BURIED TOGETHER
Partner
Pat McDonald
Queer Places:
Prompt Corner, Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3004, Australia
Fox Valley Rd, Wahroonga NSW 2076, Australia
Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium
North Ryde, Ryde City, New South Wales, Australia
Dorothy
Cronin (9 January 1920 – 2 April 2000), professionally known as Bunney Brooke,
was an Australian actress and Casting director/agent, best known for her being
one of the early faces of Australian television. Known for her television,
movie, theatre acting and comedy roles including the long-running role of Flo
Patterson in the soap opera and movie release version of Number 96 in
the 1970s (a role for which she won a Silver Logie Award), and in her later
years to a new generation of viewers in her role in children's series Round
the Twist (1989 and 1992) and her role as Violet "Vi" Patchett in E
Street (1990).
Brooke was born as Dorothy Cronin in Bendigo, Victoria, adopted at an early
age and had an unhappy early life. She was raised by foster parents, and then
later joined the Australian army at the age of 18. As a young adult, she saw
marriage as a means of escape, marrying Leonard Brooke in 1946. The union
produced two children but ended after four years, with Brooke reporting that
they were "wrong for marriage".
Brooke switched to the carefree life of a drifter with little money and few
possessions. After becoming disillusioned with this existence, Brooke sought
conventional employment as a clown, acting teacher, café owner and train
conductor. Subsequent experiences of a broken marriage, two children and
struggles with depression, illness and lack of money which gave her the depth
for years later to win the Best Actress Logie for a 1974 episode of Number
96 as Flo Patterson, jilted at the altar.[1][2]
In the early 1950s, Brooke managed the Prompt Corner coffee lounge in
Melbourne with her girlfriend. At that time, several city coffee lounges
implicitly catered specifically to LGBT patrons at a time when few other
commercial venues existed for them. Prompt Corner
also held poetry readings and, aside from the gay and lesbian patrons, it
attracted the theatrical and bohemian crowd.[1]
Brooke landed the front cover of the edition of 28 April 1975 of Brisbane's
TV Week Magazine, giving an interview of her "battle to the top"
explaining being in a better position in life, career success and being a star
in the earlier years of
Australian TV.[3]
In April 1976 Brooke endured a heart seizure which brought her to the "brink
of death" collapsing at her Rozzele home with crushing chest pains then
spending 10 days in
intensive care of
Balmain Hospital,
Sydney. It
was the fourth time in 5 years suffering a similar
seizure. In Brooke's case the seizure was brought on by a busy change in
lifestyle over a period of months causing extreme tension which affected the
heart, doctors warned she must never endure such tension again and herself
determined it to not happen again.[4]
In 1976 Brooke moved into her house in the near city suburb of Balmain yet one
year later rented the house and moved out due to a terror campaign which
bizarrely included threats, anonymous letters, visits from police,
ambulancemen and an undertaker. Brooke owned two dogs including her neighbor
who each received
photostat
pamphlets about keeping residence
dogs under control which is believed to have been the first indication of
the events.[5]
Brooke lived with
Pat McDonald, who suggested her for the role of Flo Patterson. They shared
the same birth year and an apartment in
Wahroonga in northern Sydney. Although the true nature of their
relationship was never originally detailed, many photos of them on holiday in
various overseas locations were featured in magazines.[6]
Pat McDonald would later die in 1990 of
pancreas cancer.
Brooke endured a
nervous breakdown within the mid-1990s, which was a few years before her
death. It is not really known as to why, yet Brooke did have a history within
depression the earlier decades of her career.[7]
My published books:
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- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunney_Brooke