SMOKE AND MIRRORS: Stuart Rattle and Michael O’Neill: A Tragedy of Love and Murder by Robin Bowles

Robin Bowles began writing in 1997 after reading a story in the Sunday Age about a new investigation into the twelve-year-old mystery of the death of a young Victorian woman, Jennifer Tanner.

The book that resulted, Blind Justice, became an instant bestseller.

Since then she has written ten more books, including the Davitt Award–winning Dead Centre, which focused on the Peter Falconio mystery. She lives in Melbourne with her husband Clive and her Griffon Bruxellois dog, Miss Deva.

Other books by Robin Bowles Blind Justice (1998) Justice Denied (1999) No Justice (2000) Taken in Contempt (2001) What Happened to Freeda Hayes (2002) Dead Centre (2005) Winner of the Davitt Award The Curse of the Golden Yo-Yo (2007) Rough Justice (2007) The Mystery of the Missing Masterpiece (2008) Blood Brother (2010)

Echo Publishing 12 Northumberland Street, South Melbourne Victoria 3205 Australia echopublishing.com.au Part of the Bonnier Publishing Group www.bonnierpublishing.com Copyright © FUN & KY Pty Ltd, 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

First published 2015 Page design and typesetting by Shaun Jury Cover image courtesy Robert Doble Extracts and quotes reproduced from court transcripts with kind permission Supreme Court of Victoria Printed in Australia by Griffin Press Only wood grown from sustainable regrowth forests is used in the manufacture of paper found in this book.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Creator: Bowles, Robin, author.

Title: Smoke and mirrors : Stuart Rattle and Michael O'Neill – tragedy of love and murder / Robin Bowles.

ISBN: 9781760061869 (paperback) ISBN: 9781760069872 (epub) ISBN: 9781760069889 (mobi) Subjects: Rattle, Stuart, 1961–2014.

Homicide investigation–Victoria–South Yarra.

Interior design–Australia.

Murder–Victoria–South Yarra.

Dewey Number: 364.152099451 Twitter/Instagram: @echo_publishing Facebook: echopublishingAU

Dedicated to my friend and editor, Jenny Lee – my esteemed writing partner

Darling, it’s all about smoke and mirrors. — Stuart Rattle

Contents Author’s Note

ix

Prelude

1

PART ONE

7

CHAPTER 1

The Ideal Couple

CHAPTER 2

The Old Schoolhouse

27

CHAPTER 3

The Dolce Vita

49

CHAPTER 4

The Unravelling

65

PART TWO

9

85

CHAPTER 5

The Fire

87

CHAPTER 6

The Aftermath

95

CHAPTER 7

The Investigation

107

CHAPTER 8

The Trail of Deceit

113

CHAPTER 9

The Interview

123

CHAPTER 10

The Right to Remain Silent

131

CHAPTER 11

The Confession

141

CHAPTER 12

The Murder Charge

151

CHAPTER 13

The Send-Off

159

PART THREE

165

CHAPTER 14

The Will

167

CHAPTER 15

The ‘Folly de Grandeur’

175

CHAPTER 16

The Committal

183

CHAPTER 17

The Plea Hearing

189

CHAPTER 18

The Case for Mitigation

201

CHAPTER 19

The Psychologist’s Report

207

CHAPTER 20

The Summing Up

219

CHAPTER 21

The Quality of Mercy

229

CHAPTER 22

The End of an Epoch

243

POSTSCRIPT

The Appeal

253

Appendix

257

Acknowledgements

259

Author’s Note

T

he literature on Stuart Rattle, celebrated interior designer and creator of one of Australia’s most remarkable gardens, is voluminous and readily available. There he is in hundreds of photos, in his de rigueur smart casual outfits, smiling broadly, looking relaxed and comfortable. This was the image he had crafted carefully over the years. The real Stuart Rattle, however, remains elusive. He is often scrutinised, but seldom understood. His partner and lover, Michael O’Neill, became Stuart’s shadow – unsung, rarely photographed and almost unrecognised.

Fortunately, this book is not a biography, nor is it a real-life whodunit. Rather, it’s an attempt to tell the story of an unlikely relationship, which synergised into the product Stuart created, ‘Stuart Rattle Interior Design’. This story of love and aspiration played an important role in the evolution of high-end interior design in this country. But this book is less about design than about a dependent relationship between two passionate men who, by a stroke of fate, had personalities that fitted so closely that in some ways they morphed into one – a fusion that ended with a perfect storm, a passionate explosion in which one killed the other, perhaps attempting to avert the complete disappearance of his own persona.

When I started this book, I was concerned that much of my resource material would consist of the retrospective opinions of third parties, some of whom may have been close to the couple, but many of whom could well have changed their views of the relationship in hindsight. Protagonists in this story have at times ix

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

offered theories, conspiratorial and otherwise, along with their personal accounts of their relationships with Stuart and Michael. I may not have always agreed with their views, but I have found their contributions valuable, and I thank them.

My biggest problem initially was being barred by the Justice Department from visiting Michael O’Neill, although he had put me on his visitor list, indicating he wanted to see me. Only he had first-hand knowledge of the story and could confirm or refute the information I was gathering from other sources. The second big problem was that although many members of Stuart and Michael’s circle had spoken freely to the media in the early days, they seemed to have closed ranks and retreated into an impregnable silence, despite being offered confidentiality and the opportunity to contribute to Stuart’s legacy in a personal way. Others agreed to contribute, provided they were only identified by pseudonyms. These are shown with an asterisk when they first occur.

Many aspects of this story are still matters of contention, and much of the discussion since the murder derives from emotion, memory or speculation, without documentary support. I found it necessary to turn to court transcripts, other Supreme Court records, company searches, land titles records, probate and inheritance law to provide a factual background to the conflicting viewpoints and divergent recollections with which I was presented in the many interviews I conducted.

