NATIONAL TREASURE A poetic Writer and poet Barbara Blackman brought up three children, nurtured her artist husband Charles’ gift, made their home the hub of Australia’s art circle and, she tells DAVID LESER, made her blindness a life corridor to a different sort of existence.

Barbara Blackman greets me at her funny lot,” she says half-mockingly. “You two hours later, she gathers up cucumber, Canberra home wearing dark glasses and can’t cook the dinner, wash up, have a avocado, spring onions, walnuts and basil a Chinese cotton dress embroidered with shower, go to bed and make love unless from the fridge and begins to slice, spoon purple butterflies. A clump of walking you’re watching. I think it’s hilarious. I and crunch together a salad to accompany sticks guard the entrance. “Do come in,” think when the lights go out and you all the fish soup lunch that she has somehow she says, as she proceeds to escort me fumble and bump about ... it’s hilarious. managed to conjure up that morning. across her Persian carpeted dance floor I mean when there was a power strike in “People are so overwhelmed by what and into a room filled with music, fragrant New York recently, I had this wonderful they see,” she continues, “and they’re the smells and dappled light. “This is my idea of getting bus loads of blind people people who are dangerous for me to go English chest and my little teapot with and issuing them, one per household, to out with, because they might push me hyacinths,” she says, “and here,” leading run the houses until the lights came on.” under a bus or something. They’re so me upstairs, “this was my father’s bed, So you’re laughing at us? “Absolutely. preoccupied by the visual. ‘Down step, and here is my gallery of photos ... ” I think the fact that you utterly distrust up step, don’t trip ... ’ I’ll get myself there, The fascinating thing about this your hands ... sometimes I give talks and I tell them. Never broken a leg yet. guided tour is that Barbara Blackman is I say, ‘Hold up your hands. Apologise to “How do I know how much milk to btotally blind, and has been for more than these beautiful, intelligent parts of your pour into a cup? I can feel the change in half a century. Having said that, it would body that you don’t trust and don’t love the weight of the jug. You people have got be wrong to suggest that this disability and don’t use.’ Why are things only real to look and see how much milk you’re somehow renders her sightless. if you see them ... ?” putting in. How do you know when shoes If truth be known, this 75-year-old And as if to prove the point, she walks to fit you? Do you look to see if they fit ...? former artist’s model and muse, salon the kitchen to prepare coffee – taking the jar “If 30 people describe a painting ... Well, keeper, oral historian, writer, poet and from the fridge, measuring three spoonsful there are 30 paintings. You think you’re all-round national treasure, can see into the plunger, boiling the water, lighting seeing what other people are seeing. You The remarkable better than most of us, except the world the gas, frothing the milk, retrieving freshly are not. It’s part of your visual addiction.” Barbara Blackman, she sees is drawn from a combination of baked cake from the tin, taking the plates, at home. At 75, she is sound, touch, smell, visual memory, cups and saucers from the pantry ... doing here are some people whose lives as active as someone deep intuition and rich imagination. All it all by touch and spatial awareness. read like epic novels. They tantalise half her age and these provide her with, as she says, the Can I help you? “No,” she says matter- Tour imagination with stories of loss, refuses to look on gift for “seeing from within”. of-factly. “I have a pantry of the mind.” despair, adversity, courage, love, wisdom, ▲ her blindness as any “You sight-addicted people are a And just so there’s no doubt about that, non-conformity, a sweep of history ... PHOTOGRAPHY BY LORRIE GRAHAM. BY PHOTOGRAPHY kind of handicap. 82 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 83 Barbara Blackman’s is such a life, and not merely because, for 27 years, she was the wife and central muse of one of Australia’s greatest painters, , the man she fell in love with just as the last light was fading from her eyes. That on its own could easily provide the stuff of fiction – the way she inspired arguably his greatest works, the Alice in Wonderland paintings, by having him listen with her to Lewis Carroll’s masterpiece on a talking book machine; the way they were to defy convention in the late 1940s by living together before they married; the way she could “psychically reach out”, intuit what he was painting and how he would, in turn, read to her, becoming her eyes; the way she managed to raise their three children without being able to see them; the way she and Charles partied long into the night with fellow painters, writers and musicians in what must surely have been one of the best salons in Australia during the post-war period; and then, of course, the way in which she eventually “resigned” from their marriage because she could no longer stand his alcohol-fuelled descent into oblivion. Charles and Barbara, with their children (from left) Auguste, Barnaby and Christabel, and So, yes, there’s enough here to tell a (opposite) Charles in his Sydney studio in 1996, with one of his Alice in Wonderland series. momentous story without mentioning “My mother read to