Mark:"My focus on supporting leaders has very much been influenced by her. Great educators transform lifetimes. Briony is influencing a thousand lifetimes every day."Credit:Joshua Morris
BRIONY:At the end of my first university year in Sydney,I bumped into a school friend who invited me to have lunch with her friends. Mark was part of that group – he was tall,very skinny,with a big mop of curly hair. He'd wear pale blue KingGee overalls. When he talked people would listen.
I'm an introvert and I didn't think he'd seen me. One day,he came up to me and gave me a letter. It was the most beautiful letter. Not romantic – Mark is more subtle than that. It talked about how he had seen me,and what he saw. I fell in love with him because how could you not? He's a gentle,sensitive soul,who's intelligent,quick and thoughtful. He has a strong moral compass. We married when I was 22 and he was 23. For me,that maxim of marrying your best friend is true.
We took turns with our careers. When I went back to work after I had kids,he was writing forThe Sydney Morning Herald. My job,heading the senior school at Oxford Falls Grammar,was full-on,but he was always there for our three daughters. He stepped up and that really worked until I became a principal at Roseville College and he got the ABC managing director's job. We kind of muddled along.
Mark loved his time there. It ticked all the boxes for who he was:a great communicator and leader. There are complex,creative souls in the arts and he loved every one of them.
In mid-2015,I developed a cough. I went to a particularly zealous GP,who ordered a chest X-ray"to rule things out". It showed a cancerous growth on my lung. Mark is an optimist but inside he would have been scared. I used to get grumpy at him and say:"It's all very well for you to think that this is all going to work out,you actually don't know."In retrospect,it wouldn't have been good for both of us to be miserable.
Mark or one of our daughters would come with me to chemotherapy. He'd read out bits from the paper. It was pretty tough doing the surgery stuff,and he was the one I wanted there. He protects my dignity. That was three years ago. I get tested every six months or so and there's no evidence of it returning.
When he became NSW Department of Education secretary in 2016,he was the keynote speaker at every conference I went to for the first two years. I teased him:"Come on,you've got to be kidding me!"We talk about education a lot because we are both passionate about it. We talk of the political challenges,and the equity challenges that he,particularly,has.