Chapter 1: How did Peter Goers lose both of his parents?
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Right at the start of Peter Gers' memoir, there's that famous funny line that was written by Oscar Wilde. It's that line from The Importance of Being Earnest, where one of the characters is explaining that he has lost both his parents. And Lady Bracknell quips, to lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune. To lose two looks like carelessness.
Well, it always gets a laugh on the night, but it is a line that skirts around the reality of what it must be like to suffer the sudden death of both parents at the same time. And in Peter Gers' case, to lose them in a Pan Am air crash outside of New Orleans in the United States. At the time, Peter Gers was 25 years old. lived with or very close by his mum and dad all his life.
And suddenly Peter was required to drop everything, to fly to America on a request to identify their bodies.
Chapter 2: What was Peter's initial reaction to the tragic news?
Today, four decades later, Peter is one of Adelaide's most well-loved figures. He's been a theatre director, an author, a reviewer for the Adelaide Advertiser, and he's been the presenter of ABC Adelaide's Evenings Programme for many years. And it's taken him all this time to understand and truly come to terms with that strange and terrible moment way back in 1982 when the sky fell in.
Peter's beautifully written memoir of that time is called In the Air of an Afternoon Almost Past. Hello, Peter. Hello, Richard. Now, you launched this book in the old childhood home in Woodville. Was that still in the family at the time?
No, no. It's, I think, had several owners and... The current owners, Mike and Sue O'Kelly, he's a Vietnam veteran, live there with two daughters and two granddaughters. And yet it's not a big house. It's just an ordinary L-shaped suburban house in Woodville.
I had a contact, a neighbour we've remained friends with who's still there, and she put me in contact with these people and I went to visit them and said... I had actually returned to the house years before, 20 years before. A listener rang my show one night and said, I think I'm living in a house you once lived in. I said, how did you know? She said, your library stamp is on a wardrobe door.
LAUGHTER And so I had the rare experience of going back to a house that you've grown up in, which is extraordinary. You always think it's so much smaller than you remember because you were small and everywhere you look there are memories. There's a sort of palimpest of memories in a house that you've once lived in. What pictures do you have in your head of that house, Peter?
Jarrah floors that have been a wedding present from rallies in Western Australia. Wow. The memory I have is love. You know, my sister and I were raised with love, which is the greatest gift a person can ever have, Richard. It was a place of love, laughter and occasional tears, and it was a place of some struggle, of course, but it was a place of... comfort and reassurance.
Woodville was a classic Adelaide working-class suburb between the city and the port. And this was the age when Adelaide still had those old institutions like Amscol Ice Cream, Woody's Drinks, Balfour's Pastries, John Martin's Department Store.
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Chapter 3: What challenges did Peter face when identifying his parents' bodies?
That was all part of the wallpaper of your childhood?
And indeed, our house and my grandparents' house in the next street abutted what became the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. And that had been... People look at me very strangely when I say this, but it's absolutely true. It had been an estate originally with wheat farms and had become much smaller and a kind of market garden owned by a family called Connor.
and they owned this property which became the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. We had the launch of this book in the family home.
The current owners very kindly acceded to that request and I went down and said, look, by the way, the governor of South Australia, Frances Adamson, is coming to launch the book and, you know, Willsie with her 19 Logies will emcee it and, you know, there'll be about 100 people. But don't go to any trouble.
LAUGHTER
And it was an extraordinary launch of this book. I think, you know, stories are most powerful. And I read that Aboriginal Elder said that recently. Stories are most powerful in the place they've come from. And this story had come from this house, so it was good that it sort of went back there. And the revival of this story should start there where it had all begun.
So then we come to your parents that created this house of love for you and your sister. Your dad, Brian Desmond Gers. He sounds like quite an energetic man. Tell me how he made a living over the years. years, Peter?
Well, he began, his own father, who was Barossa German, had worked 47 years on the assembly line at GMH Holdens at Woodville. See, we lived by the Holdens whistle. We knew, you know, start time, knock-off time, lunch time, all of that. And my father started work on the assembly line at Phillips at Hendon, making transistors and so forth.
And then he branched out for a while and was a commercial traveller for Bosch selling automotive parts. And then he bought a service station at Seacliff, which failed. But this was the period of when men were hobbyists. You know, you wanted a shed, you built it yourself, which you built the shed before they built the house, that sort of thing. And he had a lot of hobbies.
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Chapter 4: How did Peter cope with grief in the years following the tragedy?
One of his hobbies became taking Super 8 film and he made all these Super 8 films. It started with home movies and then he'd do narrative films and he joined a club and, you know, they became bigger and better. And then he turned that into a job. He would shoot Super 8 films of people's weddings and
So he'd do two weddings a weekend and this became quite lucrative for him and from that he, when it looked as if Super 8 was coming to an end and video was coming in, this is late 70s, early 80s, he started as a stills photographer and became quite successful in that role, again doing weddings, portraits, passport photos, that sort of thing. That's why my parents were in America.
