‘I was a CHILD SPY'

Sue-Ellen tells how her parents trained her to be a mini James Bond

- Brigid Auchettl

Almost every weekend throughout her childhood, Sue-Ellen Kusher and her family would conduct what they called “number plate runs”.

This involved driving around the Brisbane suburbs, recording details of cars parked outside the houses Sue-Ellen’s parents had under surveillance as part of their jobs as intelligence operatives. “The car could do three circuits without becoming too noticeable,” says Sue-Ellen from her home in Bulimba, Queensland.

“We’d memorise the car and number plates, make, model.”

So they didn’t attract suspicion, Dudley Doherty and his wife Joan, plus their three children, Sue-Ellen, Mark, and Amanda, would often change outfits during these runs. They would also swap seats with each other.

From the outside, the Dohertys appeared to be like any Australian family of the era. But during the 1950s and ’60s, while Dudley and Joan were employed by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), their children became unofficial spies-in-training. This was despite strict guidelines that ASIO employees should never tell family about their work.

“It was against the rules but [my parents] had a very serious conversation about if they would involve the kids and they didn’t want to have secrets from us,” says Sue-Ellen.

Living in the Brisbane suburbs at the height of the Cold War, the couple were tasked with locating and tracking Soviet agents.

“We looked like a normal family,” says Sue-Ellen. “It was an exceptional cover.”