Journalist turned author with passion for Pittwater
By Di Morrissey
SUSAN DUNCAN: 1951–2024
Susan Duncan was a journalist’s journo because she was fearless, frank and often very funny – especially at a party.
She was born in Albury and grew up in various parts of country Victoria where her parents, Esther and Norman, ran country pubs.
Susan worked as a journalist in the heyday of women’s magazines, where feisty women ruled. She always had a mind of her own and decided to travel overseas, where she worked in South Africa. Like so many of us journalists, she was uncomfortable with the country’s racial divide and headed to London and New York to work for the Australian Consolidated Press. She returned to Australia to take the helm, if briefly, of The Australian Women’s Weekly and New Idea.
Susan Duncan before an appearance at Hornsby library to speak about her first novel, The Briny Cafe, 2011. Credit: Publicity
Former Women’s Weekly editor Deborah Thomas recalls: “I didn’t know Susan when she was Woman’s Weekly editor, however when I started as editor in September 1999, I brought Susan back to work for me part-time as an associate editor.
“She stayed on and wrote stories for us for about two years before leaving to write her own book, Salvation Creek. She was a fabulous, generous woman and a great writer.
“She was also a great host, putting on many lunches at her home in Lovett Bay, and a great cook. I was really pleased to have her support and counsel when I first took over [as editor], as she was much more experienced with mass-market magazines than I was at that time.
“Her loss is very sad as I think she’s too young to have passed from cancer.”
After leaving journalism, Susan decided to turn her hand to writing her first book – Salvation Creek (2006), in which she bared her soul over her own earlier journey with cancer and her grief at losing her brother and first husband to cancer within days of each other.
Salvation Creek was recommended by leading cancer specialists treating women with breast cancer and won many awards. If ever in a dark night of her soul, Susan may have wondered about her final possible journey with cancer, one would not have known it.
Di Morrissey (left), with Bob Story and Susan Duncan at Tarrangaua.
Susan Duncan always said that places choose you … when the time is right. So when she was invited by a journo friend to a party at Pittwater, accessed by boat from Church Point in Sydney’s far north, she knew she’d found her true home. At that time, she was widowed, retired and feeling lost.
Pittwater embraced her as she embraced this little-known haven.
She rented a cottage on Scotland Island facing Lovett Bay before moving to rent a “tin shed” in Lovett Bay. Here, her neighbours and friends Bob and Barbara Story became close, and when Barbara died of cancer, Bob and Susan, who were friends first, later married.
They moved into Bob’s house – the magical Tarrangaua on Lovett Bay, the former home of poet Dorothea Mackellar.
Susan Duncan on the set of Fred Schepisi’s film A Cry in the Dark in Alice Springs, c.1988.
Susan became a vital cog in Pittwater’s unique and casual lifestyle and energised its social life. Lovett Bay and its surrounds attracted a community of actors, artists, singers and creative types, and Susan settled at its social centre, bringing a diverse community together.
Her sense of feeling she had “come home” inspired Susan to write several beautifully photographed (by Anthony Ong) books about Pittwater and Tarrangaua which were very successful. She then turned her hand to fiction, penning several delightful novels based around a fictional Pittwater.
Pittwater has always been an inspirational place inhabited by creative types. I grew up in Lovett Bay along the bush track from Tarrangaua, and have childhood memories of an aged Dorothea Mackellar telling me to put down the stories I made up in my head in a book one day, so other people could enjoy them.
So I spent happy afternoons with Susan and Bob at Tarrangaua reminiscing and was thrilled to launch her book.
In later years, Bob and Susan decided to embark on a huge project to build a sustainable house on a large property to raise cattle near Wingham on the Mid North Coast of NSW. I was born in Wingham, so it was lovely to have them as locals again.
Susan had kept the old tin shed when they sold Tarrangaua, and it was here in the place she loved that Susan died. She was, I suspect, frustrated that she did not live long enough to continue her novel writing: her last book, Finding Joy In Oyster Bay, was published a week after her death.
Her publisher, Richard Walsh, recalls: “In mid-2005, I was commissioning books for Allen & Unwin, and we were approached by Susan’s then-agent, Caroline Adams, about a book Sue had written that was then called Tarrangaua. What we saw of it read marvellously, and we desperately wanted to publish it.
“Together with A&U’s trade publishing director, Sue Hines, I lunched with Susan, and we shared some great memories. A&U put in a generous offer, which I gather was much the same as Random House’s, but Sue blessed them and gave them her nod. Of course, Salvation Creek was a triumph, as it richly deserved to be. It turned out that this was Susan’s ‘Everest’, and her illustrious editorship of Women’s Weekly was only ‘K2’.
Susan Duncan with her first husband and fellow journalist, Paul Doherty, in late 1980s.
I kept in touch with her intermittently as she became a stalwart of the book world with her non-fiction books, and then her much-loved Briny Cafe novels.
I was delighted when she agreed to let me take on a manuscript she had long put aside. With a bit of collaborative effort, that became Sleepless in Stringybark Bay. She was so tickled by its success and so confident of her own health that she then produced Finding Joy in Oyster Bay, which has just been published.
The title of Sue’s last book may sound a tad ironic. But Sue did find joy in life – with Bob most of all, and with her friends and her literary success. And she brought great joy to others – particularly her readers. Despite our on-again-off-again working relationship over the years, I count her as a good friend, always good for a laugh and always courageous in the face of adversity. I admire her enormously and will miss her greatly.
Susan Duncan’s final escort, with husband Bob, by the Rural Fire Service.
Samantha Ryan, Allen & Unwin senior publicist, adds: “Susan showed great courage and true resilience in facing the many adversities of her life. She was a remarkable person with whom to work – kind, encouraging, so funny, straightforward and honest. She will be much missed by all her publishing colleagues. Vale Susan.”
Susan and Bob did not have any children, but both had step-children by their deceased partners.
She was a major supporter of the West Pittwater Fire Brigade, and her body was borne by a team of brigade members to a fireboat, which was escorted by a flotilla of 17 commuter vessels to a nearby marina as a sea eagle soared above.
Susan would have loved that.