They were en route to a photographic convention in Las Vegas. What was he like as a dad with you, Peter? Well, he was either on or off, my father. He had, you know, his mother was from Perth and everyone from Perth is perverse, in my opinion. And... His mother, my grandmother, was the most perverse person I ever knew.
How so? How so?
In every way, you know, the perversity. And he was somewhat perverse. He could be a clown, my father, but he could also be very doer. He was either on or off. And he was, of course, in the manner of men of that period, unaffectionate. You know, never hugged me or indeed seemed to value me at all. You know, whatever I did was not good enough.
I knew he loved me, but whatever I did was not good enough. And I was lazy and indolent and so forth, even though, you know, I think I had six jobs before I left school, delivering newspapers, selling newspapers, et cetera, working at John Martin's as a shop assistant. And still he'd say, you couldn't work in an iron line. You know, that sort of thing.
And then at the memorial service for my parents, his friends would come up to me and they'd say, do you know, every time we saw your father, all he could talk about was you. and how proud he was of you. And I was glad to hear that, but I was also affronted, really, Richard, because I thought, why didn't he tell me? So that's the perversity right there. That's the perversity.
But it was very common with men, particularly of that generation. But he was still loving in his own way and appreciative, I think. How about your mum, Margaret Leonore Dunstan? I adored my mother. She was a good woman. She was a strong woman. She was... There again, it's generationally sad that she was an intelligent woman...
raised by a countrywoman, a housewife, and her father was a First World War digger who was a clerk at Elders. You can't get more South Australian than that, to be a clerk at Elders. And she was at Woodville High. She was intelligent enough to go to university. But, of course, in that period, unless you won a Commonwealth scholarship, and they were very hard to get...
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Chapter 5: What insights does Peter share about his father and mother?
How old were you, Peter, when the theatrical instinct gripped you and never let you go? LAUGHTER
I was in year five, grade five at Woodville Primary and I had this wonderful teacher called Mr Martin who stood in front of the class for the entire year drinking Coca-Cola and smoking Benson and Hedges cigarettes.
Naturally he became a great role model and for some reason, since I'd never been to the theatre because we were not in any way a theatrical or artistic family, you know, I'd never been to the theatre but for some reason I just decided that I would perform The trial scene from Toad of Toad Hall, Wind in the Willows, my mother typed it out and ran it off on a Gestetner.
I played the main role, the judge, which is a good part, and also directed it with other members of the Grade 5 class in front of Mr Martin's class and parents and friends. And so, you know, for one brief shining moment, I was the Orson Welles of grade five at Woodville Primary.
Then I had a wonderful teacher, Mick Rivers, who was a Broken Hill man and a South Adelaide footballer who had the sense. not to exhort me onto the football field in which I would have been hopeless, but he said, you're an actor and he put me in a little play and thus, you know, my life turned on that. You see, I was a disappointment to my parents because they were both sporty.
They'd both played different sports for the state and along I come completely hopeless at every kind of sport. I have a fear of moving balls coming towards me, Richard. Contrary to popular belief...
So from there, you went on to study drama at Flinders University. Your dad's business was thriving and he moved to a new house, still around the corner from where you were. You were living around the corner as well. And that brings us to the 10th of July, 1982. Now, what state were you in that morning before you got the phone call, Peter?
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.
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Chapter 6: How did Peter's life change after the plane crash?
So she was, I think, expectant. She sort of keened and cried a lot. It was easier for her, I think, because she had a very strong faith. Faith is important, I think, in these. It can be important in grief. My other grandmother was, from birth, was known as a caliphumpian, an agnostic, and it was much, much harder for her.
She really never recovered, and I think it exacerbated her dementia and agoraphobia and so forth.
So that morning you'd woken up with a hangover and then sometime late that afternoon you'd been told your parents had died, confirmed your parents had died in this plane crash and suddenly... You had to be put on a plane to go to New Orleans, the place where your parents had died. Did you even have a passport in those days?
No, I didn't. I didn't. Somebody, a friend of my father, came round to our house where there was a studio and took a passport photograph. I then had friends at my own house in the next street come around. They couldn't get through my head. And I was in this sort of fog. ..of grief, naturally. And, you know, I was drinking brandy but couldn't get drunk.
Somebody had given me a Valium, the first time I'd ever taken a Valium, so that was sort of adding to the fog, I suppose. It couldn't get into my head that I was going to... I was leaving a very cold Adelaide winter and going to New Orleans, which would be very hot and humid in the height of summer.
