Peter Goers

I have a fear of moving balls coming towards me, Richard.

Contrary to popular belief...

Probably hungover.

And the phone, this was the time, you know, I was 25, when we could all sleep till the crack of noon, Richard.

Nowadays, you know, I'm up three times before dawn.

But anyway, the phone kept ringing incessantly at 11 o'clock in the morning and eventually I answered it somewhat disgruntledly.

looking for the creaming soda and the mercindol and the black coffee to help with one's hangover.

And it was my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, whom I revered, Ellie, saying, there's been an aeroplane crash in America and it corresponds with your parents' itinerant.

That moment, I think I knew they were dead.

And, of course, then you go into denial and I immediately tried to reassure her.

She was an 85-year-old lady.

Oh, for heaven's sake, Nana, you know, there's thousands of planes coming and going in America.

You know, they may not have even come round.

She said, I went round.

and then began the next five hours of, you know, I would call Pan Am in Sydney, Pan Am in Melbourne, Pan Am in New York.

Yes, they'd left their hotel room in New Orleans.

No, they hadn't arrived in their hotel room in Las Vegas, et cetera.

The Pan Am people would say, take all my details assiduously, tell me nothing, and it was a question of waiting.

And was this in the news, this story?

Yes, and we were hearing it on the ABC and I think even on the television, but they wouldn't give a flight number for some reason.