A Life By Design

by Siobhan O'Brien

  Released during the Christmas period at Brisbane’s Forum Cinema, David and Pyewacket appeared as a support to the Ken Russell film The Boyfriend. One reviewer described it as a ‘film made of gold’. Another reviewer was effusive about an event at the New Art Cinema in Sydney where the film was a feature:

  Once the evening was in full swing (we) called everyone to the auditorium and encouraged Florence Broadhurst and nine-year-old David Wynne to mount the stage and throw streamers at the audience before we enjoyed two short movies, one of which was “David and Pyewacket” written by the young star’s mother, Diana Wynne, and directed by Donald Wynne, his father. After this delightful film depicting a dreamy childhood world in the New South Wales countryside of 90 years ago, we delved into a lavish supper, then danced like mad to the music of the moment by the Sounds Mobile Discotheque (Walford, 1971).

  Florence looked like a million dollars on the night. She danced until dawn and worked until dusk, when the party started all over again. She appeared as vigorous and healthy as ever. But her health was failing. In 1972, Doctor Henley Harrison, a Macquarie Street specialist, diagnosed Florence with sensory-neural deafness and issued her with hearing aids. Florence concealed her new accessories with strategically styled hair and gaudy gold earrings. Most people were fooled and not many knew she wore them. But, being hard of hearing was only one of Florence’s concerns. She was almost blind from cataracts creeping over her eyes.

  When a friend told Florence about the Peter Stephan Cell Therapy Clinic in London, which claimed to offer an elixir of youth, she was sold. Without blinking an eye she contacted the homeopath in 1973, a year after she started wearing hearing aids. Dr Stephan’s claim was that he could stimulate the regeneration of underdeveloped, diseased and age-damaged organs. He made controversial claims that his brand of therapy improved the tone, texture and elasticity of skin, stabilised weight, firmed sagging breasts and treated sexual dysfunction. According to Dr Stephan his ultimate aim was ‘to give more years to life’ and to ‘make all the organs struck by old age capable once more of functioning properly’.

  Dr Stephan injected new cell material taken from the foetuses, embryos and organs of young and unborn animals into his patients’ organs. Injecting lamb placenta into his patients, he said, would replace dying cells. Dr Stephan’s theories were later dismissed by the General Medical Council as ‘a load of old rhubarb’ (Strassmann, 1994). But Florence booked and paid for an intensive two-week course of cell therapy at a cost of two hundred and fifty pounds, and on 12 July 1974 she met Dr Stephan in London. She stayed at a nearby hotel, undertook her course and returned to Australia feeling like a new woman.

  This was not the first or the last time that she had work done to her body and face. David Miles remembered visiting Florence in hospital in the sixties when she was recovering from cosmetic surgery:

  My wife and I heard she was in hospital to get something done to her neck. We felt sorry for her, so we went and paid her a visit but we had no idea she was getting cosmetic surgery done. We hadn’t really heard of anyone getting it done before, not back then anyway. It was considered taboo. But later, when she had recovered, my employer at the time, Merle du Boulay said, ‘Didn’t you know Florence gets facelifts all the time? I thought everyone knew.’ When I next saw Florence, there was no doubt she looked different, kind of like a scrawny chook with her skin pulled tight.

  Judy Korner, her beautician for twenty years offered this explanation:

  Cosmetic surgery was a new concept in the sixties and seventies. There were only a handful of women getting it done in Sydney at the time, I think Florence was one of them. It was a big decision back then because the process was much cruder than it is today. But Florence looked fantastic, it was all part of her image to look eternally youthful, successful and glamorous. She was like a grand dame from the English theatre.

  Sally Fitzpatrick recalled Florence telling her she’d had three facelifts (other reports suggest that she had five):

  On one of these occasions she and a girlfriend had one done together and then as a reward they went on a holiday on a cruise ship. But while they were out at sea, her girlfriend’s face dropped and she was forced to come home to Sydney. She left Florence to recover in peace.

