Maitland City Council
Maitland Libraries is proud to bring inspiring voices to the area as part of the Look Who’s Talking Program as Sarah Hogan, Carly Findlay, Kurt Fearnley and Belinda Downes appear to share unique stories.
Maitland Libraries is proud to bring inspiring voices to the area as part of the Look Who’s Talking Program as Sarah Hogan, Carly Findlay, Kurt Fearnley and Belinda Downes appear to share unique stories.
Journalist Sandra Hogan will be joined by Sue-Ellen Kusher (nee Doherty) to discuss what it was like to be inducted into the world of spies as a child whose parents worked for the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO).
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Sue-Ellen’s parents were ASIO agents living secretly in the Brisbane suburbs at the height of the Cold War.
Their mission was to locate and track Soviet agents, and they enlisted their 3 young children to help.
Sue-Ellen was taught to memorise numberplates, stake out buildings, and never ever let anyone else know the truth about her family.
During the Melbourne Olympics Sue-Ellen’s family secretly hosted the Petrovs, Australia’s famous Russian defectors… they spent much of their time together in beer gardens at the Gold Coast until Vladimir Petrov nearly gave them all away.
With My Little Eye (with Sandra Hogan) is published by Allen and Unwin
News by Leisa Scott
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Subscriber only Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to believe that tucked away in the perfectly ordinary Brisbane suburb of The Gap, lived a family of spies. Mum, Dad and the three kids. They went on holidays to the Gold Coast with Soviet defectors, the Petrovs. Dad did the books for Abe Saffron, one of Australia s most notorious underworld figures. They d pop into the city looking like an everyday family posing for happy snaps but that was a ruse; they were busy collecting intelligence on could-be Communists. If it s a mission too outlandish, too impossible for you, that s understandable. Even the woman who lived this story finds big chunks of her childhood hard to believe.