Telegram from Ms Julieanne Driscoll to Ms Jed Kelly, 11 November 1975
Tell me the news isn’t true query not in Australia exclamation mark ring me exclamation mark J xxx
JED
The phone shrilled. Relief surged like a tsunami. Scarlett, wanting to come home. Or having at least reached Sydney safely with Mrs Taylor . . .
‘Hello?’
‘Jed?’ Matilda’s dry-leaf voice shook like it was wind blown. ‘Have you heard the news?’
‘What news?’ Dread chilled her hands, her feet. Had Scarlett been run over? The car crashed?
‘The governor-general has dismissed the government.’
This day could not be happening. ‘But . . . how can he do that? He can’t.’
‘Possibly.’ The voice was firmer. ‘And yet he has. Kerr has given the prime ministership to Malcolm Fraser until an election can be held.’
‘He can’t do that,’ Jed repeated weakly.
‘I assure you this is not the first evidence of senile dementia. Impossible as it seems, Sir John Kerr and Malcolm Fraser and those behind them have staged a coup. You need to ring Nicholas. See what needs doing. Articles for the Gazette at least. A demonstration?’
‘I don’t . . .’
‘My father and his mates would have been storming Parliament House. I do not know what your generation will do, but you must do something.’
‘Matilda, I . . . There’s a problem with Scarlett. We . . . we quarrelled and she’s left. I need to find her . . .’
‘That girl is capable of looking after herself.’
‘I . . . I don’t know. She was upset.’
An engine. Jed looked out the window. Leafsong’s car! Thank goodness. Then she realised the passenger seat was empty.
‘Matilda, I’ll call you back. Leafsong’s here. As soon as I find Scarlett, I’ll call you back, then call Nicholas’s office.’
‘I may be on the phone. We need a headline for the Gazette.’
And the Gazette had a highly competent editor who would not be amenable to an owner interfering. Those days had passed. But surely Cheryl’s editorial fury would be as great as Matilda’s. Every thinking Australian must be outraged!
Impossible that a government elected only the previous year could be dismissed. This extraordinary government that had changed the nation so deeply and so well . . .
She shoved the sheer outrageousness to the back of her mind and ran out to Leafsong.