me, which was a great bond between us. She was a wonderful, patient and loving reader. She loved reading to me.” what happened before and after Charles with Aboriginal people in south-east came to inhabit the world of women: six back to this inquisitive creature about 6/4/98 less reading than English or history. Still, Blackman erupted into her life. Except Queensland, making maps for the Lands grandmothers in all, one of them real, the their wartime experiences. It was the My dear Judith, she needed her friends to read to her, that would be the easy way out, and for Department. It was to this country that rest elected, adopted, foster, step ... and, beginning of a lifelong addiction to So you think that being deaf as all posts, which they gladly did. Barbara Blackman the easy way out has he returned when he learned he was of course, her own mother, Gertrude, with other people’s stories. blind as all bats, we should never meet Barbara became part of a burgeoning never seemed to be an option. dying. “He had a stroke and knew life was whom she lived in various communal “My life course was set,” she was to again. Dear friend, a kiss is still a kiss, cultural and intellectual life which was very limited,” Barbara says, “and so he houses and private hotels. observe later, “to become one of the last a hug is still a hug ... We have had to challenge the straitjacket of 1940s arbara Patterson started life, walked out of the house, leaving the front Even at three years of age, Barbara’s great letter writers ... and later oral good times, Judith, and it will be all Brisbane. She edited the literary youth literally, as a survivor. Sixteen door wide open, and he took my mother eyesight was poor. “After my father died, history interviewers.” good to the last drop, no matter what magazine, Barjai; flirted with communism; Bdays after her birth – in Brisbane and me down to live out his days with I immediately went into hospital under (In later life, Barbara would conduct bits fall away, went to public lectures on Carl Jung; on December 22, 1928 – her twin sister, Aborigines on Bribie Passage. That was my observation. I could never read very hundreds of interviews for the National I send you my love, Barbara attended poetry readings at the Ballad Coralie, died. For years it produced in earliest memories – campfires, clapsticks, much to myself. My mother read to me, Library Archives. She would also manage Bookshop; frequented the notorious Pink Barbara a dark vision of herself. “It used fishing, smoky bars ... ” which was a great bond between us. She to maintain, over more than half a century, By the time Barbara was 15, she had Elephant Cafe; and befriended a veritable to be an overriding thought for a long The death of Barbara’s father was was a wonderful, patient and loving reader. correspondence with Judith Wright, the started experimenting with her own who’s who of Australia’s emerging talents time,” Barbara says now, “that she emblematic of a generation of Australian She loved reading to me and I loved being deaf Australian poet.) prose styles and begun writing poetry. – poets Barrett Reid, Charles Osborne [Coralie] would have got it right and that women who had lost their menfolk in read to.” One surrealist effort saw her published in and Judith Wright; philosopher Jack I’d got it wrong; that she wouldn’t have World War I. Barbara is old enough to As Barbara’s sight began to give way, 15/3/98 the ABC Weekly. It caused a commotion. McKinney; artists John Yule, Sidney Nolan, been blind and a burden on the people remember the ragged hole this left. she began falling under the spell of My dear Barbara, “If a 15-year-old schoolgirl wrote this, Laurence Hope and a “small scruffy muscly around her. She was my alternative. She “I think something terrible happened words. At four, she would make up stories I do think visiting is not a proposition I’ll eat my hat,” exclaimed an incredulous painter from Sydney” by the name of was my might-have-been.” in the First World War,” she says now, by symbolically using stones as letters. for us now – how could we possibly letters page correspondent. Barbara Charles Blackman. Then, at three-and-a-half, Barbara lost sipping her coffee. “So many were killed By the time she was seven, she’d received communicate? I wouldn’t hear you and responded by writing another poem about her father, W. H. (Harry) Patterson, a in that war. There were houses full of her first radio and discovered the joys you couldn’t see me and there is just people eating their own hats. harles Blackman and Barbara surveyor, painter and verse writer who had aged mothers, spinster women or widows. of listening to The World’s Best Books, no communication system available ... When she left school two years later, Patterson fell in love in Brisbane adopted the publishing name, Banjo II, There was a great missing gap and it dramatised on the ABC. At 11, World War So I just wave to you in my mind, in 1945, Barbara had just enough vision Cin 1949, and by the following year in self-deprecating regard to his more has taken a long time to build up that II had broken out and she’d started knowing you can’t see me and if to look like she could see. She enrolled in had moved to and taken up famous distant cousin, Banjo Paterson. Australian manhood, if ever we have.” writing to penfriends in the army, navy you did I couldn’t hear you ... university and began studying philosophy residence in a converted coach house. ▲