Then, when I was still struggling to put meat on the bones of the real Stuart Rattle, a little miracle happened. I received a phone call from a person intimately connected to the relationship between Stuart and Michael. This person did not agree with my project or wish to be involved, but agreed to talk to me in the interests of accuracy. Since then, we have had numerous frank and at times painful conversations, which I hope have enabled me to present this story unadorned by propaganda or fantasy.

So what really happened? A degree of mystery will always x

AUTHOR’S NOTE

surround the motive for the murder of Stuart Rattle. There are particular challenges for a narrative non-fiction writer writing about events one was not party to. I have had to use my judgement and experience to assess the reliability of various sources and decide which parts of the many stories related to me seems closest to being authentic. This was a difficult task, as Stuart had created a counterfeit public image that many accepted as being the real Stuart.

Some will disagree with the choices I have made. Smoke and Mirrors is a love story and a tragedy, as well as being the story of an almost surreal murder. It isn’t a story with unambiguous ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’, though many have sought to portray it that way. The version I offer here is as close to the truth as I can make it, and I hope it does something to explain the baffling sequence of events that attended Stuart Rattle’s death.

Robin Bowles Melbourne May 2015 www.robinbowles.com.au

xi

Prelude

M

y first visit to see Michael O’Neill in the Melbourne Metropolitan Remand Centre wasn’t auspicious.

I’d been corresponding with Michael for some months, and he’d requested a visit. Visiting a prisoner isn’t like dropping in to see someone in hospital. Before approval is granted, there’s a rigmarole of red tape to untangle, details about the visitor, requests formalised by the prisoner. It can take weeks, and it had, but at last I was there.

It was my first visit to this particular prison, but the general requirements are the same for all. No cap, hat, sunglasses, scarf or gloves. Empty pockets, unrevealing clothing, no jewellery (always a problem for me) and sensible shoes (also potentially a problem).

I’d come prepared.

The Remand Centre is quite a long way west of Melbourne, set on a treeless plain. Anyone running from the walls would stand out worse than a doggie’s whatsits. You could spot them from a passing satellite.

A high, cantilevered roof soars above the glass-fronted entrance foyer. The walls and floors are painted and tiled in soothing pale blues and creams. No pink. On that first visit, I’d recently read a book, Drunk Tank Pink, about the calming effect of pink in prisons, but the designers at Metropolitan Remand obviously hadn’t. The centre was completed in 2005, but the reception area could have been any recent vintage and showed little sign of ageing.

At a bar-like bench in the foyer stood two security guards, who seemed to be employed full-time to watch people passing by. I 1

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

walked past them to the reception desk, which was manned by a big, friendly police officer and his mate.

‘Robin Bowles for Michael O’Neill. I have a 9.15 visit booked,’ I told him, producing my 100-point ID. Long pause, peering at computer. Low-voiced conference with mate. Further peering at computer screen.

‘Sorry, Robin, I just need to check something. Are you sure you’re on his visitor list?’

‘I am.’ I dug into my bag and retrieved Michael’s letter inviting me to visit on this very day at this time. ‘I had a phone message as well – from the prison, I believe – confirming this visit,’ I told him.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Not sure,’ he said. ‘I’m going to check with someone. Take a seat.’

I sat behind the security guys, watching people come and go.

Dark-suited lawyers with black briefcases, name-tagged social workers in jeans and sneakers, prison staff with transparent plastic briefcases, visitors with mullets, tatts and kids.

What could be wrong? I was feeling apprehensive without knowing why. No sign of Friendly Cop. A big, shaven-headed young man walked in. His singlet, shorts and thongs barely covered his gallery of tattoos. He’ll never get in dressed like that, I thought. But his conversation with the remaining cop at the front desk soon made it obvious that he wasn’t planning to go in – he’d just got out.

‘Couldn’t pick up all my stuff when I left yesterday,’ he said.

‘Wasn’t ready. I was told to come back today and get it from Property.’

He was directed through a big glass door into another area, which looked a bit like a hospital emergency waiting room. Wherever possible, prisons have glass inner walls to allow full view of the whole space. In there, rows of chairs were bolted to each other and to the floor, and I could see a lone woman in a cubbyhole on the far wall, accepting or handing over approved items as people waiting in the area approached her in turn.

2

PRELUDE

Finally, Friendly Cop came back.

‘Sorry, love, I tried to get you in, but they’ve taken you off his list. There needs to be some more work done by the administration section.’

I forgave him for calling me ‘love’, since he’d tried to help. ‘But why?’ I asked. I was thinking of an unpaid speeding fine. Had it progressed to a warrant? Could that count as a black mark for a prospective visitor?

‘I’m not sure. I can give you a pen and paper if you’d like to write him a note – tell him you came, sort of thing. I’ll put it in his mailbox.’

He was a nice man and it wasn’t his fault, but I was pissed off.

Nearly an hour’s drive and Michael expecting me and no reason given. No point in being ungracious, though. I accepted his offer and wrote a page to Michael. Then I asked if I could at least leave the interior design magazines and three books I’d brought.

‘Mmm, technically, no,’ he mused, ‘as you are not an approved visitor.’ Seeing my disappointment, he said that just this once he’d fix it up.

‘Go into the property waiting area, and I’ll OK it with the property officer.’

I saw him take a sticky note around the back way as I headed for the glass-walled waiting area. I noticed an empty seat next to the young former inmate, so I plonked down beside him.

‘Just out, I heard you say?’ I said to him. He gave me a wide, gappy grin.

‘Yeah. Seven months.’

‘What for?’

Still grinning, he told me he’d breached an AVO – an Apprehended Violence Order. ‘Second time.’

‘Got a bit of a temper, have you? You’re big and strong – you could hurt someone. Hope you’re not thinking of trying again?’

‘Nah. I’ve gone off ’er now anyway. Waste of space. Not worth it. What are you here for?’

3

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

‘Visiting a friend. Do you know him? Michael O’Neill.’

