Welcome to Not Quite Right.
My name's Ed, and I'm Amanda.
We are back at Words on the Waves for 2026.
It's our fourth time at Words on the Waves.
Yeah.
And I'm super excited to be back here.
We're part of the furniture here now.
We are.
It's a fun experience every year.
Last year, we had a very echoey room with an
excellent view.
This year, hopefully a less echoey room, but with no view, unfortunately.
Well, we can look at each other.
We can look at each other.
That's that's all the view that we need.
We came here last night, actually.
We went and saw Story Club.
Yeah.
Presented by OSHA Ginsburg and Zoe Norton Lodge, which we've seen every year so far.
It's always a great time.
And then tonight we're going to see the poultry Slam,
which was a lot of fun last year.
Yeah.
Are you going to read a poem?
I would love to, but alas, I'm not a poet.
Maybe one day, maybe I'm tempted.
Do you wanna?
Maybe we should both do it next year.
What do you reckon?
Yes.
Yeah.
That'd be great.
So this will be the first of a series series of interviews from our time at
Words on the Waves.
And our first interview today is with Juliet Reeden,
who is the biographer of Quentin Bryce's Dame Quentin Bryce.
Dame Quentin Bryce is of course the first female Governor General of Australia.
And we had a very quick chat with Juliet this morning because she had to rush out
the door.
Would have liked to have a little bit longer to pick her brain.
But nevertheless, it was a lovely chat and we learned a
little bit about the Royal fans and about Australian political history and it was
very eye opening.
So here is our discussion with Juliet Reeden.
Well, we are here at Words on the Waves with
Juliet Reeden.
How are you Juliet?
I'm very well.
Beautiful place you've got here.
Goodness me.
It's a lovely day for it as well.
So tell us about what brings you to Words on the Waves.
So I am here with the person whose biography I've written,
which is Dame Quentin Bryce.
We brought out the biography in October last year,
so it's quite new in the book shops.
And yes, it's been an incredibly long journey for
me writing this biography, three years in the writing,
more than a decade in the making.
Well, so tell us about that experience working
with Quentin on on that book.
It has been an extraordinary experience.
I first approached Quentin in 2022 to write her biography.
I have known her for some while, and all the time I'd known her,
I thought that she was writing her own autobiography.
I knew she had so much material.
I've been to her house.
I've, I've been to her office, I've travelled with her.
I know that there's so many stories to tell.
She had boxes and boxes of journals of papers, of letters,
of contemporaneous notes that she has written throughout her career.
I mean, I think what's most interesting to me is
that she's obviously known for a very long time that she was going to live
quite a big life in, in the Australian landscape.
And she, she made sure that she documented that
herself.
So those personal contemporaneous notes that nobody else had seen before I saw.
And they're fascinating to read.
Lots and lots of photos as well.
So I, I went to Quentin and said, can I do your biography?
And she didn't immediately say yes.
She went away and thought about it.
She had been approached by many, many other journalists, historians,
commentators and and she had always said no.
So I was really delighted when she came back to me a few days later and said yes,
I'm all in.
And then she handed over all that material to me and we got going.
That would have been great having a subject to so organised and had so much
material to work with.
How, what was the process like of going
through that and trying to pick out like a thread of a narrative?
Look, I would say she wasn't organised.
Those boxes were really in massive disarray, not from particular periods,
just stuff thrown into boxes.
Her husband's boxes of records were beautifully catalogued,
absolutely beautiful.
Quentin's not at all.
So my first job was to actually get her entire archive into some form that I
could deal with.
I also then went into to the National Archives, the State Archives,
the library archives, all the archives of the various places
she's worked.
So there was an awful lot of material for me to sift through.
I already had a structure for my book before I started on that material.
I'd done a number of interviews with Quentin over the years.
I knew her life story quite well.
What I didn't know was all the stuff I was going to find, of course,
but I knew the areas I wanted to specifically look into,
and so I had structured it.
That structure largely didn't change when I wrote it.
So was there anything there that really surprised you and what you discovered?
Oh, there was so much there that surprised me.
I think probably the biggest surprise for me was how hard it has been for Quentin
behind the scenes.
I think people look at Quentin Bryce, They see the wonderful Governor General
we had the very elegant Governor General.
They think that everyone admired her greatly, which they did.
What they don't know is what went on behind the scenes, not just in that role,
but in all of the roles that she had had before that, which were extensive,
you know, federal sex discrimination commissioner,
the chair and CEO of the very first Childcare Accreditation Commission.
And those roles were, were really hard, as was the governor of Queensland and the
Governor General role.
And it was the sexism behind the scenes, the misogyny behind the scenes, the,
I mean, unbelievable things.
You know, when she was Governor General, she was taken to her office,
was taken to Senate estimates, 42% more than any other Governor General
before her.
Now all of those governors general were male of course and a lot of the things
she was her office was taken to be questioned about at the Senate estimates.
Enquiries were things like how much she spent on flowers or or you know, whether,
whether her clothes were too expensive.
