“She Followed Every Blood Test, Every Anxious Decision”
Lucy Palmer (left) and Mary-Louise O’Callaghan have been friends since 1994 when they were foreign correspondents.
Distance has been no barrier for best friends Lucy Palmer and Mary-Louise O’Callaghan, both 58. They met as foreign correspondents based in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands respectively and have stayed close through love and loss, despite rarely living in the same country.
Lucy We met in March 1994. I had only just moved to Papua New Guinea in December, and Mary-Louise was the South Pacific correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald based in the Solomon Islands. I kept hearing about her, had read her work, and was in awe of her already. We met on a press trip and I found her formidable, an absolute force of nature. She was irreverent, sharp, brilliantly funny. By then she had her first child, Erin, and had the most extraordinary physical and intellectual energy. From that trip on, we either spoke or wrote to each other every single day about every single aspect of our lives, large or small, significant or boring. We didn’t have emails then, we sent each other faxes. I still have quite a few of them, although some of them are very faded.
Mary-Louise Lucy’s arrival was much heralded in the PNG media community, because she was the new AAP [Australian Associated Press] correspondent and because she was a woman. I think people expected us to compete, but we effortlessly became friends. They put us in a hotel room together on that first trip so we got to know each other pretty quickly. We also shared a room when I came over for the South Pacific Forum in Madang. I had my baby with me on that trip; it takes a certain sort of person to be able to share a hotel room on a working trip with a person with a baby. Soon I was staying with Lucy rather than in hotels when I came to Papua New Guinea for work. We have barely ever lived near each other or even in the same country, apart from a short period when I was in Canberra and she was just a few hours away in the Southern Highlands, but we have always had daily conversations.
L We travelled together, we covered stories together. Very early on in our relationship I realised ML was the first real friend I had made. I just knew that whatever happened she would be there, a certainty I never felt with other friends. When I met my husband, Julian, it was natural that he and ML became very firm friends. She was best woman at my wedding.
ML I remember when Lucy told me she had fallen in love with Julian. His wife had passed away a year or so earlier and they were copping flak from various people because it was seen as being too soon. All I was interested in was supporting her as she worked through what she wanted to do. Then of course she fell pregnant, and it was all on. She went through a huge amount so quickly. I remember going over when [Lucy’s son] George turned one – I was his godmother. I took a lovely photo of Julian and Lucy holding George to blow out the candle. I dropped the film off to be developed and by the time I got it back, Julian had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma, and those three people were looking at a very different future.
“We have a rare intimacy in our friendship; the hallmark of a true friendship is that you can be disappointed and hurt and angry and forgive and become stronger. ”
L Julian and I married in 1995, had three children and Julian died in 2001. Mary-Louise was there was for the whole intense six-year period. She followed the result of every blood test, every disappointment, every anxious decision. But while I could share the journey I was on, there were times she couldn’t really grasp what I was going through, and those were real moments of lonely anguish for me. When Julian died, she dropped everything and flew from the Solomons, while her parents also drove up from Melbourne to help me through the funeral. It was such an extraordinary gesture, it still blows my mind today.
ML When Lucy’s memoir, A Bird On My Shoulder, came out, I stayed up all night reading it in one sitting and I wept and wept and wept. I rang her as early as I was able to and said, “I had no idea. Even though I was there every step of the way, I had no idea how hard it was for you.” When [my husband] Joses read it, he said to me, “I need to talk to Lucy.” When Julian was sick, Joses had been quite challenged by the amount of time and energy I had devoted to Lucy. Reading the book made him see things, and see her, very differently, and helped him understand why.
L In the last four or five years there has been another great shift as Joses has become increasingly unwell. It’s an extraordinary privilege to be ML’s companion on her journey, and to be able to offer something more than platitudes. We have a rare intimacy in our friendship; the hallmark of a true friendship is that you can be disappointed and hurt and angry and forgive and become stronger. I remember once saying, ‘What would I have to do to really fuck up this friendship? I guess if I slept with your husband that could end it’, and she said, ‘Hm, I’d have to think about that.’
ML Joses has Parkinson’s disease and as he has gotten frailer, it’s a very comforting thing to have someone who has gone through a very similar experience. Our friendship has withstood a lot in the past - we are used to being pretty robust in our exchanges. I once said something insensitive during a phone call and realised straight away I was wrong to have said it. I felt dreadful. I remember walking around the office, deliberately keeping her on the phone until she had forgiven me – I wouldn’t let her hang up until we had made it up a little. But Lucy is still the one person I can call and know I won’t be judged. No matter what I’ve done, she’ll just listen.
Lucy Palmer teaches journalism at the University of Central Asia in Kyrgyzstan; Mary-Louise O’Callaghan is communications manager at the Solomon Islands Justice Program.
Interview_ Ute Junker