In early 2002, I resigned as vice-chairman of the Australia Day Council to become chairman of the fundraising committee for the fledgling Green Gates drug rehabilitation charity. That year, Green Gates decided to hold a Christmas in July Ball at the new Alice Springs Convention Centre. A band from Sydney was recommended by the events manager, who had seen the group perform at an Alice Springs film set. The brochure for The Siren Singing Sensations featured a blonde, a brunette and a redhead, all dressed in colourful costumes which I later discovered had been designed by the Sydney Theatre Company. They appeared to be a high-class act, so I made a phone call to the blonde, LouLou (or Lou), in Sydney and booked the band. Little did I know that I had just spoken to my future wife!
A few months later, The Sirens arrived in Alice Springs. I first met Lou in the ballroom as she and the group prepared to do their sound check. When I heard Lou’s strong, deep singing voice booming around the room, I knew we had booked the right act. Later that night, The Sirens performed flawlessly and the ball was a huge success, raising much-needed funds for Green Gates.
After the ball, my friends and I went to the casino’s Irish pub, Limericks, where we met Lou and her fellow Siren Mandy for drinks. We thanked them for their performance and had a good time getting to know them as we talked and danced into the early hours. As I was recently separated and emotionally unavailable, I didn’t want to get involved with anyone at that time, so a night of dancing and drinks was all I had in mind. As we all said goodnight, I didn’t imagine that our paths would ever cross again.
But fate intervened. Our treasurer had forgotten to pay the band and it was up to me to contact Lou in Sydney to apologise. The lines of communication were reopened and The Sirens were paid. The following year I contacted Lou before arriving in Sydney on my way to the United States and caught up with her for a drink. We hit it off immediately. Lou was fun, easygoing and intelligent. I was strongly attracted to her and wanted to see her again but when I mentioned the possibility, she replied that there wasn’t much point since I lived in Alice Springs and she shared custody of her son with his father in Sydney, so Sydney would always be her home.
We made arrangements to see each other again, and then again. One day, when we finally spoke about the depressing reality of our geographical separation, I simply looked Lou in the eyes and said, ‘I will make it work.’ And so Lou and I began a long-distance love affair that thrived in spite of the considerable kilometres between us. For more than five years, each month one of us made the three-hour flight between Alice Springs and Sydney, visiting for a weekend or a couple of weeks when time allowed—becoming two of Qantas’s best customers. As our relationship developed, our deepening love and commitment proved to be stronger than the great distance between us.
My new relationship meant that I was required to complete the Foreign Contact form for Security as I was still ‘owned by the agency’ as far as my personal life was concerned. In late 2005 I knew I had found the person I wanted to always be with and decided I wanted to marry Lou. Security then provided a massive amount of paperwork as a more extensive investigation needed to be completed on Lou and her family (as was done for my previous marriage). I didn’t want to alert Lou that I was planning to propose, so I just told her that I needed more information for ongoing investigations because we had been in a relationship for some time and Lou wasn’t a US citizen. This latest investigation reassured Security that Lou—a born-and-bred Australian with a stable job working with autistic children as a registered music therapist—was neither a security risk nor an agent committing espionage for a foreign government.
Lou remained unaware of my plans until I proposed about seven months later, proving I was worthy of the security clearance that said I was able to keep quiet and not reveal the most important secrets! I later learned that Lou thought I would never propose, believing that my previous relationships had left me with a negative and bitter view of marriage. She was surprised and thrilled when I proposed to her at our special meeting place, Emily Gap in Alice Springs.
Traditionally, prospective grooms ask the young lady’s father for permission to marry. As a security-cleared employee seeking to marry a non-US citizen, I had to channel my request in a somewhat different direction. Instead of asking Brian, Lou’s father, I was required to ask, and subsequently received written permission from, NSA’s Office of Security. During a previous visit to Sydney in late 2004 I had a private talk with Brian, who was sick with cancer at the time. He told me how happy Lou was whenever we were together, and said he would like to see us marry. ‘Just marry her,’ he said! With blessings from Brian and Security, I was now ready to marry my Australian bride-to-be, which I did in November 2006, our homes still separated by the vast outback. Sadly, Brian died several months after we had our private talk and wasn’t able to attend our wedding. (I think of him fondly every time I see his legacy in downtown Sydney: Brian was in the glass business, and he manufactured and installed the stained-glass dome in the Queen Victoria Building.)
Lou’s friends and family had dubbed us early on as ‘The Singer and the Spy’—before becoming a music therapist Lou had been a professional singer for more than two decades, appearing as the headline singer at the Long Bar in Singapore’s Raffles Hotel, the Lyric Theatre in Hong Kong and Sydney’s premier music club, The Basement, to name just a few venues. She had also sung and become close friends with the legendary 1970s funk guitarist O’Donel Levy, often seen riding on the back of his motorcycle in Singapore, and as a session singer, her voice could be heard on many television and radio commercials. As a wedding present she sang to me, and our guests, the aptly titled song ‘At last’.
Our planned honeymoon in Fiji had been booked and paid for and in spite of rumours of an impending military coup we decided to stick to our plans and head to the islands. Since many tourists were staying away from Fiji, our first five nights on Tokoriki Island were quiet and relaxing as we enjoyed the Fijian people, the fine food, the beaches and snorkelling. Our next stop was the exclusive resort of Namale, owned by the well-known motivational speaker Anthony Robbins and managed by a friendly Australian couple. We stayed at the very exclusive Rosi Villa and were told that Ben Affleck had stayed there just before our arrival. As we were leaving, I found a high-quality Italian-made black shirt left on top of our wardrobe. It was a perfect fit and I silently thanked Ben for the honeymoon gift.
Talk of a coup had been rumoured for months, with nine demands by Commodore Josaia Voreqe ‘Frank’ Bainimarama imposed upon the prime minister, Laisenia Qarase.[1] But as we had spent two idyllic, sunny days swimming and drinking Veuve Clicquot champagne, any thoughts of an impending coup seemed millions of miles away. The deadline for the demands to be met was 1 December, but in true Fijian fashion the plotters delayed the coup until 3 December to accommodate the annual rugby union game played between the National Police and the military.[2] As we were having breakfast at Namale on 4 December, we observed several Fijians huddled around a radio listening to news of the coup, which had just occurred. After breakfast, I received a phone call from Security at Pine Gap asking if we were in any danger. I assured Security that we were safe and nowhere near the capital of Suva. I was certain that an emergency rescue by military helicopter wouldn’t be necessary, so Lou and I continued to relax, drinking Veuve in paradise.
We could not have honeymooned in a more peaceful place. The people of Fiji were among the friendliest we had ever met, with constant greetings of ‘Bula’ heard from passers-by. ‘If only more military coups could be modelled on Fiji’s,’ I perversely thought when we had no problem getting out of Fiji in time to return home.