Harry Patterson had previously lived And so as a young girl, Barbara and air force, lonely men who would write NEWSPIX.COM. With love and many memories – Judith. and psychology, subjects which required Charles was on the threshold of

84 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 85 “It seemed to me then that I was being given a life sentence for a crime I had not committed. Later, it was commuted to solitary confinement with parole and 100 lashes a day ... “

Two Charles Blackman portraits of his wife Barbara, done in 1995 (far left) and 1969 (left).

becoming one of Australia’s finest and Judith Wright, who were my sky heroes.” don’t know. I was wild in my ideas and most prolific modern painters, renowned Still, it was an intoxicating and in my words and in my vision of things.” for his haunting images, his sense of revolutionary time, when Melbourne was Through the 1950s, Barbara became adventure and his exquisite use of colour. becoming defined as a city; a time when one of the most celebrated artists’ models Barbara was still reeling from the devas- artists would show their respect for one in the city. She posed for, among others, tating news she’d just been handed. another by swapping shirts – “shirts off” Fred Williams, , , Brisbane, March 1950. Ophthalmologist’s became the salute of the day; a time when Dattilo Rubbo and Thea Procter. But it consulting room. “Optic atrophy ... rapid everyone knew the addresses of the three was her role as muse to emerging decline ... Certification of industrial major abortionists in town; a time when genius Charles Blackman that captured blindness. Sign here for pension.” ’s studio was turning into the most attention. “It seemed to me then,” she would later famed meeting place for group and solo “Without question it was Barbara ... write in her autobiography, Glass After shows, exhibitions, suppers, readings, who had the most profound and lasting Glass, “that I was being given a life sentence theatrical events, conversations, music influence on his art,” commented art for a crime I had not committed. Later, it and riotous sleepovers. historian and curator Felicity St John was commuted to solitary confinement During one of these, Barbara actually Moore. “She was able to name the with parole and 100 lashes a day – awoke in the arms of a young architect emotion that he would intuitively feel. the lashes of landscapes dissolved in with whom she had apparently fallen Charles once wrote [in a letter] of his need vacant air, smiles and gazes buried in asleep discussing the difference between for her, ‘I shall achieve, but only I feel blanks, faces of lovers and children bisexuals and hermaphrodites. “You slept through Barbara’.” drowned in fathomless clear water, spillings, with my wife,” Charles accused the man The clearest testimony to this, believes bumpings, gropings, uncertainties, when he stumbled upon them. “Well, yes, Felicity, was Barbara’s presence in the bewilderment ... ” no, sort of, nothing like ... ” came the man’s Alice paintings, where “listening to the story Charles had been drawn to Melbourne faltering response. again and again, Charles was struck by because of artists such as , “Did you f*** her? Yes or no?” Charles the parallels between the fabulous Alice , and John Yule, insisted. “Absolutely no,” the man replied. and the real Barbara”. and the new wave of modernism being “Then you have insulted [her],” he said. This long-standing assumption was ushered in under the patronage of “She is too attractive a woman to be treated challenged recently by art historian Sunday and . At Heide, their like that. I’ll have you put on trial.” Thus Janine Burke, who speculated, in her rural retreat near Heidelberg, Australia’s began one of the mock trials for which book on Heide, that in those paintings answer to the Bloomsbury set burst into this crowd became famous. Charles was paying homage to his patron, life, although the Blackmans never felt Half a century later it begs the , not to Barbara. quite at home there. question: was she a wild woman? “No, I Barbara scoffs at the notion. “It’s idiotic “Someone once made a toast to the just lived my life,” she responds, smiling ... She wasn’t there.” good ship Heide and all who sailed in at the memory. “I dressed very properly. Felicity St John Moore says that, “If her,” Barbara says now. “And I couldn’t I’d studied psychology. I’d worked for a while Barbara was Charles’ muse, he was her resist it. I said, ‘And a toast to all those in a kindergarten. I posed at art schools. eyes. During the formative years of his who were made to walk the plank.’ So you I just could not tread the unquestioned art [1950-56], he developed the habit of know there were two sides to it. path. But we didn’t go streaking up the reading to her at great length, mainly “I’m not disgruntled. They [Sunday street nude. modern French literature, but any book and John Reed] were great people, but “I sometimes thought if I’d had sight of note that helped him explore the to me they didn’t have anything to offer I might have been wild [laughing]. Gone language of his emotions.” ▲

