Names: Kristen Merskine and Gordon Campbell
Years together: 27
Occupations: Academic and editor
“We shouted from Inverness all the way to the Isle of Skye.”
Kristen Merskine and husband Gordon Campbell don’t mind a good debate, and throughout their almost 30 years together just about everything has been discussed. “What do we debate? Everything,” says Kris.
In conversation the couple’s sentences jumble together, joke after rebuff after loving retort, and they disagree wildly on many things. Even choosing a movie is tricky: “She likes movies with bus chases and explosions,” he says. “And he likes movies with naked French ladies smoking cigarettes full of ennui,” she says. “It’s called culture, darling,” he says quickly. “Mine’s called entertainment so you don’t leave the room wanting to slit your wrists,” she jokes.
Officially they met in 1993 when they both moved into a share house in Sydney with two others. But it wasn’t long before they realised they’d crossed paths years before, in Townsville in the early 80s when they were attending James Cook University, albeit in different years. Kris remembers seeing Gordon around: “He was the only guy on campus who wore a sarong and Chesty Bonds [singlet] and he was a surf lifesaver then. He was really cute but he wasn’t my type because I was into gloomy weird goth boys and he was all blond and tanned and chiselled.”
Her heart almost stopped when she saw him seven years later: “I saw the same god standing by the refrigerator … I just looked at him and I was so happily single and I was like, oh my god, he’s gorgeous. I can’t live here. And I nearly backed out of the share house.”
Gordon has similarly vague memories from their university days but when he saw her in Sydney he was smitten. One night over a game of chess and a bottle of Green Ginger wine they kissed. But like all good housemates there was an unspoken agreement that they wouldn’t pair up – so they kept their romance a secret. It was only when a housemate confessed to Gordon that he was romancing the other woman in their house that the couple came clean.
Kris still wasn’t sure, however. She’d dreamed of being an academic and so went to Scotland to finish her master’s in medieval archaeology for a year, and Gordon travelled to India and finished his degree. They reunited in Townsville and this time he was determined to make it work. He proposed: “She always made me happy. I could talk to her about everything and I found I really liked having somebody at home I could talk to. I just liked domestic bliss.” Despite her joking protestations, Kris said yes: “Because I love him, really. He’s the only guy who’s ever kissed me and made my knees weak.”
They were married in a rainforest retreat centre in the Paluma national park not far from Townsville, amid a series of misadventures. First their officiating priest almost lost his hand in a ceiling fan accident. (“He kept all his fingers,” Gordon says.) Then a busload of guests skidded off the road and had to be winched to safety by rescue services. After the festivities the wedding party was buffeted by torrential rain, the remnants of an unexpected cyclone off the Queensland coast. The next morning they woke to find landslides on the road home. Everyone was stranded for the next three days waiting for the road to be cleared. It was a cocoon of family and friends with the occasional food drop from the SES, all endured with humour and love. “One wedding guest said I wasn’t expecting to have a cold shower on someone else’s honeymoon,” says Kris with a laugh.
The couple settled into married life in Sydney and hoped to conceive quickly. But they suffered three miscarriages in a year. It was a very difficult time, with many trips to the hospital and countless tears. It was tough on their relationship, too. “We didn’t fall into each other which is something that I reckon if you are a couple you should [do],” says Kris. “But I was so angry and he hadn’t experienced anything like that before.”
After a while they decided to move to Tasmania, a place they both loved. They didn’t know anyone but it was the new start they needed. “We only had each other and that was probably good because then we forcibly had to fall into each other,” says Kris.
She fell pregnant once more but it still wasn’t smooth sailing. “Gordon had to support me right through this whole first pregnancy where I was so convinced it was all going to go horribly wrong,” she says. “Any time I flinched when I haven’t felt the baby moved or I don’t feel well or anything like that, he would drive me straight up to the hospital [where] they’d do a scan for me and reassure me that [the baby] was OK.”
It was an upsetting time, says Gordon: “It was challenging, it was joyous [and] it was wonderful.” Their daughter Dara arrived safely.
They’ve stayed in Tasmania and now their South Hobart home is a jumble of kids and happy chaos. When it comes to discipline, they play good cop, bad cop – “He’s nice, I’m mean,” says Kris – but they agree on how to raise their four children. “We both [encourage] the children to speak their minds and be very straightforward,” says Gordon. It’s turned out well. “We tried really hard to raise homeless yoga-weaving hippies,” jokes Kris, “but our eldest has just been awarded a global leader scholarship.”
Daughter Dara recently represented Australia when she took part in the United Nations’ commission on the status of women and her parents are justifiably proud: “She’s kind of like the Michael J Fox character in Family Ties.”
Despite their many differences, they agree on politics and social activism. “We’re all live and let live,” says Gordon. “We’re both domesticated hippies of a sort [although] she’s more mystical. I’m more show me the peer review articles and the test tubes.” They meet somewhere in between on religion: “Where she sees lots of beliefs having a share of the truth, I see all different religions having a bit of a share of the bullshit.”
Now in their 50s, Kris jokes that it’s thanks to laziness that they haven’t split up. But it’s clearly something deeper: “When we’ve had really tough times, one of us has always not been willing to walk away.”
Gordon agrees: “It’s tempting to not see somebody’s good points or to take them for granted and then focus on the problems. I’ve tried to guard against that by realising that as people [Kris is] pretty darn good.”
“I actually like him more now,” says Kris. “I thought he was really hot and sexy, all of which I still do think but … we know each other well now and I really like hanging out with him.” He feels the same way: “Seeing them as a real person with all their foibles and everything and still loving them just like that because over the years I’ve come to realise that I had some little tiny foibles as well.”
They still argue a lot – but they fight fair and have agreed not to bring history into an argument. “I think we’ve got each other’s fighting style down and sometimes it’s like chess champions playing with someone they know. They just do the standard moves. You know where the other one’s coming from and then you might mix it up a little bit … It’s a choreographed thing [but] you know there are some things you’re never going to get past.”
So they don’t shy away from conflict: “We’re both passionate about what we want and we want to achieve it, and there’s nothing worse than wimping out. I’d rather be with someone who’s assertive about their needs and what they want than somebody whose like, ‘Oh whatever, dear.’ ”
But they’ve learned when to leave things alone, when the other is tired or overwhelmed. “Then you’ll realise it’s a silly thing that you can laugh about. Don’t be afraid of conflict but sometimes postponing it is OK.”
Each day they make time for each other, going for long walks with the dog to debrief on their days. “Then we’re clear and it’s not the cacophony of home. It’s just us talking to each other,” says Kris. “If we, for whatever reasons, external or accidental, don’t get that chance to walk and talk, that’s when things will often get tricky.” And ultimately their shared sense of humour is the key, says Kris. “It’s a bit of a glue actually. If we’re not laughing like idiots, then we need to.”
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