Stephany Evans Steggall - Interestingly Enough ...: The Life and Times of Tom Keneally

Published by Nero,

an imprint of Schwartz Publishing Pty Ltd

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Collingwood VIC 3066 Australia

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Copyright Stephany Evans Steggall 2015

Stephany Evans Steggall asserts her right to be known as the author of this work.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior consent of the publishers.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Steggall, Stephany Evans, author.

Interestingly enough: the life of Tom Keneally / Stephany Evans Steggall.

9781863957588 (hardback)

9781925203448 (ebook)

Keneally, Thomas, 1935

Authors, Australian20th centuryBiography. Australian.

A823.3

The author acknowledges with gratitude the assistance provided in the writing of this book by the Hazel Rowley Fellowship 2013.

Cover design by Nada Backovic

Cover photograph by Richard Saker

Text design and typesetting by Tristan Main

For Helen Neill, sister and travel companion, and for Terry ONeill, friend and adviser.

The Arrival of Thomas Keneally

T his might have been a different story although it is unlikely that the story of a Father Thomas Michael Keneally would ever have been told, except in eulogy or obituary. The everyday scenes in the life of a popular parish priest are not often reconstructed. If he had become an activist cleric on a wider world stage, or a white-collar writer directing the spotlight on the social injustices of the day, then there may have been a book about Father Keneally.

Keneally had been destined for some unremarkable parish as the hero priest of his boyhood imaginings, but the would-be cleric had a severe crisis of doubt shortly before his ordination. In the days before he left St Patricks College, Manly, on Sydneys northern shoreline, the students in a lecture room could hear Keneally above them, treading the wooden boards of his solitary chamber. His unheard monologue, about doubts and guilt and shame and failure, took him to the office of the rector, the Right Reverend Monsignor James Madden.

Madden was expecting him. There had been notes from a Dr Kyneur about Keneallys psychological sufferings. His patient, Kyneur concluded, should postpone ordination as a priest. Keneally told Madden that he had decided to leave and not proceed to a priestly life beyond the closed community at Manly. Im not sure that I am worthy of being a priest, Keneally confessed. I am driven by doubts, so I must leave.

Mick Keneally, as he was known at the Manly seminary, had shown evidence in recent times of being unbalanced. For instance, he had drawn attention to some cracked cups in the refectory, insisting they were unclean vessels. He could not ignore them, he said, and risk being responsible for someones illness. Madden and Bill Voght, the bursar known as Blinky Bill, had laughed it off, but then came the visits to the doctor, the sick leave and so on. Nervous breakdowns at Manly were not unheard of.

I am not in a fit state for holy ordination, Keneally wrote in his petition to the Vatican about reverting to the lay state. I will never in the future be able to undertake the onerous duties of the priesthood.

The young man who had commenced seminary life in 1953 at the age of seventeen, endorsed by references that spoke of outstanding character and very good abilities on the literary side, left Maddens office empty-handed. Madden had dismissed him, blankly refusing his request for a reference.

No one marked Keneallys leaving. He was just not there any more, in the refectory or in the chapel. His room was empty.

A slight, bespectacled figure in black made his way alone out of the main building, which he later described as the cavernous symbol of his unhappiness. Keneally had walked down Darley Road to the Manly ferry terminal many times, but never without permission. On this day of departure he was in too much turmoil to appreciate his freedom. The ferry berthed at Circular Quay, on the other side of Sydney Harbour, even before he was aware it had left the Manly wharf.

The last leg of Keneallys journey was by train to Homebush, in Sydneys western suburbs. From there it was a short walk home. Home meant facing down failure, hearing trains instead of bells day and night, listening to secular music and television instead of observing strict silence each evening, sharing a room instead of occupying a single cubicle, and seeing suburbia instead of the sea.

Keneally was broken and broke. An old friend, a fruiterer who had a stall at the Flemington Markets, gave him 50 to help out. There wasnt much work to be had when all he could lay claim to was a degree in Sacred Theology. Keneally avoided teaching for as long as he could, not ready to face a crowd and reluctant to return to a Catholic environment. He taught, however, for three years or so at Waverley College, a Catholic boarding school for boys near Bondi Beach.

Keneally started jotting down story ideas on paper torn from school exercise pads and examination booklets. He had been a scribbler since schooldays, and there was a poetry society at the seminary to which MK had contributed verse. The college magazine, Manly, had published an article written by Keneally with the title The Unique Colonial.

Keneally the writer of fiction started his new life as Bernard Coyle. A story about a defecting priest at the recognisable Peninsula College was accepted by The Bulletin. The bigger story goes that Coyles yarn, The Sky Burning Up Above the Man, was based on the true story of Father John Jenkins, a Manly old boy, who married a girl in his parish. Keneallys transformation from failed priest to successful writer began at this point. Authorship would be his delayed vocation.

In the holiday break of December 1962 to January 1963, he wrote The Place at Whitton, published under the name Thomas Keneally. The real place is St Patricks College, Manly, and there are repeated references to men who want to be worthy priests; If they were sure they wouldnt be worthy, theyd leave this place. In The Place at Whitton Keneally questions with dark humour the doubts that drove him away from the fraternity at Manly.

The book heralded The Arrival of Thomas Keneally, announced by Max Harris in Australian Book Review. With his first book, Keneally made his debut in another show, one performed before a fickle audience over an extended season. The popular, regularly revised script follows the fortunes of a famous writer, a witty, kind and compassionate man, a blatherskite, partygoer, bullshitter, boozer and outrageous flirt whose public face beams bonhomie. What follows in these pages does not always stick to that storyline, and it may not be the definitive, final script, but the drama at times tragic, comic and melodramatic is true to life. The opening scenes are about Mick Keneally or Michael, to his mother the grandson of Irish immigrants, sickly kid, eccentric teenager and priestly candidate, who preceded Thomas.

From Cove to Cove

K eneallys paternal grandfather, Timothy Thomas Keneally, was part of the Queenstown story, which began with the convict ships that left Irish shores for Australia. Queenstown (also called Cove or Cobh) was the principal port of departure. Timothy Keneally was not on board any of the Irish convict ships, nor was he among the desperate countrymen who fled the Famine. Besieged Ireland was held hostage then, as ship after ship took away captives of a different kind from the convicts.