EVERY EFFORT HAS BEEN MADE TO TRACE AND ACKNOWLEDGE COPYRIGHT IN THE ARTWORKS REPRODUCED. SHOULD ANY INFRINGEMENT HAVE ANY INFRINGEMENT HAVE SHOULD REPRODUCED. ARTWORKS THE IN COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGE AND TRACE TO BEEN MADE HAS AGNSW. EFFORT FOR EVERY WOODBURY – RAY US. CONTACT TO HOLDERS COPYRIGHT AND INVITE APOLOGIES THEIR TENDER THE PUBLISHERS OCCURRED, compared to Jack McKinney and down to the docks and hung around ... I “Charles was a wonderful describer,”

86 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 87 Barbara concurs. “To walk up the road she used to sew bells on his shoulders so Barbara’s, claims he has never been the with him was wonderful. He described she could hear where he was. Auguste same since he entered the Blackman people in the restaurant. He’d turn them eventually learned to hold the bells so she world nearly 30 years ago. “It was the into cartoons or poems. He’d see right into couldn’t find him.” epicentre of cultural life in Australia,” them. I brought that out in him.” There was nothing in the literature he says. Not to mention good fun. Which she still does, according to about blind women having children, and Adrian remembers a dinner party one some of her legion of devoted friends. it took friends like artist Joy Hester to night at their home in Paddington, Sydney, Award-winning writer and artist Kim bolster Barbara’s courage. “You’ll be right,” not long after Charles had returned from Mahood marvels at her capacity to elicit she told her. “The babies will help you. They one of his painting trips. Barbara had word descriptions from people. “There’s a know what you should be doing.” prepared a sumptuous meal for about 24, real pleasure in going that extra distance, She was right. “My children learned the alcohol was flowing, the Alice paintings in telling her how things look,” she tells things at a very early age,” Barbara says. were staring down at everyone from The Weekly. “And because she’s been “They maybe got things on inside out or the walls, and it happened to be the eve around painters all her life, she has an back to front, but people would say, of Christabel’s English Higher School amazing eye ... so I describe my work to ‘Aren’t they clever children?’ No, they Certificate exam. The party turned into her and she imagines it back to me.” were just allowed to do it. an all-night bender. Another friend, artist and neurologist “I used to, when I moved to a new “I think that was the night we had Ross Mellick, has enjoyed over the years house, tell my neighbours I was blind and the competition between Beethoven and “He used to sing in a great deep voice Bessie Smith songs. I’d never met anything like Charles. And he’d never met anything like me. So it was utter dynamics of being carried away by each other.”