‘Michael? Oh yeah, Michael. The gay murder. He’s nice. Poor bugger. Just lost it and look where he is. Worse than me.’

‘How does he get on?’

‘Oh, he’s all right. Nice to everybody. He’s got a job in the library.

He helped me with photocopying and stuff for my court case. Good bloke.’

Just then a man in uniform came in from the foyer. He held the door open and yelled, ‘OK, everybody in here, out there.’ I looked around me. About twenty people were slowly rising to their feet.

A mixture of personal and professional visitors, they all looked as unsure as I felt. Did he mean me too? What was going on? Was it a bomb scare? I later reflected how dreadful it was to think that was the first thing that came to mind in these times of global uncertainty.

To banish any doubt, he yelled again. ‘Come on, come on. Line up in single file out here, bags and possessions on the floor in front of you, step back, no talking!’

Were they allowed to issue orders like that to civilians? I guess it was their prison, so they got to set the rules. No-one was arguing.

Reluctantly, I followed the others as we all lined up in the foyer, our backs to the two security guards. Books, magazines, new socks and jocks in clear packaging for inmates, briefcases – all obediently placed a step in front of our feet.

‘Spread out! Spread out! No talking!’ We shuffled awkwardly a bit further away from each other, bending to move our possessions along so they all lined up neatly.

Finally, an explanation.

‘This is a sniffer-dog training session,’ the officer said. ‘A dog and its trainer will come in from that back door, sniff you and your possessions and leave. No moving. No talking. Barry!’ he yelled towards the back door. ‘Ready!’

A man and a young black Labrador burst through the rear doorway.

4

PRELUDE

‘Find! Good girl! Find!’ the trainer said. He ran alongside the dog, keeping the lead short, as the dog sniffed our bits and pieces.

If any visitors had risked some contraband, they’d unexpectedly be for it, I thought.

The dog found nothing exciting – not even traces of the doggie bag from a restaurant I’d brought home the night before for my own dog. It turned its big wet nose towards us. I was taken back to a prison visit I’d made in South Australia when I was being thoroughly sniffed by a big Alsatian. I put up with it until its nose disappeared into my crotch, at which point I instinctively whacked it over the ears. A lot of apologetic grovelling followed before I was allowed to go in for my visit.

This time, I kept my hands to myself. After two trips up and down our raggedy column, the dog and trainer were gone.

‘OK, that’s it,’ the officer said. No ‘thank you for your cooperation’ or ‘sorry for the inconvenience’. I suppose ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ aren’t really part of a prison officer’s vocabulary.

We dribbled back to our former seats, but before the AVO man could sit down, the lady in the cubbyhole called him over and told him he’d have to come back tomorrow. His stuff hadn’t yet been sent down from the cells. She suggested he ring first.

‘Yeah, I will. Long way on the bus.’ He made for the door quickly, the sunny freedom a magnet.

At the door, he turned back to me. ‘Good luck,’ he said. ‘Say g’day to Michael for me.’

An opportunity slipped by, I thought. Pity we couldn’t chat for longer.

Then I was called. The property lady’s Kiwi accent made English sound like a foreign language. She looked at my pile of reading material, checked the sticky note, and then turned to her computer.

‘Mmm, O’Neill,’ she pondered aloud. ‘No books. The magazines are OK.’ ‘No books?’ I asked. ‘Do you mean these books, or any books?’

5

SMOKE AND MIRRORS

‘He’s allowed eight in his cell. He’s got eight. When one goes out, one can go in. But he’s got books in property, waiting. So take those books away. No room.’

‘How do you know he has eight books?’ I asked.

‘It’s here, on his list. He can have more . . . mmm . . . not much more of anything really. He’s got all he can have, except a cap.’

‘A cap?’

‘Yep, that’s about it.’

I couldn’t see how he’d need a cap in the library, which was probably why he didn’t have one. I was amazed that this woman could zoom in on any prisoner and know exactly what he had in his cell.

‘How do you do that?’

‘Inventory list. Permitted possessions, number of, list full, or gaps in list. Simple.’

I was tiring of concentrating on every clipped syllable in Kiwi, so I thanked her, left the magazines and made my escape.

As I approached the gate in the car, AVO Man was sitting in the windswept bus-stop shed all alone, like a king on his throne. Pushing away thoughts of how my husband would react if I offered a violent ex-con a lift, I pulled up. Half an hour to town. Gold for my research.

Not altogether a wasted trip after all.

‘Hi! Me again,’ I called through the passenger window. ‘I’m headed for town. Would you like a lift?’

‘Nice of yer,’ he said. ‘Goin’ out Sunbury way meself.’ Damn! If I hadn’t already said I was going to town, I’d gladly have driven in the opposite direction if it meant twenty minutes conversation. But too late now. I didn’t want him to think I was coming on to him.

What a wasted morning! I was so absorbed in wondering why I’d been removed from Michael’s list that I stopped checking the speedo.

The needle was on 111 as I whizzed under one of those gantries that cross the toll way. Slowed down too late. Ticket arrived soon after.

A $208 fine and loss of a demerit point. Bugger!

6

PART ONE My Loves: Digging in the dirt, Any & all lilies – especially lily of the valley & the Casablanca Lily, Books – tattered or leather bound, Dogs – my own and everyone’s, Paper & pencil, Floors that creak – the sound of lives that have walked that way & of course History – that is what links us all.

— John Fowler, designer

CHAPTER 1

The Ideal Couple

S

tuart Charles Rattle and Michael Anthony O’Neill were both working-class lads who spent their teenage years in Australian country towns. Stuart went to high school in the western Riverina town of Barham in New South Wales, while Michael was born in Ireland but grew up around Terang in Victoria’s Western District.