She did not have a clothing allowance.
She paid for all of her clothes, but it didn't matter how many times that
was said.
That was picked up time and time again when she was doing so much more important
work out there for Australia, going to Afghan understand for the first
time as a Governor General, going out beyond the wire,
first state visit to China for a Governor General,
first Governor General to to travel Africa.
There are so many things.
You know, she went to 59 countries in her time as
Governor General, so, and of course, she had four prime ministers.
So there was a lot going on.
It was a very febrile time politically.
And Quentin, I think looking on it from my distance as
a biographer, I could see that she was like that still
point in what was a very chaotic world at the time.
And it's been quite a long career since the 60s, right?
So it's very disappointing that as recently as just over 10 years ago that
those issues are still prevalent.
Do you think it's any better now in 2026?
Look, I think what I have seen is all women in
senior roles have faced very similar things.
We of course, we all know what happened with Julia
Gillard and you know, Quentin swore in Julia Gillard.
So our first female Governor General swearing in,
our first female Prime Minister, you would hope that that was a line in
the sand.
But it hasn't stopped.
It really hasn't.
I'd like to think we're getting better at it,
but there's still an awful long way to go.
So you mentioned that she made a lot of notes with the idea in mind that she was
aware that she had this important career.
So who do you think the audience was in her mind for those notes?
I think she wanted to make them for history.
I think she was always aware that her work will end up in a national archive at
some point.
A lot of those notes were about particular events that she was at and
things that were happening.
Australia's bid for the World Cup, for instance.
She was there with Prince William and strangely, Elle Macpherson.
And yes, she wrote about that particular scenario.
She wrote about going to amazing places for the first time, but you know,
a lot of them are also about what was happening with regards to people of the
day, prime ministers of the day who were
seeing her, who wasn't, how it was going, how she felt,
whether she felt that she was being supported or not.
So tell us that you've had quite a long career as well in other areas.
I'm interested as well in your time as a like a royal commentator and we're in a
bit of an interesting time with the royal family,
new king and kind of talk about succession and things like that.
What are your thoughts about all of that?
Yes, well, I mean, I've been a royal correspondent
commentator for more than a decade now, currently AB CS royal commentator,
and I've been lucky enough to meet and interview a lot of members of the royal
family, including the current King.
When he was Prince of Wales, I interviewed him at Balmoral actually.
Well, in his house, Burke Hall in the Balmoral estate.
Look, the current situation of the royal family,
it's a tough time.
It's a very tough time for the royal family at the moment.
I think the King actually is doing a pretty good job.
I don't know whether you heard his speech in Congress.
In America, you know, lots of people don't tend to listen to
the King's speeches too much.
I think everyone was listening to that one and it was a a master class in
diplomacy and leadership.
I think he said things that prime ministers, our Prime Minister,
the British Prime Minister couldn't say and he managed to make a point whilst not
being rude very tactfully and also provided a good contrast against the
speeches of the US president as well.
Brought a little bit of class into Congress.
Very much so.
I mean, I know everyone was was a little nervous
going into that.
Many people in Britain thought that the British government should not be sending
their head of state over to have an official visit with the president who has
been very critical of the British government and very critical particularly
of the British Prime Minister.
Obviously the King was there on behalf of the British government.
He was there at the at the behest of the British government and that speech that
the king made was written by him and Keir Starmer together.
So they very much knew what they were both trying to say there.
Yeah.
I mean, I think, you know, what's happening in the US as well is
also reflected in the UK, in Australia politics at times and and
sort of feels like we're moving away maybe from some of our more traditional
values and, you know, you talk about the royal family and so on.
I guess that's what unites us and is what differentiates the US.
So I think it's, it's interesting to see perhaps how
Australia and the UK sometimes follow the lead of the US.
Yes.
I mean, I think that Australia in the past more
so has followed the lead of America more than Britain.
Britain sees, I mean, I'm British by birth.
I've lived here for almost 30 years now.
So I sort of have a sense of both.
My mother was Australian, so I've always had a foot in both camps,
but I think that Australia always are coming out of, you know,
the apron strings, trying to cut a few of those apron
strings with Britain went headlong into American culture and really started to
embrace American culture and sort of cut ties a little with British culture as as
the Australian nation move forward, I don't think Britain did that so much.
Britain's always seen itself as an ally with America,
but very British and separate.
Well, look, we have more questions, which we'd love to talk to you about,
but unfortunately you're getting pulled out the door.
Yes.
So it was very lovely to meet you, Juliet, and enjoy the rest of your time at Words
on the Waves.
Pleasure.
Thank you.
And a lovely festival.
This has been a special presentation of the Not Quite Right Podcast in
collaboration with Words on the Waves Riders Festival.
Check the show notes For more information about Words on the Waves and the books
mentioned in this episode.
If you're new to the podcast, please join us again for our regular
episodes where we talk about media, culture, and the art of writing.
Something doesn't seem quite right.