Left: Nigel Thomson’s atmospheric portrait of Barbara Blackman, which won the 1997 . the curious but delightful pastime of that I had little children and there might Elton John,” Adrian says. “We had two taking Barbara to Art Gallery of NSW come an occasion when I’d need help sound systems going flat out.” exhibitions. Guiding her through the urgently, and that was all right. “Yes,” adds Barbara, chortling. “It was painting-filled rooms, he describes to her “Once, when Christabel was a month hard to hear the neighbours banging on what he is looking at by drawing an or two old, she was on penicillin every the door [at 2am]. It was even hard to hear approximation on the palm of her hands. four hours and Charles had gone away Christabel screaming. It was too much for “It’s wonderful to describe a picture to on a painting trip with Cliff Pugh. I just the cat. In the morning she had kittens.” Barbara and wonderful to get a response used to go down to the front gate and say And so, across nearly three decades – back from a blind woman,” he says. to a passer-by, ‘Excuse me, I’m blind from Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney and and my child needs four of these drops’. , to London, Paris and back to harles Blackman was at the height I wasn’t embarrassed. My child needed Australia again – the Blackman marriage of his artistic powers when he drops and here was a human being. He assumed an almost mythical status. Cand Barbara had their first child, could see what a drop was.” “He used to sing in a great deep voice Auguste, in Melbourne in 1957. Two Because of Barbara’s disability, she Bessie Smith songs,” she says. “I’d never years later a daughter, Christabel, was and Charles never belonged exclusively met anything like Charles. And he’d never born, and then, in London in 1963, their to the arts world. Instead they gathered met anything like me. So it was utter third child, Barnaby, arrived. around themselves not just artists, dynamics of being carried away by each Betty Churcher, former director of the but people like entrepreneur Georges other. Probably one of the last interviews National Gallery of Australia and a life- Mora and his wife, Mirka, poets Jack he ever gave on radio was to this chirpy long friend of Barbara’s, remembers her McKinney and Judith Wright, as well interviewer who said to him, ‘What was it struggling mightily with her sight around as musicians like Peter Sculthorpe and like being married to a blind wife?’ the time Auguste arrived. “She could just Ross Edwards. Their parties became He said, ‘She never looked at my paintings see enough out of the corners of her eyes celebrated events. and interfered with my thoughts.’

to put the nappy pins in,” she says. “And Adrian Keenan, a music friend of Continued on page 206. NEWSPIC.COM.