Michael’s parents, Mick and Anne, who came from a farming background in Ireland, naturally gravitated to the country when they migrated to Australia with their five children – Nora, John, Richard, Michael and Colin. Young Michael, who was born in May 1966, was seven when they migrated. At first, his father worked on a dairy farm, but when the older boys started attending secondary school, the family moved to town, where Mick worked as an agricultural mechanic and repairman at an abattoir.

Their only daughter, Nora, was slightly autistic and intellectually disabled, but young Michael was intent on helping her, according to their youngest brother, Colin. ‘Michael spent a lot of time working on Nora’s life skills, reading, writing, basic maths. Even things like knitting, swimming, engaging Nora in the swimming club.’ Michael put more time into her than the other children, Colin observed, and had never forgotten Nora’s birthday.

Terang in the 1970s was a rural community of about 1200 people servicing the surrounding dairy farms. The town was socially conservative and quite churchy, with St Thomas’s Catholic Church and the Presbyterians’ Thompson Memorial Church occupying the high ground at each end of town. The Catholic church was 9

PART ONE

originally built in 1900 on the outskirts of the developing village, but when the town expanded in the opposite direction, the church was relocated into the township itself in 1906. The mountain had come to Muhammad – or to Jesus in this case. Meanwhile, the Presbyterians had already staked out a good spot on High Street, in the centre of town.

Terang wasn’t exactly a lifestyle hub for youngsters, and there wasn’t much to do apart from sport. Colin says that Michael had a difficult childhood. ‘Michael was always different from a typical country boy in that he was rather effeminate, he was always immaculate in his appearance, even as a child, and his interests weren’t typical of the majority of kids in that town. He was more interested in cooking and fashion.’

He says that Michael’s manner made him an easy target for cruel teasing and bullying from primary school onwards. Terms such as ‘poof’, ‘poofter’, ‘fag’ and ‘faggot’ were used frequently at school. At home, his own older brothers nicknamed him ‘Shelley’ – short for ‘Michelle’ – and teased him about being a girl.

Colin says that Michael rarely fought back. ‘When he was bullied or targeted and attacked by people, he wasn’t inclined to use his fists to defend himself. He would use verbal retorts, using wit and sarcasm, and often quite effectively – which usually made things worse, as a matter of fact. And he was physically beaten up on a number of occasions.’

The bullying grew worse at high school, where Colin says Michael was picked on by one group of boys in particular. ‘I think Michael was an easy target for them, and he didn’t retort – he didn’t dob on people. He didn’t tell others what was happening and he kept that very quiet. Therefore it was even easier for them to target him, because there was very little trouble that would come out of it.’

When he was twelve or thirteen, Michael asked his parents if they could send him to boarding school, but he didn’t tell them why. With five kids in the family, including one with special needs, and only one 10

THE IDEAL COUPLE

wage coming in, he might as well have asked for a first-class ticket on a luxury cruise back to Ireland.

Colin saw Michael being chased down by other boys several times. He says of one episode he witnessed, ‘They began to push him in between each other, so pushing him from one to the other, calling him “poofter, Shelley, poof”, trying to get a rise out of Michael. And then some punches were thrown at his body and his arms, and then he was pushed to the ground, and I think they gave up and left then, because Michael rarely rose to the occasion and fought back.’

Michael still kept quiet about the bullying. Colin thought Richard, their older brother, probably would have acted if he’d known the extent of it. Teachers weren’t aware of it either, and Colin says his parents certainly weren’t.

According to Colin, Michael never sought comfort. ‘He never would come to me, you know, and talk about how hurt he was by this, even though when I witnessed it, I could see he was humiliated and deeply embarrassed and angry over this kind of thing. When he was a young boy, he would cry. But then from about the age of ten onwards, he would stonewall it. He would present a very stoic resistance to the physical and verbal abuse, and I can’t recall ever seeing Michael cry over anything after that time. He once had an argument with me about males crying, which he just described as being weak. They were his words, as I remember them.’

Michael finally got his wish to leave Terang and boarded at Christian Brothers, Warrnambool, for Years Eleven and Twelve.

*** Stuart Charles Rattle was six years older than Michael O’Neill.

Born in 1960, he was the only son of Ken and Jill Rattle and had two younger sisters, Katrina and Dianne. Ken Rattle was a master builder. The family was living in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern when Stuart was born, and he began primary school in the city.

11

PART ONE

For a couple of years, they moved from Malvern to Harkaway, a small township on the outskirts of Melbourne. Stuart and his sisters belonged to the pony club, which he really enjoyed, and he started high school in Harkaway.

In the early 1970s, Ken Rattle decided to chance his arm at farming and move his young family to Barham in New South Wales. On the Murray River about 300 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, Barham had become the centre of a thriving area for irrigated dairying and agriculture. By the 1970s, however, irrigation had raised the water table in many parts of the region, and arable land had been lost as the groundwater became salty. Land clearing contributed to the problem, which grew worse after the major flood of 1956.

Ken sold up his building business and bought a farm as a going concern about fourteen kilometres out of Barham. He also purchased cattle, and the family was very excited at the move. Stuart started at the local high school in 1974, aged fourteen.

But they’d barely arrived when another major flood hit. A temporary levee of sandbags was built around their house to keep the water out, and Ken patrolled the perimeter hourly. The house was isolated, and the children had to be evacuated to neighbours’ houses so they could attend school. Many of the newly purchased livestock had to be shot, because they had no feed or were stranded in mud.

Katrina remembers it as a frightening time. ‘It was devastating to their dreams of starting a new life in the country,’ she said.

Although Barham was located in New South Wales, it was more closely affiliated with Victoria, with the locals reading Victorian newspapers, receiving Victorian television programs and watching Australian Rules football. Sport was a major part of the life of the town.

