Autobiographers tend to be deeply self-interested, to the point where they can spend years of their life writing about themselves, so that everyone can know just how complicated and misunderstood they really are. Lech Blaine’s autobiography, Australian Gospel: A Family Saga, is not that. Technically, it straddles the line between auto and biography, and Lech himself isn’t born until two-thirds of the way into the book. What initially sets this apart from other autobiographies is that it’s not about the person writing it: it’s about two families, diametric opposites and mortal enemies. Their conflict is so vast and complex that it’s no wonder Lech felt compelled to write it down. To be honest, I didn’t read the foreword very closely (or the blurb at all) and I spent the first hundred pages under the impression that it was a novel, because it sounded so far-fetched and detached from what might be considered a ‘normal’ life.
At the Sydney Writers Festival, Blaine spoke about how his childhood existed in a bizarre liminal space between completely normal and absolutely terrifying. For decades, his family was pursued by Michael and Mary Shelley, two fundamentalist Christians who effectively ran a two-person cult. They were infamous for gallivanting around Australia and passing their time with things like attempting to assassinate the Dalai Lama and Pope Benedict, and committing many instances of fraud and tax evasion, not to mention abduction of Blaine’s older sister Hannah.
The Shelleys had had several children, all of whom were taken away from them by Child Protective Services (CPS) and four of whom were adopted by Lech’s parents, Tom and Lenore Blaine. Lech spoke about how, in researching the book, he sought to humanise the Shelleys, especially Michael, who viewed himself as the Messiah. Lech said that during his childhood he had thought of Michael as “Osama Bin Laden” and that reaching out to him was one of the hardest things he had ever done. Michael’s email address, coincidentally, was [email protected], while Mary’s was [email protected].
Lech talked about how his siblings, most of whom were the biological children of the Shelleys, had an aptitude for “idiotic ball sports” that Michael despised, whereas he was the only biological child of the Blaines and was introverted and loved reading and writing. Lech’s childhood in Queensland was full of beer, football, and barbecues. He described sport as his father’s religion, and said that his father was actually quite similar to Shelley because of their mutual fanaticism, albeit for very different things. Lech spoke about how when he met Michael, Michael was delighted to have someone finally talk to him, given he had been in prison for many years,shunned by the Australian public and all of his children. At no point did Michael admit remorse for any of the unhinged, morally bankrupt things he’d done.
One of the striking things about the book, which Blaine touched on during the session, was the feeling that Lech — and the reader by extension — was physically present, able to see and hear exactly what was going on, long before he (and very long before I) was born. Lech spoke about how he had researched it for years, and conducted thousands of hours of interviews, gradually curating his book bit by bit. There is an astonishing amount of colour in the book, and a wit and vigour to it that indicates either Lech’s family is side-splittingly funny or Lech himself is very generous; perhaps a bit of both.
Lech’s family is constructed from scratch, glued together by love and effort, marred by tragedy and trauma, and strengthened by Tom and Lenore’s sheer determination to hold their family together and stay calm no matter what. Tom grew up in Queensland as the youngest of sixteen children, and was dead-set on having a huge brood of kids from the get-go. Lenore was similarly keen to have children. They met at a barbecue in Ipswich while Tom Blaine was still married, and Lenore had recently become separated from her former husband. Lech described how “the sexual revolution had been and gone and everything was fair game”.
However, they ran into problems early on — not with each other, but with their efforts to produce a child. Lenore had miscarriage after miscarriage, having a total of six. She and Tom leapt onto the adoption route pretty early, deciding that they wanted to have kids no matter what. Enter Elijah, the firstborn son of the Shelleys. He had been taken by CPS when he was a couple of years old, as the Shelleys purposely and routinely starved him because, in their view, a so-called healthy baby was ‘fat’ and a starving, thin baby was ‘clean’. The Blaines immediately nursed Elijah back to health, and developed a strong bond with him. Over the years, CPS gave several Shelley children to the Blaines in order to keep the biological siblings together, and also because they understood the benefits of raising children who had been born into such a precarious situation in the Blaine’s stable and loving family.
Lech talked about his dislike of Queensland and the allure of Sydney (can confirm, we are the best), where he eventually moved to. He explained how the spectre of Michael Shelley loomed large in his imagination, igniting his curiosity to be in the same streets and suburbs as the person who had haunted his family for decades before his birth. The process of writing was emotionally cathartic for him, allowing him to process all of the trauma that he and his family had endured.
It seemed like Lech had been working towards Australian Gospel for most of his life; to be born as a talented writer in the grips of such a dramatic story, it would be only natural to write it. Lech said that his family was never surprised by his writing the book. In response to the moderator’s question about whether any of his family were offended by the content, he recounted how one of his brothers, Stephen, admitted that he would never read the book because he hated reading. However, Stephen eventually did pick it up and became engrossed in the book, calling Lech to complain about the omission of an embarrassing story where he had driven blind drunk on a roundabout and crashed a car; despite it being embarrassing, Stephen thought it was important for the public to know what he had gotten up to in his youth. It is this kind of effortless humour and blase drama that characterises Australian Gospel, and makes it one of the most brilliant stories to grace Australian shelves.
Lech Blaine spoke at the Sydney Writers Festival on Friday 23rd May at Carriageworks.