88 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 THE AUSTRALIAN WOMEN’S WEEKLY – JANUARY 2005 89 BARBARA BLACKMAN Continued helped form the National Federation of life better for someone? One of the great And the interviewer said something like, Blind Citizens and later Radio for the sins of omission is not writing to people ‘But you had to read to her?’ And he said, Print Handicapped in Perth. and telling them how much they’ve ‘I read her great books and, Madam, it In the last third of her life, she has helped you. I say to people – and I don’t made me an educated person’.” become increasingly drawn to the spiritual. always do it myself – ‘Spend half a day a But it all came to an end in 1978, not To the rigorous study of – as opposed to month saying thank you to people who’ve because of Charles’ rumoured infidelities, New Age infatuation with – astrology; to an made your life better’. That’s gratitude. but because of his alcoholism. (Today, he investigation of where modern science and And when you pay your bills, pay them suffers from alcoholic dementia.) the ancient wisdoms might intersect; to promptly. I used to post my payments “I’ve a friend,” says Barbara, “who said, the Temenos Foundation, which seeks to with a few leaves of lavender in it ... now ‘Small infidelities save more marriages bring these ancient wisdoms into greater we don’t pay bills like that.” than they destroy’. I think it’s a very wise focus in contemporary life; to the power And so, yes, a world is crumbling, remark. No, it was the alcohol. It’s done of service to those she loves. but Barbara Blackman retains a truly great damage in my family. And as I’m It was at Karnak, Diane Cilento’s adventurous spark and an appreciation not an addictive person, I suppose I’m on School of Sufi Studies in Queensland, for everything life can offer. Every first the other side of the river. If you’re blind, where Barbara met Frenchman Marcel Sunday of the month, she opens her home you can’t get too drunk because you lose Veldhoven, the “scholar gypsy” with whom to friends, just as she did when she was your footing. You lose your precious self- she would spend nearly 20 years. married to Charles, or when she lived at control and independence.” Together they created a “university” Indooroopilly with her second husband, Barbara announced the end of their in the bush in Kangaroo Valley, on the Marcel. “You can’t finish a poem until marriage one morning in 1978, by typing south coast of NSW – a retreat called you’ve lived it to the end,” she says. a letter of resignation to him and placing Indooroopilly, where friends came for A few months ago, she went on a cruise it – along with a flower – on his breakfast contemplation, good company, music with a friend along the east coast of tray. She declared that the resignation and the study of poets and philosophers. Australia, visiting two beaches a day for a would take effect a fortnight later, on “All fixed beliefs,” she said, “were left, like week. In that mysterious, almost psychic their 27th wedding anniversary. the metaphorical shoes, at the door.” world of hers, she addressed herself to – But that, too, came to an end around as she puts it – the “eternal ocean”, “the usic is Barbara Blackman’s life Christmas 2001, when bushfires swept ephemeral sand” and the “ancestral flow, the heart of everything. the Southern Highlands and Barbara rocks”. She came back re-invigorated. MEvery morning, for half an hour, was forced to evacuate the house, along “Every day I wake up with a sense of she sways and turns across her dance with her computers, her talking book surprise, gratitude, curiosity,” she says, floor to the sounds of Dave Brubeck, machines, archives and paintings. By “and it never lets me down. And whenever Harry Belafonte, Sufi rock or, as was the this time, her relationship with Marcel had I go to bed I am grateful – grateful for the case on the day I visited her, the Beatles. long since fulfilled itself. He was drifting bed. I suppose blindness was a shortcut “It’s to cleanse the mind and work the further to Tibetan Buddhism; she to her to humility and so I’ve just let myself body,” she says. “I just love it.” many friends and interests in Canberra, be guided.” Barbara Blackman reminds us of and ”the tasks of old age”. And now that she has reached old age, what the spirit is capable of when the When I’d first spoken to Barbara by she feels curious about what lies ahead. world appears to vanish before our eyes. phone, she’d claimed her world was “going “If I could look in the mirror, I would After their separation, Charles went on down”, and that she was “not unhappy to probably lament a lot more,” she says. to marry one of his daughter’s friends, a go down with it”. I asked her to elaborate (“It looks like the prow of a boat,” her woman 30 years younger. It was the first on this theme, and so she talked of how friend Kim Mahood says of her face.) of two successive marriages. Barbara she felt language and moralities had “I’m the height now I was when I was 12. chose instead to fall back into Aboriginal changed beyond recognition; how words Petticoats have gone out of fashion. life, back to the place of her earliest like modesty and frugality and decency But what is interesting about old age – memories with her father. Where’s that had gone out of fashion; how the idea of what my mother called the Promised whitewoman called Blackman? She don’t housework had come to be regarded as Land – is that you don’t have the weight of see ... she smells. It was here, in a place drudgery rather than service. tomorrow on your back. You are free to where she was to become mythologised, “The home is the centre of family, look at beginnings and where they lead.” that she had a soul meeting with a three- hospitality, woman’s solitude and solace,” Do you welcome the Great Sleep? “Yes,” year-old girl, Rebecca, whom she would she reminded me. “I’d replace ‘drudgery’, she says. “I’ve enjoyed everything about later adopt as her daughter. with ‘caress’. The house breathing its waves my life and I’m sure that dying will Over the succeeding years, Barbara’s of safe harbour when all are asleep in be one of the most interesting. It’s my life trajectory continued to take her in the night, the clock ticking its heartbeat curiosity which carries me on, and surely a multitude of directions, but seemingly welcome, the order and cleanliness of death is something to be curious about.” always under one guiding star. Earlier in humble utensils, a hat on a hook, a book What do you think happens when you her life, she had played the muse and the left open ... ” die? “I like that phrase from Tennyson,” model as well as the vigorous campaigner And while we’re at it, what happened she replies. “When that which drew from on behalf of Australian contemporary art, to the writing of letters? “I suppose the out the boundless deep turns again home. music and writing. A beautiful writer, she worst things about old age are the sins of Twilight and evening bell and after that had celebrated the world of ideas and what omission,” she observes. “What have I not the dark! And may there be no sadness of it meant to be a good citizen. She had done that had I done would have made farewell when I embark.” W

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