Stuart didn’t like Barham much. It was too hot, and he considered the people coarse and uneducated. He too was teased at school and called ‘girly’. His sister Dianne told me that the worst taunts often occurred outside school. ‘Once a week, Mum would come into town 12

THE IDEAL COUPLE

after school to pick us up and do a big shop, and me and Katrina and Stuart would wait outside the supermarket for her. Kids would gather round and taunt Stuart. His way of dealing with it was to look into the distance and ignore them. “Don’t look at them!” he’d whisper to us. “Just don’t look them in the eye.” ’ Stuart also missed his grandparents in East Malvern, with whom he’d spent many hours as a young child, ‘helping’ by following his grandfather, Frank Rattle, around his meticulously maintained garden, admiring the roses and other flowers. Stuart’s mother, Jill, thinks this is where Stuart’s love of gardening began. But in a dry inland town, the weather conditions conspired against growing a pretty garden. Stuart had little outlet for his creativity, which his mother says was evident from when he was very young. ‘He’d find bits of metal pipe and make them into a fountain,’ she told me, ‘or once he lugged home a big old chair and re-upholstered it himself in red velvet for his bedroom. We called it “the Throne” ’.

His teenage bedroom was nothing like any of his friends’. He teamed elegant furniture with beautiful pictures rather than sticking pop posters on his walls. His parents described his room as ‘quite the Englishman’s quarters’. He developed a love of all things English at an early age, and Barham simply wasn’t his cup of tea.

He befriended an elderly lady named Mrs Graham, who had a passion for her garden, and he spent many hours with her. ‘She’s the same age as the Queen Mother,’ Stuart told his mother. Apparently, she’d put together enormous spreads for afternoon tea – passionfruit sponges, sandwiches, teacakes – all much appreciated by her young pupil after a long, hot afternoon working alongside her in the garden.

‘Stuart wasn’t like other people,’ Jill Rattle said. ‘He was always artistic. He used to joke that he was reincarnated from the era of real kings and queens – that’s where he thought he really belonged. He said from a very young age he was going to be famous – a household name, he used to say. He didn’t know what he wanted to do to become famous, but he was certain it was preordained.’

13

PART ONE

*** By the 1981 census, Barham was home to 1039 people, and Stuart Rattle wasn’t one of them. Some friends say he left at sixteen, others seventeen, but in any case he was definitely out of there.

He left with $15 and a bus ticket from his mother and instructions to ‘look up the rellies’. He ended up in Melbourne, where he shared an apartment with his sister Dianne. He waited in restaurants and spent a few months working in an antique shop in Burwood, learning about old furniture and its restoration.

In Melbourne, where there was a strong gay scene, he found he could express his sexuality in a way that had been impossible in Barham, and at the age of eighteen he told his parents he was gay, travelling from Melbourne to Barham to deliver the news personally.

He told Katrina separately. She records that she was shocked, but not very shocked. She thinks she had probably already suspected he was gay because he was so creative.

His coming out caused his parents some disquiet. Jill, who was quite a committed Catholic, told me, ‘I really should have known, but if I did deep down, I didn’t let myself believe it. I was still shocked when I finally had to face the truth. It wasn’t about grandchildren.

I thought maybe I was to blame. Was I too tough as a mother?’

She added, ‘Ken was more upset. He and Stuart had done so many blokey, matey things together over the years; it was hard for Ken to deal with. It strained the family for quite a while. Stuart stopped coming home, probably for about a year or so, but we gradually eased back into the family routine, and Ken and Stuart were mates again.’

Stuart was tall, well-built and good-looking, strong of jaw with a very straight nose. He favoured tight white T-shirts to show off his pecs and biceps, and had a spread-winged eagle tattooed on his left upper arm, ‘to fly above the shit’, he told a friend who was being tattooed with a dolphin on the same day. At that stage, Stuart still spoke with flat Australian vowels.

14

THE IDEAL COUPLE

One day, a cousin by the name of Mandy approached Stuart with a business idea. He had become a legend in his family for his skill at running a measuring tape over someone and effortlessly ‘throwing together’ wonderful dresses and suits. With his parents’ financial assistance, Stuart and Mandy moved into a neglected little shop in Richmond that was known as ‘the Plete Shop’.

‘It was always known as “the Plete Shop”,’ Jill Rattle told me, ‘because part of the front door had been replaced, which we think might have had “Com” on it. But we left it because it was catchy.

‘Mandy was very cute – short skirts, high heels, red lipstick – so she did most of the front-of-house work, and I did the bookkeeping for them, because creative people are rarely good at bookkeeping, in my experience,’ Jill said wryly.

On the first day, ‘Stuart staggered in under a great roll of thick brown paper and started cutting out patterns.’ Their dressmaking business had begun.

But dressmaking struggled to pay its way, and Mandy was barely getting a wage, so Stuart branched out into cushions and curtains to make money. Then one day a cousin of restaurateur Andrew Blake asked Stuart to help with the curtains in a restaurant they were doing up in Richmond. Stuart’s natural flair took over, and he ended up designing the whole restaurant fit-out.

Mandy eventually gave up on the Plete Shop and decided to try her luck in the USA. Stuart then announced that he wanted to turn the shop over to interior design. He was going to become Australia’s most influential interior designer, he said.

His father was brought in to pull out dressing rooms and convert the Plete Shop into an interior design studio. Ros Palmer, a doyenne designer from Woollahra in Sydney’s wealthy eastern suburbs, sent down a truckload of furniture – her Glenmore range – to decorate the showroom. The Rattle Group P/L was born.

The work was slow to come in. In the first year, Jill says, Stuart ‘probably only sold a few blinds’. His first big project came when 15

PART ONE

his parents invited him to redesign and decorate an apartment for them.

Ken and Jill had given up on Barham and moved back to Melbourne, where they’d bought an undistinguished apartment in Chastleton Avenue in Toorak. When Stuart was short of cash, he’d often stayed there, becoming familiar with the place and developing ideas about how it could be improved. His parents liked Stuart’s ideas and gave him free rein to redecorate. Ken supervised the building, and the newly-formed company paid for the fit-out. Stuart used architectural detailing and pale fabrics to establish a cool, elegant look and introduced a central skylight to flood the living room with natural light.

