So Easy For Wheels To Come Off Publicity Machines

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday September 2, 2006

Ken Haley; Ken Haley, who became a paraplegic in 1991 when he tried to end his life, has visited 109 countries - 52 of these in a wheelchair. His first book, Emails From the Edge, has been published by Transit Lounge.

BEFORE the week is out, I swear this virgin author is going to lose it. Out of a blue sky I descend to the familiar Botany side runway, a dozen copies of my paperback passport in tow - and hope in my heart.

Five years in preparation, this memoir of my journey halfway across the world in a wheelchair has me musing that a clutch of positive newspaper reviews might springboard me to success in Sydney. I'm not without grounds for optimism: an interview with Phillip Adams on Radio National is set up: Alan Jones's producer seems diverted by the prospect of my telling his listeners what Muslims really think of us.

But, while radio is turning on the microphones, TV seems intent on keeping me off camera. Today didn't want me yesterday, but promised to let me know about Thursday tomorrow.

Naturally, now I've arrived in Sydney, a Melbourne newspaper calls for an interview. I cadge office space through the kindness of my hotel manager - a dire necessity given my mobile phone reception has broken up more times than Elizabeth Taylor.

Next visit is to the newspaper that published my adventures as I lived them. I'm astounded to hear the editor I expected to see is absent ... she was hit by a bus the night before. (Is this the Haley curse striking again? The author of the first solid review I received died three weeks after it appeared.)

TV may not want me but radio can't get enough. On Monday I did a phone interview with a Brisbane station - from Melbourne. Later, it's the ABC in the Northern Territory, with presenter Vicki Kerrigan. She wants an hour-long chat - from Sydney. Problem is she doesn't have the book. A call to the distributor solves that: somehow, overnight, I turn 120,000 words into a thoughtful conversation across the continent.

One unpredictable moment comes when Kerrigan introduces me as "an intrepid traveller and writer, Ken Haley, who is here in our Darwin studio". "Thank you for having me, Vicki," I stumble, stopping myself from blurting out: "I'm actually 2000 kilometres away in Ultimo." Instead I say: "It's a pleasure to be with you."

The next night, I ignore local TV's indifference and pitch to Tinseltown. An Australian photographer resident in Los Angeles reckons my adventures could make a miniseries. I fire off a 1500-word outline to show to his contacts. I look back at my recent travel history and chuckle: "You're going to fly before you can walk."

Day three and the TV muse finally deigns to visit: Channel Seven's breakfast program asks if could I come in from 8.15 till 8.20, the day after tomorrow, to talk about the crisis that put me in a wheelchair in 1991. Sure, I reply. My elation is shortlived. Next day there's a call to say, "Bad news ... we have too much serious content already."

Serious? Me serious? They can't be. Bewildered, I ring a friend who puts disappointment in its correct perspective. "So what are you saying? There'll be no Sunrise tomorrow?"

Come the weekend, it's the Melbourne Writers Festival and sharing the stage with my old colleague Garry Linnell. He's kept his word and flown to Melbourne despite having reason to beg off since his recent appointment as the Nine Network's director of news and current affairs. Linnell, who played a key role in the evolution of my book, reminds me it's what people will remember me for after my death. Sobering thought, but also an inspiring one.

Sunday marks the week's low point. I've left my planning diary on the festival podium - the diary with my schedule for the next month in unrepeatable detail. Desperate phone calls have the festival organisation in a tizz until someone finds it in a corner.

But the worst moment occurs in the evening. I am looking forward to the following night for the highlight of my time in Sydney: a Glebe bookshop appearance with Bob Carr. My elderly mum and dad, who haven't been to the Harbour City since Joern Utzon was last here, are attending, but there's a fly in the lotion: mum, spooked by years of exposure to a made-for-TV war on terrorism, says she's not happy about flying these days. They take the train instead.

One of my book's themes, as I ambled through the Middle East after September 11, is that the world is much safer than the scattered eruption of violent episodes littering our newspapers would have us believe. Get out and see it while it's still there, I say, and, go by air if you have to. Hasn't Mum got the message? They've departed aboard the XPT just half an hour when I head to the shops for a pizza and on return find the keys Dad told me open the front door do no such thing: they open the letterbox. Twelve hours before I'm due to fly out to join them, 100 paying guests and an ex-premier of NSW, I'm 1000 kilometres away, on the street, possibly about to miss one of the most unmissable events of my roundabout career. A $100 call-out fee buys the key-cutting services of a locksmith.

Monday night in Glebe goes swimmingly, even if I did get only one hour's sleep the night before. Carr asks me whether I share Franklin Roosevelt's greatest fear as a wheelchair user, of being trapped by fire. Quite the opposite, I think: my greatest fear is freezing - in front of a fee-paying audience.