  In the mid-seventies, Florence also had some surgery done to remove the cataracts from her eyes, but as Sally Fitzpatrick explained the ‘surgeon’ that Florence chose was questionable:

  Florence sent me a number of postcards from the Philippines, where she had gone to see a witch doctor who apparently didn’t use anything but his hands to cure his patients—no drugs, no scalpels or anything. I’ve seen documentaries on these doctors who just reach inside people and pull out the offending organ or whatever. But it is all just a scam. It’s voodoo. Florence wrote to me and said, ‘Darling, guess what? I’ve just had surgery at the witch doctors. It’s a miracle, I can see.’

  But it seems that Florence had talked herself into it. When Sally asked her a few years later how her vision was Florence replied despondently, ‘It’s much better, but not as good as what it was.’ As Sally explained, it upset Florence that she could not see as well as she was once able to. ‘She was a very visual person and it definitely got her down, like her body was betraying her.’

  Regardless, in the winter of her life Florence still looked and felt great. Her figure was svelte, she wore stylish clothes and her cosmetic therapy meant that it was impossible to tell her real age. When she was asked how old she was, she said she was forty-eight and most people believed her.

  •

  At 6 am on 16 October 1977 John Griffith Chamberlain, who had lived next door to Florence’s Paddington studio-factory since the late sixties, peered out his window. He noticed that the front door of the Florence Broadhurst Wallpaper studio was open and that the lights had been left on. John, a widower in his seventies, drove up the hill to the Paddington Police Station, where he spoke to Sergeant Patrick Leembrugen, the officer on duty. The sergeant and his colleague, Constable Russell, drove directly to the factory. They arrived at 10.45 am and noticed nothing unusual on the lower level, so they walked up the narrow staircase to the first floor. Leembrugen noted that a large black handbag was open on the elegant curved desk in the reception, and two beige wallets (that had apparently been taken from the bag) lay on the desk. Beyond the reception, there were two doors, one that led into the main showroom and another that led into the kitchenette. Constable Russell went into the main showroom, while his colleague Leembrugen entered the kitchenette. Leembrugen walked through the kitchen and, before he opened the door to the washroom, which contained a hand basin, a mirror, a chest of drawers, shelves and a paper towel dispenser, he noticed a hearing aid and tea towel on the floor. He pushed the washroom door ajar and noticed that the carpet in the washroom was sodden and there was a red bag on the floor. He then pushed the toilet door open. He was shocked to discover a lifeless Florence wedged between a blood-spattered wall and the toilet.

  The two police officers immediately left the building and radioed for assistance from their car. A short time later, detectives from the homicide squad, which included Detective Sergeant Greer, Detectives Hollis and Hansen, and a government medical officer, Doctor Oettle, arrived at the studio factory.

  At 11.50 am Detective Senior Constable Kerry Riddell from the scientific investigation section arrived to examine Florence’s body, take photographs of the premises and collect evidence. He noted that a small wall safe in the upstairs office (that was normally concealed by one of Florence’s portraits) had been exposed. The portrait was on the floor leaning against a wall. He also noted that the doors of the adjacent steel lockers had been left ajar. At 12.15 am, Senior Constable Schell arrived to conduct a thorough search for fingerprints on the lower and upper levels of the factory. And later that afternoon, the Government Contractor removed Florence’s body and took it to the city morgue, where the following day her body was identified by her ex-husband, Leonard, who gave his address as Perth
, Western Australia, and her son Robert, who gave an address in a suburb of Sydney.

  •

  Theories about Florence’s murder abound, most of them unsubstantiated. Robbery appears to have been a strong motive, but when it was learned in 1992 that one of her employees was married to the half-brother of ‘granny killer’ John Glover, by then behind bars, police had another avenue of enquiry. Mike Hagan, a detective inspector involved in the investigation of the murders of six elderly women and the attempted murder of another on Sydney’s North Shore between March 1989 and March 1990, said that while Glover admitted to those crimes, he never admitted to killing Florence. ‘There are however, similarities,’ noted Hagan, who is now retired from the New South Wales police force.