The result was nothing short of fabulous, earning Stuart a storm of praise from friends and family. He then decided to ring Zinta Jurjans Heard, the editor of Belle, one of Australia’s trendsetting interior design magazines, to invite her to view the apartment.

When Heard arrived, she said, ‘Yes! We can use this.’ Then Stuart waited for months. No feature. Eventually, six months later, Belle rang. ‘You’re in next month’s issue, and on the front cover.’ The Belle article turned the corner for Stuart Rattle Interior Design. With the magic he’d wrought in his parents’ apartment, he won design awards and garnered huge acclaim. Jill Rattle recalls that the property ‘was featured in newspapers and magazines for months’.

Pretty soon, he was living the stylish life, giving interior design advice to friends and family, urging them all to live with beauty instead of ordinariness, or – worse – ugliness. He couldn’t bear ugliness. He’d been known to walk into a room, pick up a chair and move it – sometimes outside.

‘That looks much better,’ he’d say, and usually it did.

He started to come to the notice of Kevin O’Neill, florist to the rich and famous. In Australia during the 1980s, a group known as the A-Gays basically ran the supply of up-market services to the wealthy, with Kevin O’Neill the ‘godfather’ of the clan. ‘We were the ones 16

THE IDEAL COUPLE

who supplied them with taste,’ a survivor of the group told me. ‘We were in the party industry.’

The key players in the group were Peter Rowland in catering, Graham Geddes supplying antiques, and Kevin O’Neill with his partner John Graham doing floral arrangements. If one got a job with a new client, he brought the others in. Those were the heady days of Christopher Skase, Ron Walker, Lindsay Fox, Alan Bond and Kerry Packer, whose wives had money to spend and friends to impress. Interviewed by the Melbourne Age in 2003, John Graham said, ‘Money was flowing more freely than we’d ever seen it before.

Kevin used to do big parties for the Packers, Rupert Murdoch, for Alan Bond and Christopher Skase, functions that before those days were unheard of.’

Kevin also hosted big parties at his own home. Graham Geddes, who is still dealing antiques in his eighties, remembers them well.

Although not gay, Graham was an important part of the circle, as the clients trusted him and recommended him to each other. He was one of the entrée cards for the rest of the group.

‘For years we’d all go up to Kevin’s on Easter Saturday. Dozens of people – Stuart and Paul, Skases, leaders in any field – would be invited. It was like a carnivale masquerade. Everyone had to dress up. You can imagine the costumes!

‘Kevin was always Selene, the goddess of the moon – our leading light. There’d be an enormous table, probably fifteen metres long, set up with cornucopias and statues dripping fruits and grapes, fine wine in torrential quantities, fabulous food, two ice sculptures. It was always amazing.’

A former guest told me of an occasion when Stuart spent the whole day dressed only in a fig leaf. I suppose Easter started out as a pagan festival, so why not?

Graham added that Kevin wasn’t the only one holding large parties. ‘Every New Year’s Day, my wife and I would have 300 for lunch at our country place. We’d have Zig and Zag and face 17

PART ONE

painting for the kids, Frank Traynor’s Jazz Preachers band, Cook Island dancers, magicians. It was a bit OTT, but it wasn’t then. It’s what we did.’

Stuart, now in his mid-twenties, was tiptoeing around the edges of the A-Gay scene when he met Paul Bangay at a dating bar called Mandate, and they became friends. Bangay was a beautiful nineteenyear-old who had been chosen to work with Kevin O’Neill because of the high standard of the work he produced while studying garden design at Burnley Horticultural College. Bangay had become a protégé of O’Neill’s, and Stuart Rattle soon joined him.

O’Neill quickly established a great influence on their lives. Outings with him were always fun. One day, the two young men piled into Kevin’s station wagon and the three drove deep into the Dandenongs on the eastern outskirts of Melbourne, looking for a deserted house where Kevin had heard the neglected garden contained vast numbers of Cardiocrinum giganteum, commonly known as Himalayan lilies.

They found the place and spent most of the day digging and hauling and filling the station wagon, getting hot and sweaty even in the cool mountain air. The plan was to take the bulbs back to Mananie, O’Neill’s retreat in Mount Macedon, and try to cultivate them there.

When they arrived at Mananie late that afternoon, John Graham already had dinner in the oven. This was Stuart’s first visit to Mananie, but it wouldn’t be his last. Soon afterwards, the two young men received an invitation from O’Neill that would change Stuart’s life.

*** It was a dark and stormy night, and Stuart Rattle and Paul Bangay had been summoned by exclusive invitation to a private mens dinner at Mananie, one of three such dinners that Kevin O’Neill held each year. Fog swirled around them as they got out of the car and crunched across the white gravel and wet leaves to the front door.

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THE IDEAL COUPLE

O’Neill was adventurous in his use of colour, both in his garden and in the floristry business he ran in Toorak Road with John Graham.

Another guest who was there that night, also a designer, recalls, ‘O’Neill often told friends his inspiration was Mount Macedon – his muse and what drove him to try new effects, juxtaposing improbable colours, and to “grow near impossible things”. He adored his home and garden.’ (Sadly, he did not live to see those Himalayan lilies flower, but they did flower in time to be used in the floral arrangements at his funeral.)

His fabulous garden had been three-quarters wiped out in the 1983 bushfires that roared through the Macedon Ranges, destroying many homes of historical significance. O’Neill’s house was saved, but much of his garden was burnt. Devastated but undaunted, O’Neill began the renewal of the garden immediately, experimenting with plants and colours.

Another guest told me about Stuart’s reaction on entering the inner glow of Mananie that night. ‘He was so wide-eyed and green,’ he said. ‘Stuart seemed overcome with the warmth and colour of the rooms. He walked around, throwing his arms out every now and then, saying, “Oh shit! Oh shit! I love it!”

‘Kevin was very amused, as most of us hadn’t met Stuart before.

