Anne Summers: ‘A lot of men resent the fact that women have rights and have entitlements and have freedoms’

Fifty years after writing a book which would change how Australians view their history and culture, the author and journalist isn’t slowing down

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Anne Summers is scrutinising street numbers as we walk. Pausing in front of a 19th-century mansion, the author and journalist looks up to its second storey. “This is where I was arrested.”

“Oh wow,” she says, taking in its immaculate sandstone facade. “It didn’t look like this then.”

We’re in an area real estate agents now call Potts Point, but in 1974, it was the Cross. When Summers moved to Sydney in her 20s, from her home town of Adelaide – “an incredibly boring place” – every aspect of the notorious neighbourhood excited her. The luminous purple jacarandas and exotic frangipanis, the steep geography and sparkling harbour, but most of all “the incredible mix of people”.