monitoring a suspicious location.

“We would go to some key location and each one of us would pick a car and remember the number plate, and then go around the block again, change clothes, change position, double check the number plate, pick another car, and then we’d stop at some stage and download that information for Dad,” Sue-Ellen says.

Growing up in Sydney and then Brisbane, Sue-Ellen and her siblings, Mark and Amanda, were sworn to secrecy from a young age.

Dudley and Joan Doherty on a night out in Sydney.

Left to right: Vladimir Petrov, Joan Doherty, Mark Doherty, ‘Peewee’ (Evdokia) Petrov with Sue-Ellen and an unidentified ASIO officer on their Gold Coast holiday.

Vladimir Petrov fishes in the Nerang River on the Gold Coast with Mark Doherty as Sue-Ellen watches on.

“From my earliest memory, I can remember being drilled that, ‘Your father works for the government, his job is secret, you must learn how to keep secrets, you must not tell anyone any of this information about what we do as a family, and if you muck up, you are not only mucking up for yourself, you’re mucking up for your family, for your father’s job, and for your country,’” she says.

Around the time of the 1956 Olympics, Soviet defectors Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov were sent on a Gold Coast holiday with the Dohertys to keep them safe from potential Soviet assassins.

The Petrovs posed as the grandparents of the Doherty children, who knew them as Jack and Peewee.

Joan Doherty (left) with her kids Sue-Ellen and Mark and Mrs Petrov on their Gold Coast holiday.

Joan Doherty (left) with Evdokia Petrov on their Queensland holiday.

Sue-Ellen Kusher today. Picture: Steve Pohlner

The story is told in a new book called With My Little Eye.

But Sandra says Vladimir, whose face was well-known to the public, was not an easy person to hide and the group’s cover was repeatedly blown, forcing them to relocate each time.

“He was a serial drunk who kept going out and getting himself into trouble so it was quite a tense holiday to say the least of it,” she says.

LISTEN TO THE INTERVIEW WITH SUE-ELLEN KUSHER AND SANDRA HOGAN IN THE IN BLACK AND WHITE PODCAST ON ITUNES, SPOTIFY OR WEB.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.