'Isn't that marvellous': lifestyle journalist lived in the moment
Maev O’Meara, blessed with a name straight out of Ireland that graced many column inches in The Sydney Morning Herald, was a pioneering female journalist at a time when many women stayed home and didn’t pursue careers.
In the mid-1950s she joined a band of young women presided over by the legendary editor Connie “Sweetheart” Robertson covering issues of interest, even journeying out beyond the Sydney Heads by pilot boat to board ships and gather the stories of those arriving.
“Fallen Herald Angels” from the women's section of The Sydney Morning Herald, Maev on right.
The Herald's women’s section could almost have been the setting for a movie, an open-plan office filled with the clatter of typewriters and cigarette smoke, and every now and then a whoosh noise as a story, written on eight ply carbon and copy paper, was packed into a capsule and sucked through a tube connected to the composing room. There the words were set in "hot metal", the compositors using linotype machines to create whole pages in lead, letter by letter, ready to be printed.
Often corrections were made before the paper was "put to bed” at a place in the composing room called “the stone” and it was here that Maev met her husband John O'Meara, a handsome compositor. The relationship blossomed secretly as strict women’s editor Connie did not allow fraternisation with the composing room.
Maev Kathleen O'Meara was born in North Sydney in 1928, the only daughter of Kathleen "Kitty" Sullivan and William Holness, an English civil engineer who spent time in India after World War I and arrived in Australia in the mid-1920s. A keen golfer, he met Sullivan on the golf course and they married in 1927, settling in Orange where golf continued to be a passion. Kitty’s name is still on the honour board at Duntryleague Golf Club as women’s champion in 1946 and 1947.
O'Meara attended high school at The Convent of the Sacred Heart Rose Bay (later Kincoppal-Rose Bay) during the days of World War II, when large dark panels and heavy drapes were placed across the boarding school’s windows at night to stop any chink of light alerting potential enemy bombers.
Maev at her desk in the 1950s.
Later when a Japanese midget submarine was found in Sydney Harbour, the boarders were sent to the Southern Highlands for safety. O'Meara remembered those dark days and often being the one asked to board up the windows. The Sacre Coeur nuns gave her a lasting sense of social justice and a thirst for learning and she went on to complete an arts degree at Sydney University, achieving first class honours in Latin.
O'Meara returned to Orange and started her journalistic life on the Central Western Daily, later joining The Sydney Morning Herald and a wider, more exotic world. These were the days when the establishment of the first gleaming Italian coffee machine was covered as a news story; an era when many European immigrants were arriving for new lives in Australia and swank restaurants like Romano’s were the places to see and be seen.
Writing stories and being part of a big bustling city were a joy, along with the occasional shopping expedition to David Jones’ sixth floor and stunning European styles in glorious fabric with nipped-in waists; but driving home to Orange over the mountains in a stylish Morris Minor was also a wonderful part of her life.
On December 6, 1952, O'Meara boarded the ocean liner Otranto bound for London and new adventures throughout Europe, including Spain, France and Italy, and on to Egypt. On board were a couple of actresses who were to become travelling companions and lifelong friends – one of them, Australia’s beloved Ruth Cracknell, joined O'Meara on a journey through Scotland in June the following year.
They bought an old London taxi and their travels, wrote Cracknell, “brought most communities to a standstill and caused articles to be written in local journals. It was enormous fun … We bathed in an icy mountain stream bubbling along at the foot of our plateau. Banks covered with fern, foxgloves and wild rose and the air filled with birdsong made it the most delightful bath."
A farewell in the women's section (editor Maggie Vaile in black with pearls, O'Meara by the window smiling).
O'Meara returned to Australia and the Herald's women’s section and soon after met John O'Meara, a compositor with blue eyes and a gentle, quiet charm. John had grown up in Kogarah, the grandson of enterprising Tipperary settler Michael O’Meara who established market gardens in the area, the remnants of which are still cultivated.
Forced by family circumstances to enter the workforce at 15, John joined the composing room and later rose through the ranks to become composing room manager in 1975, leading the floor through the difficult metamorphosis from hot metal to computerisation and digital printing.
During the 1970s, after becoming parents to Maeve and Matthew, O'Meara returned to Fairfax newspapers to write the Hello section for The Sun-Herald, her colleagues remembering her as enormous fun and genuinely interested in the people she interviewed.
“She made them feel like they were the only people in the room,’’ recalls Paula Goodyer, an acclaimed health writer who was part of the women’s section under editor Maggie Vaile. “We would all look forward to the ‘Maev days’,” says Val Hopwood, secretary to the section. “She was the loveliest person, you never heard a mean word from her about anyone.”
Indeed O'Meara loved what the Irish refer to as “the craic” – the absolute pleasure of living in the moment and enjoying good company and sparkling conversation. She adored literature, music and poetry – and at the end of her life could still recite whole poems learned by heart.
She took quiet pride in her children’s achievements, and when grandchildren arrived she made sure she was prepared – Maev and John attended grandparenting classes held by Tresillian Family Care and helped encourage a love of reading, playing board games and the world around them.
A reunion with Ruth Cracknell (seated right in black and white) with Maev (right foreground) and John O’Meara (blue shirt) either side.
O'Meara's favourite phrase in reacting to almost anything that life would present her with was “Isn’t that marvellous”. Those that knew her thought O'Meara was pretty marvellous as well.
O'Meara is survived by her children Maeve, a television presenter, and Matthew, a paediatrician, five grandchildren and one great grandchild.
Maev Kathleen O'Meara: March 5, 1928 – April 4, 2020.