He kept smiling like a benevolent uncle, saying, “Isn’t he wonderful?”

Privately, it looked rather like method acting to me, but of course you didn’t say that sort of thing to Kevin.’

From that time onwards, Stuart became a protégé of O’Neill, a member of his ‘inner circle’. The other members did their best to include him in their mutually profitable network, but some were let down by Stuart’s sometimes abrupt manner with clients. He was also often late for appointments. It was far too early in his career for that sort of behaviour. Some persevered to please Kevin, but others gave up.

One person told me he stopped inviting Stuart to meet his own clients because of the young designer’s behaviour. He remembers 19

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Stuart leaving one client’s house in a huff, throwing over his shoulder, ‘Listen, darling, you’re not the only girl in South Yarra with a truckload of money.’

Another, a designer himself, said, ‘The interior design world is a funny world. You have to listen, develop, pull the concept together. It takes a lot of emotional intelligence. Kevin’s patronage and introductions provided Stuart with a meteoric rise. He didn’t really have time to develop into his role. He also moved in a limited catchment area – for want of a better word, “society” – and I think at times he was floundering a bit. Living the dream, but out of his depth.’

Paul Bangay had meanwhile finished college and become part of the group. He and Stuart had fallen for each other and moved together into a little flat in St Kilda. ‘We were kindred spirits,’ Bangay recalls. ‘Although he designed fashion, he was always more interested in interior design. We shared an apartment and we were always either dreaming or in some very cheap and simple way redesigning its interior.’

For Stuart, this was an exciting time. He and Paul started getting larger commissions and coming to the notice of the bold and the beautiful of Melbourne. Stuart used to say his contribution was merely ‘whipping up a few curtains and cushions – I’m just a cushion fluffer’ – but in reality he was moving steadily into the total design world. His passion for high-quality finishes held sway in their choice of furnishings, as when they had a sofa covered in the Connolly leather used by Rolls-Royce. From now on, it would be nothing but the best.

Stuart and Paul lived, worked and partied together for several years, until around 1992. After their relationship had run its course, Paul left the house in Richmond that they were planning to buy together, and Kevin O’Neill and John Graham bought the house and rented it to Stuart. Richmond was the upcoming trendy suburb at the time, and Stuart was soon sharing the house with emerging 20

THE IDEAL COUPLE

English artist, dark-haired and brooding Robert Doble. They lived in Richmond until about 1996 or 1997.

They both toyed with the idea of a modelling career and spent some time in Sydney, having a few shots taken to pay for visits to Mardi Gras, but they gave up on the idea. Robert told me, ‘It would not have suited Stuart to be a model, even though he had the looks, because basically he was quite shy. He didn’t like people flaunting themselves in public.’

*** The Plete Shop wasn’t in a good location and was often vandalised with bricks through the window or obscene graffiti. During 1997, as Stuart’s design commissions increased, Kevin O’Neill decided to help Stuart’s family set up a shop-front at 411 Malvern Road, South Yarra, in the heart of his ‘constituency’. ‘Kevin O’Neill was a very generous, kindly man,’ another member of his inner circle told me.

‘He was incredibly creative and incredibly generous.’

Stuart’s parents were also willing to help him develop his talents.

To help fund the purchase of 411, Ken diverted some money from a loan he had taken out for a townhouse development he was building in Carters Avenue, Toorak. That covered the deposit until the family company’s finance came through, when his father was repaid. The building at 411 had sold cheaply for the neighbourhood because it had been burnt out in a fire. Ken did all the internal building and renovations to Stuart’s designs and specifications, adding an entire top storey as a separate elegant apartment for Stuart.

Kevin O’Neill arranged the signwriting that set the ‘look’ of the shop-front from the street, and Jill Rattle offered her services for three days a week as bookkeeper and office manager. Ken would also come in for a day a week to help out. When the extension was complete, Stuart moved in upstairs at 411, which was now the headquarters of the Rattle Group, with Stuart’s parents as 50 21

PART ONE

per cent shareholders, trading as Stuart Rattle Interior Design.

Graham Geddes says Stuart’s early work was heavily influenced by international designer John Coote. Interviewed in the Independent before he died suddenly at the age of 62, Coote said with a chortle, ‘My role is to overcome the heavy hand of drab.’

Coote, who grew up on a farm in outback Australia, came into interior design from outside, very much like Stuart. He said, ‘My first projects were for curtains and slipcovers, and from there I got a whole house project. The next project led to jobs all around the world.’ Coote’s name attached to a ‘For Sale’ sign buoyed Melbourne property values in the 1980s as Stuart’s name did throughout the 2000s. Stuart and Michael would become good friends with Coote and travel to his sixtieth birthday in Ireland, where he’d bought back and restored his family’s derelict manor.

As time went on, though, Stuart took less notice of current trends and created his own style, emphasising elegance and restraint.

Michael says that Stuart had an exceptional understanding of scale, balance and proportion, so he intuitively absorbed details from many design sources and used them to create unique effects.

Stuart’s mother was justifiably proud of her ‘uneducated’ son.

She told me later, ‘Stuart never trained as an interior designer.

Although he had no qualifications, he was given honorary status by the Design Institute of Australia and he used to present trophies at Design Awards. He’d be invited to talk to school students about his life and his passion for design and tell them, “If a boy from the bush can do it, so can you.” ’ Stuart and his father were involved in projects at Villa Alba, an Italianate mansion in Kew that was being transformed into an interior design museum. Jill Rattle recalls that Villa Alba would ‘give different designers a room in the heritage building to decorate as they please. You are not allowed to damage the walls, and so Ken would build an internal frame. Stuart’s rooms were the talk of the design world. He’d wanted to be a household name, and he was.’

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*** While Stuart was beginning to lead the good life in Melbourne, Michael was still struggling to escape Terang.

It became increasingly obvious that he didn’t feel part of the town’s cultural life, and he often expressed a desire to move away.

