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Why Trent Dalton loves Australians · The Front

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  Speaker 1: You can listen to the Front on your smart speaker
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  Speaker 1: every morning to hear the latest episode, just say play
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  Speaker 1: the news from the Australian. From The Australian, I'm Claire
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  Speaker 1: Harvey a special bonus episode of The Front for you today.
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  Speaker 1: It's the second in a special series honoring The Australian's
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  Speaker 1: sixtieth anniversary. We've asked six of the nation's most celebrated
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  Speaker 1: thinkers to pen their reflections on the past six decades
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  Speaker 1: in essays available to read at The Australian dot com
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  Speaker 1: dot au right now. Today, the journalist and author Trent
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  Speaker 1: Dalton follows the thread that binds the thousands of stories
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  Speaker 1: he's written in more than two decades of journalism. It's
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  Speaker 1: that special Australian brand of resilience. Dalton came up as
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  Speaker 1: a feature writer for the Weekend Australian magazine, but exploded
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  Speaker 1: onto the global stage with his semi autobiographical novel Boy
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  Speaker 1: Swallows Universe in twenty eighteen. That's today's episode.
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  Speaker 2: I want to briefly consider the notion that resilience is
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  Speaker 2: formed from love. So often do we Australians carry on
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  Speaker 2: in the memory of someone we've lost or in the
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  Speaker 2: name of someone we love. What if it's actually loved
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  Speaker 2: that's been keeping this whole wild and shimmering island moving
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  Speaker 2: forward for all these years.
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  Speaker 1: This is the world renowned author in journo, Trent Dalton.
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  Speaker 1: He's reading an excerpt for an essay he's written about
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  Speaker 1: resilience for The Australian.
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  Speaker 2: I never really had to do twenty three years of
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  Speaker 2: journalism to work out why my mom kept standing up,
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  Speaker 2: moving forward, carrying on through her darkest hours. I've always
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  Speaker 2: known it was love, love of her four sons and
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  Speaker 2: love of me.
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  Speaker 1: Stories about resilience kind of Trent Dalton's thing. He's written
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  Speaker 1: thousands of them about Australians who faced absolute terror and
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  Speaker 1: came out the other side, more often than not with
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  Speaker 1: a smile. But none is more compelling, more heartbreaking, more
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  Speaker 1: stirring than Trent's own story. Dalton grew up in the
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  Speaker 1: outer western suburbs of Brisbane with his single mum and
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  Speaker 1: three brothers. His beloved stepdad shared their home for a
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  Speaker 1: while too. Down the road lived the former convict Slim Halliday,
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  Speaker 1: who escaped twice from Brisbane's Boggo Road jail before his
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  Speaker 1: conviction for the murder of a Gold Coast taxi driver.
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  Speaker 1: To Trent Dalton, Slim was just a funny old bloke
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  Speaker 1: who helped out with babysitting and family errands from time
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  Speaker 1: to time. But he was also a man who shared
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  Speaker 1: his uncharacteristic wisdom with a young family finding its way
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  Speaker 1: in the world. As a kid growing up in Brisbane
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  Speaker 1: in the eighties, Trent Dalton saw the worst of it abuse, addiction, dealing,
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  Speaker 1: domestic violence, mental illness. His mom and stepdad were both
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  Speaker 1: in prison for dealing heroine before he was old enough
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  Speaker 1: to drive. Unless you count the time Slim holiday let
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  Speaker 1: Trent sit on his lap and steer his truck down
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  Speaker 1: the street when he was barely more than a toddler.
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  Speaker 2: You know, you just carry these rocks. I had some
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  Speaker 2: rocks from my childhood that I carried around deep inside
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  Speaker 2: me that I never told anyone about stuff that my
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  Speaker 2: mom went through. And you know, I'm talking about domestic violence,
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  Speaker 2: and I'm talking about imprisonment and things that I buried
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  Speaker 2: deep inside me that I explored as a journalist.
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  Speaker 1: After almost twenty years in journalism, many of them spent
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  Speaker 1: as a feature writer for the Weekend Australian magazine Trent
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  Speaker 1: Dalton shared a pivotal moment with the mum he adores
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  Speaker 1: as they loaded groceries into her car. She gazed at
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  Speaker 1: his then seven year old daughter and said, I wouldn't
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  Speaker 1: change any of it. Not long after, he sat down
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  Speaker 1: to write his own story for the next year. In
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  Speaker 1: the late hours, after work was finished for the day
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  Speaker 1: and his kids were in bed, Trent wrote the semi
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  Speaker 1: autobiographical novel Boy Swallows Universe. It chants the turbulent nineteen
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  Speaker 1: eighties suburban childhood of Eli Bell and his older brother
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  Speaker 1: August or Gus for short. Fittingly, Dalton's mum was the
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  Speaker 1: first person to read it. They agree it's equal parts
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  Speaker 1: fact and fiction. There's a free spirited young mum struggling
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  Speaker 1: with addiction, a doting stepdad battling his own demons. Slim Halliday,
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  Speaker 1: whom they called the Houdini of Boggo Road, features prominently.
