A campaigning Kiwi journalist
Barbara Farrelly, who has died aged 61, made her name as the editor of two Sydney lesbian and gay publications during the 1990s. More recently, her writing about living with a chronic lung disease brought her a new audience.
The Kiwi-born Farrelly loved life and all it had to offer, particularly reading, gardening, cooking, cryptic crosswords, conversing, cats and gongoozling – a word she delighted in meaning to stare idly at the ocean.
She was born in Otorohanga, the fourth of Patrick and June Farrelly’s eight children. She grew up on their farm, survived a flood that washed the family’s pigs away and a fire that burnt down their home.
She was 15 when she started work as a journalist, and by
21 was news editor of four Auckland suburban papers.
She was also a playwright and had three of her works performed in New Zealand. Which Side of the Wall? and Women and Madness were performed in the Waikato Arts Festival, while The Waiting Room opened the 1977 Women’s Convention.
A lesbian feminist activist as a teenager, Farrelly objected to International Women’s Day as it was ‘‘one day for women and 364 for men’’. She found New Zealand parochial, recalling the first pizza shop in Auckland where people thought the olives were grapes. When a police officer sexually assaulted a gay man, she left in 1981 for South Australia where the premier, Don Dunstan, wore pink shorts and valued the arts.
There Farrelly worked for the Adelaide
Advertiser, and later as publications officer in the NSW government premier’s department. In 1992, she began work as a reporter at the gay and lesbian community newspaper
Sydney Star Observer, becoming its first female editor the following year. It was the height of the Aids crisis in Sydney, and each fortnight the paper contained dozens of death notices.
It was while organising the Reclaim the Night rally in 1992 that Farrelly first crossed paths with Lesbians on the Loose editor Frances Rand. They began a relationship the following year.
A year later, Rand persuaded her to leave the Star and join forces at LOTL. Farrelly’s nose for a good story and lively writing style were rewarded with huge growth in the magazine’s readership. Many of the stories were picked up by mainstream media.
Farrelly and Rand used to wear matching outfits to the Mardi Gras parade each year. They went as schoolgirls, 1970s feminists in badge-covered overalls and, after a story about the difficulties faced by a Muslim lesbian, wearing chadors. This was the 1990s, though, and many parade-goers thought they were nuns.
One year, dressed as Crimean War nurses, they watched the parade from the Taylor Square VIP viewing room when a medical emergency happened. The then health minister thought they were real nurses and asked them to help.
Farrelly’s health began to suffer during this period. She was advised to move away from Sydney and in 1999 the couple sold LOTL and moved to the south coast. Two years later she was diagnosed with stage four COPD (chronic obstructive lung disease). There is no stage five. Her lung capacity was 30 per cent and one doctor likened it to living at Mt Everest base camp.
She gave up smoking, but was still able to perform many normal activities such as walking, gardening and cooking. She reviewed books, wrote a history of her ancestors’ perilous journey to New Zealand, and returned across the Tasman for her 50th birthday and a family reunion.
In 2014, Farrelly began writing about living with a nose hose in her blog The Departure
Lounge. She wrote thoughtfully about living a limited life and the pleasures it still offered to her such as cryptic crosswords, reading (mostly detective fiction), and watching TV dramas, especially Nordic noir.
She railed against big tobacco, predator priests and politicians – especially Tony Abbott – but never lost her sense of humour. She began receiving palliative care in 2016, and her weight dropped below 40 kilograms.
She felt hopeful again at the end of 2017, when marriage equality became law. She married Rand on the first possible day, January 9, and wrote that it gave her a new lease of life. ‘‘Our marriage has released pentup psychic energy of 25 years and we have never been happier or higher. Where once we could not have gone, we have taken the words betrothed and wife. At last, our love has a name and the state apparatus can see us.’’
She is survived by her wife Frances, seven siblings, 13 in-laws and 18 nieces and nephews. –
‘‘Our marriage has released pent-up psychic energy of 25 years and we have never been happier or higher.’’