By Phil Jarratt
Michael Jerome Donovan, a former chair of Tourism Noosa and the original Noosa Biosphere Foundation, and a prominent figure in the arts and tourism industries of Queensland and NSW, passed away in the early hours of Sunday 17 March after a long struggle with Shy-Drager Syndrome, also known as multiple systems atrophy, or MSA.
Having self-diagnosed the symptoms of what he thought was Parkinson’s disease in 2009, and then receiving an official diagnosis of MSA in 2012, Michael was given a typical life expectancy of three to five years.
Clearly the specialists didn’t know who they were dealing with. Throughout his storied career, Michael had made a habit of dodging bullets and defying odds.
As he learned to live with a terminal condition and started as many rehabilitation programs as his body could handle, the doctors revised his expectancy to seven to nine years, which the patient regarded as just another challenge to be conquered.
Remarkably, Michael lived 15 years from first noticing there was a problem. A vibrant and energetic man at his peak, he lost a lot along the way, but, supported by Carol, his wife of almost 49 years, he retained his quality of life, and kept a wry smile and a wicked sense of humour until the end.
Born in Brisbane in 1947, Michael’s first job out of school was as a bank johnny, which he pursued until, at 20, he volunteered to assist the famed New Zealand hypnotist The Great Franquin during a Brisbane performance. “Apparently I did the right things when asked and was funny and a bit outrageous, and at the end of the show he shook my hand and slipped a card into it, which was a free admission to the next night’s show,” Michael told me with great delight in 2021.
He’d ridden his mobility scooter from home to meet me for coffee, and fell easily into storyteller mode.
“So I came back and did the same thing and he slipped another card into my hand, but this time it was an invitation to go backstage and have a drink with him. Backstage the Great Franquin said, ‘You seem to know how the system works, would you like to join the show?’”
Michael quit the bank and on his 21st birthday in 1968, he signed up to travel with the touring show for a year as the audience plant in New Zealand and Australia.
He recalled: “I’d change my appearance for each show in a particular place, some nights without my glasses or wearing shades instead. I did what I was told, and I learned how to hypnotise people, even over the phone.
“I knew all the tricks of the trade. I could read someone’s bus ticket number blindfolded, but I can’t tell you how.
“I also learned how the backstage crew operated which, years later when I worked for the Australian Opera, gave me an understanding of the craft of the stage manager.”
It was an edge that he took with him through a stellar career in theatre and arts management, culminating in him becoming executive producer of the NSW Bicentennial Arts Program in 1988. He also worked in corporate public affairs, environmental tourism, became chief executive officer of Best Western Hotels, then created and managed the biggest executive mentor service in Australia.
In the 1990s he returned to his native Queensland with Carol and ran the Brisbane Convention Bureau and the Queensland Tourism Industry Association, as well as creating and managing the biggest executive mentor service in Australia, before relocating to Noosa, where he soon stepped into the evolving tourism scene, becoming chair of Tourism Noosa in 2006 as it transitioned from an arm of council into a stand-alone entity, funded by a council-raised tourism levy.
Although he remained in the TN chair for the next few years, through a lot of rough and tumble within the board and then the pressures of the amalgamated council years, Michael was sometimes seen as a divisive figure, probably because he didn’t suffer fools gladly, but he usually softened the blow with that wry smile.
Despite the frequent turmoil, Tourism Noosa’s marketing initiatives helped grow the tourism economy rapidly towards a billion dollars, but Michael was already juggling his responsibilities there with chairing the Noosa Biosphere Reserve Foundation, a role that was soon equally steeped in controversy and bitter internal arguments.
To add to the internal pressure, he was also playing a leading role in local mentoring at Business Mentoring Noosa and had become chair of the new Eumundi Markets entity.
What very few people knew was that Michael’s juggling skills were increasingly hampered by the terminal condition diagnosed correctly after he had collapsed at a breakfast in 2012.
On 30 June 2013 Michael called a halt to all mentoring work, all directorships and, other than trying to get the Biosphere Institute for Sustainability:Noosa up and running, stepped away from almost all other advisory roles.
He helped fill the void by writing an extraordinarily detailed memoir he called Just Famous Enough Not To Be Noticed, a slyly self-deprecating dig.
In the book’s final pages, Michael was bravely frank about his condition, admitting, “Further mental deterioration will likely follow and progressively present new challenges. The final parts of this book were done using speech-to-text software as my typing is poor and I’ve lost recognisable handwriting … MSA is incurable and terminal. I spoke to a psychologist friend about the stages of grieving which I am yet to experience. Apparently, I may not. This is perhaps because of my lack of any belief in an afterlife and firmly believing what we get or create for ourselves is all there is.”
In Michael Donovan’s case, the legacy is considerable.
His final years were spent doing what he could, while he could, with Carol, the love of his life. They travelled, took cruises, enjoyed fine wine and food, made new friends and treasured old ones.
Michael took his last breath at beautiful Katie Rose Cottage, Carol by his side, and was privately cremated on 21 March.
