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For ten years she was chair of the Becher Foundation, which supported indigenous programs, refugees and asylum seekers, women in the developing world, Jewish community projects, and rural and regional communities.
A few years ago she suffered a stroke, which impaired her ability to speak, write and spell. She has fought the disability, determined to keep writing. Rupture is her first book since then.
Susan is a keen collector of Aboriginal art, loves 1930s china and, of course, reading. She and her partner Anne spent much of the year in the NSW Southern Highlands and some months in sunny Brunswick Heads. She has recently brought out a new book, which will mix both poetry and prose. In December 2021 her beloved partner Anne died after contracting an incurable sarcoma.
©Susan Varga 2023
contact: info@susanvargawriter.com
Broometime
By Susan Varga and Anne Coombs
Hodder Headline, 2001
Susan Varga and Anne Coombs went to Broome on a hunch. What they found was a town unlike any other. Laid back but bursting with energy, isolated yet deeply implicated in the currents of contemporary Australian life. Above all, a place with an insouciant disregard for how things are done elsewhere. Frontier town, country town, tourist town. Aboriginal town. Which is the real Broome? A tiny place full of extraordinary characters.
Part journal, part documentary, Broometime tells the story of a journey both physical and emotional. Join the journey.
‘A lot of people run away to Broome. It is the perfect place to run to. So far away, so remote, so of itself and nowhere else. Many come here because they don’t fit anywhere else. This place is very tolerant of strangeness. But you can change your life here. That is Broome’s promise.’
Reviews
‘Broome is an absolutely different Australia . . .That’s what comes off the page in this modest, almost slatternly piece of writing, which nevertheless has the compulsion of a heat wave in the way it evokes a deeply different world in which races and culture ooze into each other in the sun and sensuality.
The charm of the book is the frankness of the talk the authors elicited and the deep enchantment and strangeness of the world they encounter which clings to this story like a sweaty shirt. Let’s hope it gets a re-run.’
Peter Craven, The Australian
‘Broometime ends on a note of poignant nostalgia, leaving the reader with similar emotions. Lovely writing, being accepted, and at the same time knowing they will have to go, and come back, and go again.
The authors are perceptive, analytical, honest about their multitude of characters and events. Everything is normal but somehow never ‘normal’. And after a while, you forget that the book has two authors. Have nine months in Broome subtly altered their individual identities? The great thing about this book is that is is abundantly generous.’
Sasha Soldatow, Australian Book Review
‘Broometime reads like a passionate, wondering sometimes cheeky, sometimes angry, unfailingly generous account of living in an extraordinary town.It contains some of the least patronising discussion of Aboriginality I have ever read.’
Robert Dessaix
©Susan Varga 2023
contact: info@susanvargawriter.com