Helen Garner's Fascination with Crime

Lex Lasry (0:02)

Welcome to Law of the Podcast, I'm Lex Lasry.

Greg Barns (0:04)

I'm Greg Barns.

Lex Lasry (0:05)

And Greg, we've had some terrific guests on this podcast.

Helen Garner (0:08)

Great start, great start.

Lex Lasry (0:09)

Over the short history, but today we've got something special, because we've got Helen Garner as our guest. So Helen, welcome to Law of the Podcast.

Greg Barns (0:17)

For those who are under 30, Helen is an esteemed Australian writer.

Lex Lasry (0:21)

Indeed, novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, journalist. We'll go back a little way, back to the start. It began in 1977 for you with Monkey Grip. That was the first thing that, first notable thing you did, I think.

Helen Garner (0:34)

Well, it was the first thing I did. I mean, it was the first book I published, yeah.

Lex Lasry (0:37)

Yeah, and as a result of Keeping a Diary, I think that was how it was done. Who published it?

Helen Garner (0:42)

Well, it was the publisher called McPhee-Gribble. Oh, yeah, yeah.

The two run by two women. Hilary McPhee, wasn't it? Hilary McPhee and Diana Gribble. Yeah. Yeah.

Lex Lasry (0:52)

What we're keen to talk about, among other things, today is your interest in the criminal law and where that started and really why it happened. And I noticed looking back over what you've done, one of the things you did was win a Walkley Award in 1993 for a report you wrote in Time Magazine.

And it was a report about the killing of Daniel Valerio by that child's mother's boyfriend, Paul Douglas Atong. And obviously you developed an interest in that case. Was that the first criminal type case that you'd written about or taken an interest in?

Helen Garner (1:26)

I did have a friend whose stepdaughter had been murdered. And I went to that trial with him, of the two people who were accused of murdering her and her boyfriend. At the time, I thought he probably would like to have some company sitting through that.

But I think that the subjects for me really was terrific curiosity. And like a lot of people, I didn't know that courts were open.

Lex Lasry (1:52)

Yeah.

Helen Garner (1:52)

Most people don't know that.

Greg Barns (1:53)

Yeah, they don't know that. It's incredible the number of people say, when I come along.

Helen Garner (1:56)

Yeah. Or they say to me, how did you get permission to go to the trial? I'm going, hello, this is a democracy. Yeah. Our courts are open.

Greg Barns (2:04)

We have open courts.

Helen Garner (2:05)

And the courts are sort of, they're acting in our name as citizens. I was thunderstruck when I discovered that. You know, I thought you had to like get a stamped piece of paper from a judge. Yeah.

Lex Lasry (2:15)

I think you said in the past that when you discovered the courts, it felt like you died and gone to heaven.

Helen Garner (2:21)

Yeah.

Lex Lasry (2:21)

Because there was so much to write about and so much to observe. Is that how you still feel about it?

Helen Garner (2:26)

Oh, yeah. I do love it. If I walk into a court, I'd get this terrific shot of adrenaline and happiness, I think. I mean, even if I know that I'm going to be sitting through something grueling and a lot of suffering, I love the idea of the law, that it's this huge thing that we've invented to try to handle what's really dark and bad in people.

And that's what sitting through a trial is to me, is watching that effort. And I find it terribly thrilling and moving.

Lex Lasry (3:01)

And you like the formality of it too, don't you?

Helen Garner (3:03)

Yes, I do. I think they should wear wigs.

Lex Lasry (3:08)

Helen.

Helen Garner (3:10)

Wigs and braids.

Greg Barns (3:11)

Helen, we were getting on so well.

Helen Garner (3:13)

Well, you can take your wig off after you come in. Okay.

No, I do think it's quite important for lawyers to differentiate themselves from some person who's just walking down the street. I mean, because you're carrying, you're trained to carry an enormous amount of our projections.

There's a word called nuffy that people apply to me when I write about football. And that is, I'm not exactly sure what it means. I think it means a kind of passionate, but ignorant. Ignorant, yes. Certainly means ignorant. Attachment to some big thing. And well, I'm sort of a nuffy. I still remember moments when I've been in court when I've been thunderstruck by something that happened. The two people who were accused of murdering my friend's stepdaughter and her boyfriend, they were a couple of junkies. They were soldiers, actually, both of them, and they were roaming around the bush and they came across these two kids quietly asleep in the back of their Ute. And so they murdered the kids and stole the Ute and drove to Virginia and parked it up on the cross while they went out to score.