‘Instilled a love of elsewhere’: How Susan Johnson’s father impacted her writing career

Writer Susan Johnson discusses her upbringing, career and the men who have influenced her.

Susan Johnson: “I see men as equally vulnerable, though I still think they are more powerful in politics and business. It’s clear we still have a long way to go.”Credit: Chrissa Fatsea

Occupation Writer
Age 64
Relationship status In a relationship
Best known for Her novel The Broken Book

I’ve had a lot of good storytelling men in my life, like my father, John. He grew up in Queensland and became a cadet journalist while at university. Between journalism stints, he volunteered as a patrol officer in Papua New Guinea. In this quasi-policing role, the inexperienced 21-year-old assisted in operations to remove limbs.

Dad became a sales manger for 3M. He travelled a lot and returned from Japan with cans of chocolate-covered ants. He liked practical jokes and had a gorilla suit he brought back from the US. But at 40 he swapped corporate life for pineapple farming, and we moved from Sydney to outside Nambour, in Queensland. He was successful at it, despite a cyclone almost wiping him out the first year.

In 2010 I returned from London to Brisbane to care for Dad. He was badly ill with a heart problem. My younger brother, Steven, and I were there the night he died. I never want to live through that again. Sometimes I’ll hear a piece of music he loved and be immediately pierced through.

I probably wouldn’t have thought of a career in journalism if it weren’t for Dad. He instilled a love of elsewhere – that sense that the world is a bigger place than what we see in front of us – because he frequently travelled. My wanderlust definitely comes from him.

My maternal great uncle, Brad, was a tumbler. When I was 13, he returned to Sydney after 35 years in London. This impossibly glamorous figure with his new wife and baby greeted us at the international airport. In my 20s I stayed with him in Sydney. He kept me up all night with stories about London during World War II, and making it as an acrobat in the theatre.

My first kiss happened with a neighbour when I was 11. He tricked me into lying on the floor and told me to look into a torch. As it came closer, he landed a big smacker on my mouth. I jumped up. It was hideous. My first kiss as an active participant was with Roger, my first boyfriend at St Ives High School, Sydney. We dated for about a year. It was all very innocent.

As a teenager, I felt physically different to other girls. I had a concave chest, which made me self-conscious. I felt a bit of a freak. It didn’t affect my lungs or heart, so it was broken and reset as a cosmetic procedure when I was 16.

I met my first husband when I was 32, through a mutual friend in Hong Kong. He was a British lawyer but wanted to be a writer. That’s why I was attracted to him. He later wrote the highly successful Bangkok 8 detective thrillers.

It was a whirlwind courtship. He visited me in Paris, where I was the recipient of a research fellowship, and after six months we married. But it didn’t last. I call it my starter marriage.

I was married to my second husband for 16 years. We were old friends who reconnected. I had a traumatic birth with our second son, Elliot, who’s now 23, and was left with a colostomy. Thankfully, it was successfully reversed.

In my tenth book, My Hundred Lovers, I wrote about a woman’s life as told through her body and intimate experiences. For women, sex, eroticism and sensuality are really linked. Some men, though, are able to separate their sexual self from their wide-awake-in-the-world self. So while they might love their wife, a sexual liaison with another woman is just sex.

I’m much more sympathetic towards men than I was as a young woman. I used to see them as all-powerful. Now I see men as equally vulnerable, though I still think they are more powerful in politics and business. It’s clear we still have a long way to go.

From Where I Fell (Allen & Unwin) by Susan Johnson is out now.

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale March 28. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.