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  Speaker 1: Some parts of the novel are embellished impossible, even, like
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  Speaker 1: the fact that Eli's taciturn older brother Gus can see
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  Speaker 1: into the future and writes his predictions in the air
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  Speaker 1: with his fingertip. But others are as real as real
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  Speaker 1: can be. The desperate longing, Eli feels for his incarcerated
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  Speaker 1: mother his own experience, writ large Boyce. Swallow's Universe was
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  Speaker 1: an instant bestseller. In fact, it was the fastest selling
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  Speaker 1: debut novel in Australian history, with more than a million
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  Speaker 1: copies sold. Earlier this year, Netflix took this extraordinary story
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  Speaker 1: of Australian resilience global arm Melo Baum, I've got a story.
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  Speaker 1: What kind of story? It's a crime story. The seven
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  Speaker 1: part series stars Australians who've made it big in Hollywood,
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  Speaker 1: Travis Fimmel, Simon Baker and Phoebe Tonkin. Things are going
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  Speaker 1: to gets so good we'll forget that. Over Bear, the
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  Speaker 1: streaming giant said in January. The TV adaptation is its
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  Speaker 1: most successful Australian title to date, racking up almost eight
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  Speaker 1: million views globally in the first fortnight after its release.
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  Speaker 1: And you told me you wouldn't to be a good person.
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  Speaker 2: This is a test.
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  Speaker 1: Dalton says in his essay that it's our collective resilience
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  Speaker 1: that defines us as a nation.
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  Speaker 2: These journalistic endeavors, I assure you have transformed my life.
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  Speaker 2: They have shaped me as a father, a husband, a brother,
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  Speaker 2: a son and a man. I have no doubt this
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  Speaker 2: obsession is rooted in my need to make sense of
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  Speaker 2: the ways in which, through much of the nineteen eighties
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  Speaker 2: and the ninety nineties, I watched someone I love very
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  Speaker 2: very much, my Mum, overcome everything from drug addiction to
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  Speaker 2: imprisonment or domestic abuse, drawing on nothing from what I
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  Speaker 2: could observed, particularly Australian kind of inbuilt human resilience.
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  Speaker 1: But if the global appeal of his own story, real
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  Speaker 1: and imagined, is anything to go by, resilience is a
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  Speaker 1: fundamental part of the human experience.
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  Speaker 2: I'm deeply honored and deeply questioning of why anyone would
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  Speaker 2: ever tell me a story, and I get so proud
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  Speaker 2: when they do. Ordinary Australians can be just as interesting,
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  Speaker 2: and I love that if you sit with them long enough,
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  Speaker 2: their story will get that interesting. There's time. It's the
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  Speaker 2: time you're willing to put in, and I promise you
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  Speaker 2: every one of us has an incredible tale to tell.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up what Trent Dalton learned about resilience from ordinary
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  Speaker 1: and extraordinary Australians. Join ours subscribers to read more stories
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  Speaker 1: just like this one at the Australian dot Com. You
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  Speaker 1: it might just wind up being a best seller be
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  Speaker 1: back after this break. For a long time, Trent Dalton's
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  Speaker 1: day job was writing features about the best and worst
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  Speaker 1: of Australian life for the Weekend Australian magazine.
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  Speaker 2: It was so weirdly cathartic and weirdly healing and deeply
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  Speaker 2: empowering to go write those stories because of those incredible
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  Speaker 2: women on that newspaper. I was led by a woman
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  Speaker 2: named Christine Midapp on the Weekend ozmag for years and
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  Speaker 2: she's become a deep friend. But I think weirdly she
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  Speaker 2: suspected that I needed to do these things. I have
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  Speaker 2: no idea why she would just gently tap me on
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  Speaker 2: the shoulder and ask me to go do these types
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  Speaker 2: of stories. And I just think she suspected it was
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  Speaker 2: a well somewhere deep inside that I could draw from,
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  Speaker 2: and I really did, and I did it for a
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  Speaker 2: decad And when I talk about resilience, I'm talking about
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  Speaker 2: this unseen thing that Australians have where we are bid
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  Speaker 2: and I firmly believe we do it through love. I
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  Speaker 2: think we do it for each other, we do it
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  Speaker 2: for our families, and I've really got an open heart
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  Speaker 2: for the people who can't abide any longer. I wrote
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  Speaker 2: so many stories about the people who succumbed, you know,
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  Speaker 2: the people who couldn't get out of the cracks, and
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  Speaker 2: I loved that we had space for those people as
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  Speaker 2: well in our pages.