  Interior designer Barry Little he said recalled Florence telling him that she was involved in a financial deal and ‘they’d taken her money and so she was going to spill the beans’. Peter Leis and John Lang supported this theory.

  As John Lang said, ‘She couldn’t help herself, she couldn’t keep her mouth closed and they [her murderer] wanted to shut her up.’ Robert Lloyd Lewis thought this was unlikely. ‘She discussed every financial transaction with me and nothing like this was ever discussed. I have no knowledge of the financial thing referred to.’

  According to Sally Fitzpatrick, it was doubtless that Florence had her enemies:

  I remember one weekend she went on a harbour cruise that had been organised for a group of A-listers. One of the guests was a man who was a highly prominent and well-respected public figure. He was married and had children, but unbeknownst to his wife, he had turned up on the boat with his lover—another man. During the cruise the two men were all over each other, it was quite obvious they were together. Florence was horrified by his lack of scruples—that he was lying to his wife and lying to society. So, she spent the rest of the week on the phone calling every single society person she knew to ‘out’ this guy. Florence probably ruined his career and his life.

  All the customers that were present on the day that Florence died—including the man in the green shirt, his female companion, the middle-aged Jewish couple and Sue McCarthy—were interviewed and fingerprinted, as were Florence’s staff, her neighbours and members of her family. As Sally Fitzpatrick recalled, ‘A lot of people were questioned and some staff members had the entire contents of their homes emptied into the back yard. For a few months life for these people was hell.’

  •

  Florence Broadhurst’s murder has never been solved, with other rumoured suspects including a young lover (who was also questioned by police before being released), an ex-employee and a business associate. The police file remains open.

  In the aftermath of her death, police offered a $10 000 reward for information on her killer and they still want to know about the whereabouts of two valuable rings that had been stolen from her. The rings were described in the police report as:

  One single-cut diamond ring, cape white coloured stone of 3.4 carats. Brilliant cut, with two baguette diamonds on shoulder. Ring has platinum shank. One ladies dress ring, single emerald, emerald cut, high quality stone, rich in colour with minimal inclusion. Approximately two carats. Emerald surrounded by ten pure white diamonds approximately 10–15 points each. Both emeralds and diamonds all in the one raised setting. Ring has a platinum shank.

  In 1977, these rings were valued at more than $50 000. Leonard claimed in the Australian Women’s Weekly in 1977 that just a month before his ex-wife’s death he had warned her about ‘working in the factory alone’ and told her ‘to be careful about wearing her jewellery’. He then went on to say, ‘I’m grief stricken they have cost her life.’ But we might never know with certainty whether the motivation for her gruesome murder was a robbery or whether it was simply made to look that way.

  •

  A funeral for Florence was held at St Mark’s Anglican Church at Darling Point. The elegant gothic revival building was packed with shocked and devastated mourners. Plainclothes detectives mingled with the congregation as they searched for clues that might lead to her killer. The rector, Reverend J. Whild, gave a touching and pertinent service. When he finished, Leonard took his place at the pulpit and read an abbreviated version of the manifesto that Florence had written when she was a fifteen-year-old Mount Perry schoolgirl. His words echoed the sum of parts of her life cut short by tragedy:

  When Florence turned her back on her Queensland upbringing, it was to forge her own path and live out her own destiny, no matter what the consequences—‘I will be selfish, for ultimately I will gratify and bring happiness to myself’. When the revolution in China resulted in the premature closure of her performing arts academy, Florence abandoned Shanghai without regret and made bigger plans to conquer Europe—‘I will fail and in failing I will try again. I will fall and in falling, climb’. When the early days of her English life came to a bitter end after her divorce from Percy Kann and the closure of the Pellier dress salon, Florence forged ahead and did not ‘blame others for (her) many sorrows and defeats, for man has but himself to blame for failure’. When her second husband had an affair with, and married, his young lover, Florence did not wallow in her misery but once again, she drew on her inner strength and personal resources by launching a new life and career for herself. Australian (Hand Printed) Wallpaper, and later Florence Broadhurst Wallpapers, was the crowning success in a creative and fearless life lived with conviction, focus and self-belief. Despite the unexpected twists and turns of life, Florence always survived—‘I will grasp the goodness and the beauty of life, and throw away the ugliness and bitterness. I will turn my face to the light; yet remember the darkness that lies behind and around me’.