I think in these moments... I think you answer... People often answer into the world of magical thinking. Yes. I'm trying to put myself in your shoes, which I don't think is entirely possible, Peter, but nonetheless, I think if I'd been told all this and seen it on the news, part of me... There might have been part of me thinking, this is all fictional. Can this even really be true?
I haven't seen anything here. I haven't seen my parents die. Was part of you thinking that this couldn't possibly have happened? And it was also strange to lose your parents from Adelaide in a plane crash in New Orleans. It must have struck you as bizarre and maybe even fictional? Yes, indeed.
And you don't... I mean, you go years and you think... Maybe it was all a mistake. You see someone who looks like them and that's happened a number of times to me, that sense of disbelief. But it's, yes, you're numb. You're just walking through motions here.
You write that you went to your parents' house where you met your sister, who was, of course, terribly distressed and upset. But you write that the house was now utterly changed. Your parents' house was utterly changed.
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Chapter 7: What was the impact of the plane crash on Peter's family dynamics?
Perhaps that I told them to go to New Orleans. You know, because they'd been to New York first and it was my love of Tennessee Williams and, you know, that whole metier that I said, I think I said, you know, go there. That's one regret that you have and some sense of guilt.
Had you been able to say goodbye to them before they left?
No, that was a regret. I didn't even know they'd gone. And it was some days I think I spoke to my sister and she said, oh, you know, you realise they've gone overseas. I knew they were going but I had no idea that they had gone and they lived in the next street. So I never said goodbye. And I never said thank you. I never said thank you for all you've given me. Thank you for all this love.
Thank you for all this opportunity of my life. And goodbye. So the book is essentially a delayed, a much delayed, a long goodbye, I suppose. of knowing what was going to happen. Why are you feeling guilty? Well, you always feel guilt, don't you, with death. I should have done this. I should have said that. Why didn't I, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot.
I've had more guilt from other deaths, I think, than this because, you know, what could I have done?
So now you had to quickly pack that night to go to America by plane, which is, I wonder if the irony of that struck you at the time and whether that frightened you.
Terrified. I mean, imagine you've just lost two parents at the height of their lives in a plane crash. So now you have to get on a plane or many planes and fly all around the world. And it was terrifying. And, you know, a friend of my father's who was an executor of this state met me at the airport where I had to make a will.
Friends had taken me there, went round to the two news agents at the Adelaide airport and turned over all the Sunday mail. The copies of the Sunday Mow, because my parents' picture was on the front page, which I never saw at that point. And then you get on a plane and only... It was years later, writing this book, that I finally realised that, you know, they block off rows...
because naturally, because, you know, you're flying from Adelaide to Melbourne, you don't want to sit with someone who's just grieving and just lost two people in a plane crash. And the hosties, as we called them then, were marvellous. They put on, I think, a special senior hostie who just sat with me the entire flight and that happened pretty well all the way to America.
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Chapter 8: What lessons did Peter learn about grief and memory?
As all this was happening... Were you getting a growing sense of the wider catastrophe too? Because, of course, it wasn't just your parents killed in that crash.
Yes. You can't... All you can focus on is your loss, your immediate loss of the two people you love. You're not so aware of the wider catastrophe. You know, I felt that later, of course. But, I mean, that sounds selfish, but... You know, there's only so much loss you can bear at any given moment. Naturally, you're most concerned for your own loss, I suppose.
After you arrived in New Orleans, after a terrifying flight through a thunderstorm, they check you into a hotel. Who else was in that hotel? Were there other rellos of the plane crash victims in that hotel with you?
Lots. It was the Sheraton Airport Hotel, so we could... It was only a couple of kilometres from the crash site. So there, yes, in the hotel and immediately I'm summoned to meet lawyers and this began the process of dealing with corporate America.
Yeah, tell me about walking into that room, what you saw when they summoned you to that room.
A couch, a couple of lawyers, a coffee table. There was no corporate apology but sort of regret. And I was told immediately that I was not to leave the hotel under any circumstances. I was not to talk to anybody who wasn't a Pan Am official in the hotel. Why? I said, because they said lawyers, ambulance-chasing lawyers are coming from all over America and they want your business.
Who were they to be giving orders like that to you at that time, Peter? Did that thought occur to you as well, that who are these people to be giving me orders? Yes, it did.
And, yes, I wanted to talk to other grieving families, some of whom I'd seen in the corridors, and that was disallowed. And the next thing they told me, they presented me with a piece of paper and said that if I signed this, they would give me $10,000 American dollars and I could return home. Immediately. And I said, well, A, I'm not signing anything.
I'd had that legal advice before I left Australia. Just don't sign anything. And secondly, I said, I'm here. You've called me here to identify the bodies. How do I do that and when? And they said, no, that's impossible. There's no personal identification. It's all forensic. We've brought you here to settle. And I said, well, that's pointless. I'm not signing anything.
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