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<\/p>\nAs a former ad man, he understood decades before anyone else that Bryce Courtney was a brand. \u201cHe got huge amounts of shit over that, but I think it is his greatest legacy,\u201d says Adam with a snide laugh.<\/p>\n
But perhaps Bryce\u2019s greatest fictional creation was himself. Not only was he a master storyteller, he was a master of self-invention. Adam believes Bryce invented himself from the moment he set foot on Australian soil in 1958.<\/p>\n
Sydney was a sunny, open place where you could leave the past behind and become somebody else. And so the myth began; the ascendancy of Bryce Courtenay, the braggadocio, the legend.<\/p>\n
There were the advertising years, in says Adam, the flimflam man; the drinking, smoking, womanising. Adam feared sitting next to his father at dinner parties, \u201cthe more beers, the greater the megalomania.\u201d Then came the Damascene conversion to long-distance running and positive thinking. Pain was gain.<\/p>\n
Adam had a front-row seat: he watched all these incarnations, \u201ccaught between love and admiration for my father, and a gnawing sense that something wasn\u2019t right.\u201d He and his brothers let the Dad facts \u201cthrough to the keeper all the time.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Spending his life in close proximity to a fabulist, Adam became a truth seeker. He became a financial journalist, first in Sydney, then for 15 years in London working for the Financial Times and The Sunday Times. Now an author, his own strictly non-fiction historical books deal with the great characters and stories from early colonial history, the escaped convicts and reprobates, the men who went native, \u201cthe guys that history has often overlooked.\u201d They are a fascinating insight into how it was in the brutal newly formed colony, how we became what we are.<\/p>\n
As Adam got older, there was a \u201cmoral confusion\u201d about his father \u201cmixing bullshit with a marvellously told story\u201d. He was finding it harder to accept the narrative as it flew along. He now realises his sense of self was at stake. \u201cWe all tell porkies all the time. But when it comes to important things I think you have to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
And by the third act of Bryce\u2019s life, fame and wealth. \u201cIt started to wear very thin because it became bullshit about himself and who he was and where he came from,\u201d Adam says. \u201cThat\u2019s a different mode of bullshit. The Dad facts become pertinent and real. It takes on a different dimension.\u201d<\/p>\n
As his father became Australia\u2019s most beloved author, Adam says he had trouble recognising him. His first wife of 38 years, Benita, had been left behind. He was shedding skin. He had a new \u201cfamily\u201d with Christine Gee. \u201cHis new role in life was to be a guru for the people,\u201d says Adam. \u201cThere was almost a priest-like ability \u2026 he ministered to people. He was always there to help. I never doubted his capacity or ability, but I no longer believed in the myth that he was still creating right up to the end.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fiction and fact were becoming blurred. Defending charges of antisemitism for Solomon\u2019s Song, Bryce blithely told The Australian Jewish News that his wife and sons had \u201cfreely chosen to be Jews\u201d. They had not. Adam\u2019s mother Bonita was Jewish but agnostic and called herself Anglican. Adam, a Christian, was \u201cvery, very angry. There was no Jewish religion or culture. It just did my head in because he was saying something about me that didn\u2019t exist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam believes his finest book was April Fool\u2019s Day, about his favoured son Damon, who was a haemophiliac and died of AIDS at 25 after a contaminated blood transfusion. In theory, it was non-fiction, but he caricatured people, played fast and loose with the facts and hurt people who loved Damon, some of whom threatened to sue. \u201cThere was no need for exaggeration,\u201d says Adam. \u201cThere were things that were just wrong. It wasn\u2019t necessary to enhance what happened. The story had enough pathos in itself.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Bryce](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1d8f9eda4fe1f0ce56bd3912165cbff57dccfe0c.jpeg\")
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Bryce Courtenay in his days as an advertising man, in 1992.Credit: Barry Chapman\/Fairfax Media<\/p>\n
Bryce would go on to be an advocate for blood screening and HIV. \u201cHe demystified AIDS to a great degree,\u201d Adam concedes. \u201cAnd that has to be remembered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam does, though, have some fond memories \u201cI remember laughing (at) Dad\u2019s trying to be cool. I found it really sweet,\u201d he says. He was a present and involved father who sent his boys to Cranbrook, and gave them substantial financial help in buying their first homes.<\/p>\n
But Adam would learn though that confronting Bryce was seen as an act of betrayal. \u201cModerating my adoration,\u201d Adam says diplomatically. The blue eyes would turn acidic. It was only years later that he realised \u201cI was being gaslit by a specialist\u201d, he writes in the memoir. Suddenly, Bryce would be the victim. <\/p>\n
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It was Bryce\u2019s sister Rosemary who provided the answers Adam needed: the foundation of his own life had been based on confabulation.<\/p>\n
Bryce\u2019s insatiable need for adulation came from a place of shame. He was not the orphan he told audiences he was, often moving himself to tears. But he was illegitimate. In provincial 1930s and \u201940s South Africa, this made his mother socially unacceptable.<\/p>\n
There was no noble lineage; his father was not a crusading barrister but an alcoholic married clothing salesman, Arthur Ryder. Bryce\u2019s childhood was chaotic. His mother Paddy Greer, who eventually embraced Pentecostal religion and spoke in tongues, was constantly moving, unable to hold down a job.\u201cI think his mother treated him very badly,\u201d Adam says. \u201cAnd I think he was very, very lonely.\u201d The poverty was dire. Bryce spent time in an orphanage at Krugersdorp and was bullied at several schools because he didn\u2019t have a father.<\/p>\n
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Adam learnt that he was not the most gifted scholar ever seen at the King Edward VII school, nor was he ever offered a place at Oxford. \u201cI feel compassion and sadness. There was darkness there and stories and myths may have been to get himself out of depression.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam stops short of calling Bryce a narcissist. \u201cA narcissist is someone who doesn\u2019t care about anybody else. And I want to give Bryce credit for really caring about lots of people, his generosity was incredible. He helped hundreds of people as a mentor,\u201d he says. \u201cI think he was an egotist, not a narcissist.\u201d<\/p>\n
Adam still has great love for his father. \u201cHe wasn\u2019t a Machiavellian guy. He didn\u2019t have a nasty side. Essentially, he was a very, very pleasant, engaging, good guy,\u201d he says. \u201cEven if he used to say things that weren\u2019t true.\u201d<\/p>\n
My Father Bryce (Hachette) by Adam Courtenay is out now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a former ad man, he understood decades before anyone else that Bryce Courtney was a brand. \u201cHe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":47062,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-47061","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-books","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}