  Florence might have been called many things in her lifetime—such as an overbearing tyrant or a vain eccentric—but she carried with her a strong sense of righteousness and a wonder at the miracle of creation—‘I will thank Him for the glorious beauty of the world at sunset, for the unbearable sweetness of song. For the million, million things which lie in wait for us every hour of the day, to please our sight and fill our eyes with perfection.’

  It was not exactly the kind of funeral that Florence had envisaged for herself. Sally Fitzpatrick claimed that when Florence came to see her in Greece in 1973, her old friend mused:

  She’d had a good life, so she wanted something like an Irish wake for her funeral. She said she wanted three days of madness, with everybody drinking Courvoisier and toasting her. I suggested that everyone could turn up wearing a red wig with false red eyelashes and plexi-glass rings on every finger. Florence loved that idea and we had a good laugh about it over a few cocktails in a bar in Athens.

  On 20 October 1977, five days after her death, Florence was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde. Her memorial, marked ‘128 MG6’, is basic, unadorned and seemingly forgotten even though her plaque reads: ‘In Loving Memory of Florence Maud Broadhurst 28.7.1899—15.10.1977. Always Remembered’. Her ashes lie deep in the heart of an elegantly manicured memorial garden on the edge of Lane Cove National Park.

  In the shadows of ghost-like pine trees, clipped conifers and Morton Bay figs with their tangled understudy of twisted roots Florence’s plaque joins other famous names whose final resting place is at the crematorium, including May Gibbs, Banjo Patterson, Sir Joseph Cook, Sir William McMahon and Michael Hutchence, who lies two feet away from her. The remains of these celebrated Australians are scattered throughout the immaculately landscaped site. And as is always the case at cemeteries or crematoriums, there is a feeling of serenity and the presence of death that dances on your skin. But there is also a feeling of peace.

  Florence being Florence, she would want to have the last word. And just like her friend Sally said, she would not want us to mourn the loss of her life, rather she would want us to rejoice in the joy of her life itself. As Florence herself said:

  Do not leave your flowers upon the graves that be in cemeteries, but rather keep your
money, your time, your moods of generous emotion for handing out bouquets for the living.

  The cluster of huts at Mungy Station, Mount Perry Queensland, where Florence Maud Broadhurst was born on either 28 July or 26 August 1899. Mungy Station sprawled over an impressive 300 000 acres (approx. 122 000 hectares) in its heyday and is still a working cattle station today. It is probable that one of the horsemen in this shot was Florence’s father, Bill Broadhurst, who managed the property for William Sly. A hut still stands in the exact location where Florence was born.

  COURTESY PAT SMITH.

  Florence was only eleven years old in 1910 when she joined the local Children’s Tennis Club in Mount Perry with her sisters May and Priscilla. The three sisters inherited a passion for tennis (and competition) from their father, who was still serving and volleying in his eighties. Mount Perry tennis enthusiasts in this image include (left to right, top to bottom): Burnett Dingle, May Broadhurst, Ruby Renfrey, Ida Dingle, Nellie Paul, Percy Dingle, Florence Broadhurst, Henry Dingle, Priscilla Broadhurst, Ethel Hunter (holding baby Marion) and Tom Prior.

  COURTESY PAT SMITH.

  Florence with her sister Priscilla (Cilla) in Mount Perry, Queensland. This photograph was taken around 1918–20.

  COURTESY PAT SMITH.