When he was eighteen, he went, initially sharing a flat in Melbourne with one of his older brothers.

Perhaps remembering his childhood teasing as ‘Shelley’, Michael was still in denial about his sexuality while he lived with his brother.

Colin later told the court at Michael’s plea hearing, ‘Even now, Michael has never said openly that he is gay to myself or any other family members. Michael’s personal life has also been a closed book, so to speak.

‘The only incident I can really recall was one time when Michael was in his early twenties, living at my brother’s flat in Melbourne, and my brother’s flatmate came out of the closet and declared he was gay. Michael was shocked and horrified . . . Whenever this man was in the flat, even though he’d known none of this guy’s attentions were directed at him in a sexual or emotional sense, Michael would walk around the flat wrapped in a blanket. I recognised this as a complete overreaction to the situation, and that was a moment where the penny dropped and I thought, it is probably a latent homosexuality type thing.’ Colin said that a lot of things seemed to make sense after that.

Over the next ten years, Michael travelled a lot. He went to the UK and Ireland, looking for his family roots, and then on to the USA, where he worked out his six-month visa in an upmarket hotel–restaurant in Kennebunkport in Maine. The restaurant owner was related to someone he’d worked for in Melbourne, and he did a bit of everything there. He was reluctant to leave, but his visa expired and he returned to Melbourne. After five months of being urged to return, he went back to Kennebunkport, and for 23

PART ONE

the next five years he was PA to the restaurant owner.

In the late 1990s, he returned to Melbourne and went back to working as a waiter until something better turned up. Still struggling with his sexuality, he took medication to help him function on a daily basis. Although he had heterosexual friendships and relationships, they created even more inner conflict. On the surface, he appeared to be together, but antidepressants and sleeping pills were a permanent fixture on his bedside table.

Jack Wells* met Michael before he became Stuart Rattle’s partner, and they’re still close today. When Jack met him, Michael was working as a waiter at Caffe e Cucina in South Yarra, Jack told me. ‘He didn’t work nights, as he liked to party. He was a real party animal back then. He had lots of friends of both sexes. He moved house a lot – people did more of that in those days. I don’t suppose he had a lot of stuff to cart around with him, but he never lived alone.

Always in a share house or apartment.’ Jack told me of several places Michael had lived, all on the fringe of the central business district.

‘He was living in a place in Hardware Lane when he met Stuart. It was some time in 1997 or ’98. They were almost instantly attracted to each other. Stuart said later they met at just the right time. He was getting sick of the party scene, and he was really into all that – part of a very influential group – but he’d been saying he wanted to give up the parties and settle with someone.’ Jack explained that it’s quite difficult in the gay community to find that special person, no matter how much you’d like to.

Michael recalls it differently. He says he was living in a flat in St Kilda with a female friend, and that it was actually Robert Doble who introduced him to Stuart. Michael and Robert had had a couple of encounters, the first being a four-day bender after Robert picked Michael up in a nightclub and asked if he had any party favours.

Robert was in luck. Michael had about forty ecstasy tablets on him, and over the next four days they consumed the lot. They were both surprised when they emerged relatively unscathed on the fifth day.

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Doble said that Michael ‘was a bit lost and hated being a waiter’.

He claimed he was known for dealing drugs.

Michael and his friends vehemently deny this. ‘We took party drugs from time to time, if we had any,’ he says. ‘Everyone did in those days. But I never sold drugs. That is completely untrue.’

A few other encounters followed, and they were in the same mens club one night when Robert insisted that Michael meet Stuart.

Robert Doble recalled, ‘Michael really pushed himself into Stuart’s life and pursued him, calling and sending flowers. All the old friends were a bit uneasy, but we didn’t expect it to become a full-blown relationship.’

Michael was dazzled by this handsome, apparently rich and successful new man in his orbit. Stuart was frightfully well spoken – his Aussie vowels were now being modified. He was 37 and Michael 31 – a good age to settle down. The attraction was sudden and passionate, but their encounters were fairly casual. It was only after eight months that, at Stuart’s invitation, Michael packed his few bits and pieces and moved into the most elegant shared house he’d ever seen.

After they set up house together, many of Michael’s friends drifted away.

Love was in the air, not just sex. ‘People in the gay scene get jealous sometimes, when you find someone and it’s love, not just sex,’ Jack told me. ‘You can have sex with anyone, but love lasts.’

*** Was the writing on the wall even then? Paul Bangay recalled, ‘Michael really had to fit into Stuart’s way of life. Michael never really brought anything to the table from his former life. It was Stuart’s career, Stuart’s friends, even the way they decorated their houses and the way they looked and dressed was all about Stuart. Stuart had a definite style and lifestyle, and Michael took on that persona.’

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To free Michael from the menial work of waiting, Stuart found him a job with Kevin O’Neill, and then decided that Michael could help him in his own business.

Jill Rattle wasn’t thrilled at the prospect. By some reports, she didn’t like Michael being involved in the the business, even though he’d developed into an extremely likeable young man. He was very good-looking and outgoing, with a touch of blarney about him, a wicked sense of humour, and a knack for making those around him feel good.

Jill’s dislike may have stemmed from his living upstairs and being a new factor in the business and her son’s life, but it also probably betokened her recognition that Michael had no training or aptitude for the minutiae required to run the business behind the creative frontman. Unlike Jill herself, he had no head for figures, and his knowledge of business processes and legal requirements was scanty at best.

A great source of pride for the new couple, they confided to close friends, was that their bond had produced one almost instant tangible effect. Michael had no further need for drugs, either party or prescription.

From Day One, they seemed made for each other. Jack Wells told me later, ‘We all thought we could use those guys as a role model – straight or gay – they were the ideal couple. Stuart would be pottering about, making a pot of English Breakfast tea, and he’d say, “You know, if we could get married, we would.” They were so right with each other – a real Darby and John.’

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