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  Speaker 1: Over the years, Trent has knocked on the doors of
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  Speaker 1: much loved Australians like Mick Fanning and Betty Cuthbert. He
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  Speaker 1: sat with flood and bushfire victims, with workers, with parents,
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  Speaker 1: with those who'd experienced great loss, great joy, and everything
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  Speaker 1: in between.
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  Speaker 2: I watched their faces turn from darkness to light as
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  Speaker 2: they shrugged their shoulders houseless and broken, and found silver
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  Speaker 2: linings and the most absurd truths. Well, at least it's
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  Speaker 2: not as bad as last time. That was invariably when
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  Speaker 2: some misguided and young media person standing in the main
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  Speaker 2: street to grant them battling a bad case of intra
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  Speaker 2: rectal craniolitis, would whisper something out of his rear ends
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  Speaker 2: such as why the fuck didn't they move? Why because
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  Speaker 2: they had nowhere else to go, because they were penniless,
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  Speaker 2: because they were screwed by God and they're chosen insurer,
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  Speaker 2: and because they were resilient.
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  Speaker 1: Many of those yarns have stayed with Trent, but one
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  Speaker 1: is forever wedged in his consciousness. It's the story of
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  Speaker 1: Paul Stanley, whose fifteen year old son Matthew, was killed
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  Speaker 1: in a coward punch attack in two thousand and six.
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  Speaker 1: Dalton calls Paul Stanley the most resilient man he knows.
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  Speaker 1: Rather than be swallowed by his grief, he established a
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  Speaker 1: foundation in his son's name and worked to transform the
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  Speaker 1: way Queensland deals with youth violence in social se In
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  Speaker 1: his essay for The Australian, Dalton recalls the time he
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  Speaker 1: visited Paul at his home.
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  Speaker 2: I will never forget the way he walked me out
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  Speaker 2: to the car after our chat, sunset in the suburbs,
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  Speaker 2: birds whistling. He asked me, just in the interests of
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  Speaker 2: filling a silent space with small talk, how the rest
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  Speaker 2: of my week was shaping up? And I told him
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  Speaker 2: that my wife was scheduled to give birth to our
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  Speaker 2: daughter in the Martyr Hospital in a matter of days.
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  Speaker 2: I explained I was going to be a dad. And
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  Speaker 2: Paul threw his head back and he laughed, and he
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  Speaker 2: looked back at me. I could see there were tears
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  Speaker 2: in his eyes. I swear to you now they were
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  Speaker 2: tears of joy. This man, who had just spent four
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  Speaker 2: brutally honest hours talking about the tragic loss of his son,
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  Speaker 2: had somehow, somehow dug deep inside himself to find the
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  Speaker 2: resilience and the love, to find joy inside a quiet
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  Speaker 2: sub urban moment between two men standing beside the Toyota
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  Speaker 2: hatchback that I drove my daughter home in three days later.
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  Speaker 2: You will never do anything more beautiful in your life,
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  Speaker 2: Paul said.
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  Speaker 1: His reflections on the Australians past six decades have made
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  Speaker 1: it abundantly clear to Dalton that the paper's fundamental purpose
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  Speaker 1: is to shine a light on these stories, to bear
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  Speaker 1: witness and to help make sense of the madness.
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  Speaker 2: I think the paper's role is to absolutely reflect our
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  Speaker 2: nation at any given time, and to do that you
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  Speaker 2: need to get to all parts of this country of ours.
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  Speaker 2: But the beautiful thing is that I had these people
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  Speaker 2: around me in really high important positions who said it
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  Speaker 2: was important to tap into that stuff as well, that
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  Speaker 2: that stuff belonged, that was just as important as the
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  Speaker 2: stuff in the business pages, or the stuff in the
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  Speaker 2: sport pages or the culture pages. And it's really important
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  Speaker 2: in journalism to speak to those people who have fallen
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  Speaker 2: through the cracks.
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  Speaker 1: You can read Trent Dalton's stunning essay about resilience right
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  Speaker 1: now at the Australian dot com dot au. This episode
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  Speaker 1: of the Front was produced by Kristin Amient with support
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  Speaker 1: from Bianca far Marcus