Courtenay was 'excited about dying'

Bryce Courtney told The Bottom Line program, airing from midday today, he was grateful to die with his intellectual abilities in tact. Picture: Park Jeremy Source: News Limited

HIS storytelling captivated a nation, sending his novels to the top of the best-sellers list.

But even speaking from beyond the grave, author Bryce Courtenay knew how to shock, revealing in his final TV interview to air today that he was ''excited about dying."

The acclaimed writer and advertising guru, who died of cancer in November last year, unleashed his final thoughts on life, his career and the battles facing his adopted homeland of Australia in a compelling chat with Alex Malley, the CEO of CPA Australia.

Courtenay told Malley's The Bottom Line program, airing from midday today, he was grateful to die with his intellectual abilities in tact.

Having endured the agony of losing his son Damon to AIDS (the inspiration for his acclaimed novel April Fool's Day), the South African-born literary icon said he was glad to have been "spared" the indignity of losing his mind.

"I watch people get older and lose their intellectual acuity, you lose that sharpness, that cleanness, that brain that you worked so hard on and that you were gifted with and lose the gifts that were given . . . I'm going to die with my mind intact. And to me that is the most exciting way you could possibly die."

Just as he mapped out the storylines of his books, Courtenay revealed he plotted out how he wanted to be buried horizontally, without a tombstone, his grave marked only by the planting of an oak tree he had cultivated from an acorn salvaged while holidaying in Sherwood Forrest, England.

"(The acorn) stayed in a draw in my study for 15 years or something and when I was at my last home I planted it. It's now 6ft tall that oak tree to be put on top of me'' with Courtenay requesting he be buried in a cardboard coffin ("because the cardboard will decompose and I'll make good manure.'')

Reflecting on his unhappy childhood, spent at times in an orphanage, Courtenay revealed life with his bipolar mother was "pretty rough."

"The only thing I can say that is wonderful about my mother is she forced me to learn three verses of the Bible every day of my life and I've read the Bible now five times and it taught me the English language."

He never met his birth father but revelled in being a parent to three sons, marred only by the loss of his haemophilic son in 1991.

Courtenay said: "To lose a child is the most horrific thing that will happen in your life but if you have loved them and cherished them and enjoyed them and allowed them to think and be whatever they wanted to be, you have given them the gift of life and if they go early you've done the best you possibly could but you will never ever get over it. I wake up at least once a week howling."

Looking to the future of an Australia he would not be around to witness, Courtenay warned the country was becoming "emotionally dumbed down'' especially over the issue of boat people.

"If I were king of the world there wouldn't be boat people, there would only be people coming in boats. I would mix us all up so that we were all exactly one shade of each other. Nobody knows who anybody was, we were all Australians, a small country, we can accommodate a lot more people, let's share it and be the most brilliant small country on earth instead of what's going on right now, getting dumber and dumber and dumber and better qualified dumber. It's not an intellectual idea, it's an emotional one and we are becoming emotionally dumbed down.''

The Bottom Line airs on Channel 9, Saturday from midday.

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