Bob Carr opens speaker season with ‘deeply personal’ memoir talk

By Steven Lang 

At Outspoken we are delighted – honoured in fact – to open our 2026 series of  conversations with former journalist and NSW Premier Bob Carr speaking about his new memoir, Bring Back Yesterday.

In October 2023 Bob’s wife of more than 50 years, Helena, died suddenly. In this memoir he records his attempt to deal with his grief, switching between the present time, with him pacing the night-time streets of Sydney, and reflections on his shared past with Helena, including ruminations on travel, conversations and cultural curiosity.

Books & Publishing puts it this way: these memories ‘form a mosaic of a relationship rather than a linear account of grief … shifting from first to third-person narration, offering an almost observational distance, as though he is watching himself from afar, his grief rendered universal. 

There is a gentle melancholy running through Bring Back Yesterday, but it is never indulgent… rather it is… comparable in tone and subject to Geraldine Brooks’s Memorial Days and Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking. Bring Back Yesterday is a memoir that feels possible only after a full life that has been well lived.

Bob Carr was the longest serving Premier of NSW. A committed conservationist, he used his term in power to create literally hundreds of National Parks, preserving vast areas of wilderness. He later held the position of Foreign Minister under Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd. He is the author of four books, including The Diary of a Foreign Minister. 

Outspoken presents Bob Carr in conversation. Maleny Community Centre, Tuesday March 31, 6 for 6.30pm. www.outspoken.com.