The last time I saw Gabrielle Carey, who died this week, aged 64, was a couple of weeks ago in Sydney. I’d texted that I was coming to Sydney for the weekend, and she texted back to say she was meeting “a couple of Joyceans” for a morning walk in Lavender Bay and would I like to join them?
“Joyceans” was an important code-word for Gabrielle. She is still best known as the coauthor, with Kathy Lette, of Puberty Blues (1979), a book she wrote as a teenager. The novel, a gritty account of the brutally sexist surf culture of Sydney’s southern beaches, was a smash hit, as was the film adaptation directed by Bruce Beresford two years later. For Gabrielle, it was an early fame she would never entirely succeed in escaping.
