Ken Haley is one of Australia’s most widely travelled authors. To date, he has visited 143 countries at length. He became a paraplegic in 1991, but as far as Ken is concerned the only difference this has made is that he now observes the world from a sitting position. A Walkley Award-winning journalist, Ken has worked on the foreign desk of The Times, Sunday Times and Observer in London, at the Gulf Daily News in Bahrain and on the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong. Ken has also worked at Melbourne’s The Age and as a newspaper sub-editor in Athens, Johannesburg and Windhoek, Namibia and as a university tutor and freelance editor. His previous books are Emails from the Edge: A Journey Through Troubled Times and Europe @ 2.4km/h, and his latest book is The One That Got Away: Travelling in the Time of Covid. He lives in Melbourne, Australia.
Today, Ken Haley is on the blog to take on our Ten Terrifying Questions! Read on …
Ken Haley
1. To begin with, why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself – where were you born? Raised? Schooled?
I was born in Fawkner St., St Kilda, in the hallway at No. 39. Dad was at work and Mum couldn’t get the taxi in time. At least that’s what she told me – and she was there! We moved to East Bentleigh, in Melbourne’s middle suburbs, when I was two, and schooled locally – at Coatesville Primary, then at Bentleigh High.
2. What did you want to be when you were twelve, eighteen and thirty? And why?
At twelve: a journalist. At eighteen: a teacher. At thirty: retired (so I did).
3. What strongly held belief did you have at eighteen that you don’t have now?
That over time most people would be intelligent enough to see what was in their own best interests.
4. What are three works of art – this could be a book, painting, piece of music, film, etc – that influenced your development as a writer?
The Final Days (Bob Woodward & Carl Bernstein); Cinema Paradiso; A Day in the Life (The Beatles).
5. Considering the many artistic forms out there, what appeals to you about writing non-fiction?
It combines the craft of observation with the challenge of exact description and the art of marshalling a vast array of thoughts into a coherent and satisfying narrative.
‘What has fetched up on the far shore of my wanderings is, if I’m not mistaken, a chronicle of our times that will contain enough surprises for most people that they will put my book down – after finishing it, hopefully – and be able to say to themselves, ‘Oh, so that’s what it would have been like to get away!’’
6. Please tell us about your latest book!
When I left Australia in February 2020 to become the latest in a 500-year line of Caribbean explorers, I didn’t expect to become a first-hand witness to what happens when international travel stops in its tracks for the first time in 80 years and you just keep going. My account of visiting nine countries, from Cuba to Grenada, with a three-month layover in Trumpian America, was unexpectedly rich in incident, personal encounters – at a safe distance – and lessons for the unwary and very wary alike. What has fetched up on the far shore of my wanderings is, if I’m not mistaken, a chronicle of our times that will contain enough surprises for most people that they will put my book down – after finishing it, hopefully – and be able to say to themselves, ‘Oh, so that’s what it would have been like to get away!’
7. What do you hope people take away with them after reading your work?
A sense that, even though these are times that try our souls, many happinesses are still possible.
8. Who do you most admire in the writing world and why?
Dostoyevsky, because coming within a whisker of execution at 27 could have crushed or released his spirit – and our loss had it been the former would have been prodigious.
9. Many artists set themselves very ambitious goals. What are yours?
To win the Nobel Prize in Literature before I write my greatest work.
10. Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?
Write when you feel inspired; read when you want to be.
Thank you for playing!
—The One That Got Away: Travelling in the Time of Covid by Ken Haley (Transit Lounge) is out now.
The One That Got Away
Travelling in the Time of Covid
In 2020, Australian author Ken Haley mapped out an enticing menu of travel destinations, comprising the Caribbean island states for main course, with Central America for dessert.
Main course soon turned into obstacle course. Cuba was a breeze, but then the world went into Covid lockdown mode and he had to decide whether to push on. As a pioneer wheelchair traveller, Haley knew exactly what to do. He took the brakes off...
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