Mother courage

Merle Thornton is a battler, an academic, an author and a woman who has made history. She and her screen star daughter Sigrid discuss their deep and complex mother-daughter bond with Jenny Brown.

- Jenny Brown

As a little girl, Sigrid Thornton was blithely unaware of the vicious death threats targeting her family. Aged six, she was still too young to realise the police cars parked in their quiet suburban street were lurking to protect her radical parents from their political enemies.

It was March 1965, and Sigrid’s feisty, outspoken, audacious mother was making national news – and becoming a feminist icon in the process. Merle Thornton and friend Ro Bogner had sent shockwaves through the establishment after chaining themselves to the bar of Brisbane’s landmark Regatta Hotel, demanding that women be allowed to drink there alongside men.

“Mum has never exactly been a shrinking violet,” laughs Sigrid, whose iconic roles play like a greatest-hits reel of Australian film and television, from The Man From Snowy River to All The Rivers Run, Seachange, Underbelly, Prisoner and Wentworth. “She has been a fighter all her life and I admire her bravery and dogged determination. I suppose I learned how to be strong and independent from that example, although it’s really hard to unpick because the empathy that exists between parent and child is so strong.

“Certainly it’s pretty difficult to grow up with such a very, very strong personality without being imbued with some of the same characteristics.” Merle nods, approvingly. “It’s the age-old thing, isn’t it? ‘I don’t want to be like my mother,’ and then realising that I am like my mother and becoming more and more like her as time goes by!”