Gabrielle CAREY

1959-2023, AUSTRALIAN AUTHOR, JOURNALIST AND LECTURER
by Colleen Passfield (Member)

The recent sudden death of Gabrielle Carey brings to mind how the publication of Puberty Blues in 1979 created such a storm, particularly in the Sutherland Shire, and brought instant fame to co-authors Gabrielle Carey and Kathy Lette. Written when they were teenagers, the largely autobiographical novel shocked many with its frank depictions of teenage behaviour and sexism in surfie and youth culture in 1970s Cronulla. It was critically acclaimed and is now regarded as a classic of teenage fiction. Germaine Greer called it a ‘profoundly moral story’. In 1981, a film version of the novel was released, directed by Bruce Beresford, and a TV series was made in 2012. Once the book was published, Carey and Lette went separate ways with both achieving success.

Gabrielle Carey was born in Sydney on 10 January 1959 and, until her late teens, lived in the Sutherland Shire. She was the middle child of Alex Carey, a writer, and his wife Joan, nee Ferguson both from Western Australia. Both parents were politically active and regarded as liberal, radical and humanist. Carey attended Sutherland North and Sylvania Primary Schools before moving on to Gymea High School where she met and became best friends with Kathy Lette. Against the wishes of their parents, they left school at 15 and 16 and moved into a flat in Glebe together. Under the name of The Salami Sisters, they wrote an amusing weekly column for the Sun Herald which attracted the attention of Spike Milligan. Once Puberty Blues was published and upset the deeply conservative Sutherland Shire, Carey and Lette moved on in different directions.

Carey moved into professional writing. As a journalist, she went to Parramatta Gaol which led to the autobiographical book Just Us, an account of her relationship with a prisoner, Terry Haley. A telefilm version of the book was made in 1986 directed by Gordon Glenn from a screenplay by Ted Roberts. In the mid-1980s, wanting to escape her fame, Carey went to Ireland where, with a deep love of ritual and tradition and a sense of spiritual quest, she felt at home. She became a Catholic and would often return to Ireland. After a year she left Ireland and went to Mexico where she lived for several years. She returned to Australia in the early 1990s to a life in academia and writing. Carey completed a master’s degree in English at the Australian Catholic University when she was 40 and a doctorate of creative arts at Western Sydney University in 2006. Until 2020, she taught creative writing at the University of Technology Sydney.

Carey became a committee member of the Australian Society of Authors in the 1990s and had a long association with the annual Bloomsday events in Sydney. In Ireland she had become intensely interested in the works of James Joyce and for 17 years was a member of Finnegans Wake reading groups in Sydney and in Canberra. Gabrielle Carey wrote nine other books after Puberty Blues and her 2020 book, Only Happiness Here, a memoir of Elizabeth von Arnim, was shortlisted for the 2021 Nib Literary Award. This was her last published work. Her final book James Joyce: A Life, completed before her death, will be published in August this year.

Gabrielle Carey died on 2 May 2023 and is survived by her daughter, Bridgette, her son Jimmy and her grandson Axel.

REFERENCES
Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org
Gabrielle Carey, University of Technology Sydney, https://tinyurl.com/csy6r6bm
The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com › au
Debra Adelaide – Obituary, 10 May 2023, The Sydney Morning Herald,
https://www.smh.com.au
The Sydney Morning Herald, https://www.smh.com.au
Nick Bond, https://tinyurl.com/4p3fpsfx
ABC Australian Story: The Big Chill: Kathy Lette and Gabrielle Carey
The Salami Sisters