Lindy Morrison is best known for being the drummer in the Go-Betweens. She fell in love with her bandmate, Robert Forster, but had her daughter, Lucinda, with another man, John Needham. Having been single for 30 years, the 74-year-old hopes she isn’t done when it comes to love.

My paternal grandfather, George Morrison, was a Grafton [NSW] mayor who died young. My maternal grandfather also died young but my mother, Adelaide, was reluctant to talk about her family because her mother died giving birth to her. She and her three siblings were raised by an aunt.

My paternal great-uncle was writer Ion Idriess. When I was nine, I went from Brisbane to Sydney with my father to have surgery, and we went to Ion’s dark office filled with whisky bottles. He was an eccentric man who’d travelled all over Australia and lived with Indigenous people. He died in 1979. I have all his first-edition books.

My dad, Ion Craig Morrison, was a doctor. He met Mum in Sydney, where she was a nurse, during World War II. Mum’s first husband had died on the Centaur, a ship sunk by the Japanese near Gladstone in 1943, after they’d been married for just nine months.

Dad was stationed in the Pacific. He wrote, asked Mum to marry him and said, “If you don’t, you won’t see me again,” so she gave in. They married in 1946.

I am one of four children. I have a younger brother, Ian, who also became a doctor. He is gay and married and lives in Sydney. We are best friends.

I grew up in Brisbane in the 1960s, just as the sexual revolution arrived. It was the era of the anti-Vietnam War protests and civil rights for Indigenous people. But in the ’70s, with Joh Bjelke-Petersen running Queensland, we lost the right to march. I became very involved politically, and that meant I was at loggerheads with my parents.

My father had been very eccentric, and that eccentricity allowed him to see things in a broader way. But he became increasingly conservative as he got older, and increasingly we didn’t see eye to eye.

My father’s brother, George Terence Morrison, was a big influence. He was gay, which was hidden from the adults in the family, but not me. George was the first person in my family to see me play drums in the Go-Betweens in Brisbane in the ’80s. He loved 1940s and ‘50s movies, particularly film noir, which I’d watch with him. We also shared a love of Marilyn Monroe.

I never got over my first boyfriend. We met at a party when I was 16 and he dumped me after a few years. Tracey Thorn from Everything but the Girl wanted to publish some of his letters in the book she wrote about me, My Rock ‘n’ Roll Friend. I had to see him to get permission to publish those letters, which helped me get over the heartbreak. First love is so significant.

I lived in a few share houses over the years, including with [actors] Geoffrey Rush and Bille Brown in 1973 and 1974. We all moved to London together. I later shared a house with Nick Cave in London.

I fell in love with my Go-Betweens bandmate Robert Forster – we had a very significant relationship for seven years. There is nothing like having a relationship with someone you’re creatively involved with, but from the moment I read Germaine Greer, I knew I would never marry. I always saw marriage as something that trapped women and men.

At 38, I wanted to find someone to have a child with. I met a lovely man, John Needham, and we had a daughter, Lucinda, in 1991. Though we didn’t live together while we were raising her, John was always present. He runs Citadel Records and is a quiet, shy man.

I have been single for more than 30 years. I’m occasionally attracted to people, but age and the withering of the body are terrible tormentors. As I get older I think, “Have I had my last lover?” That would be a sad thing, so never say never.

What’s Said and What’s Left Unsaid by SnarskiCircusLindyBand is out now.

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