In their 17 years the Whitlams have endured high and lows of an operatic scale. So bring on the orchestra. Andrew Murfett reports.

FOUR years ago, Tim Freedman did something as surreptitious as it was unexpected: he became a father.

The 43-year-old nonchalantly let the details slip last month in Sydney while promoting the Whitlams' new greatest-hits album, Truth, Beauty and a Picture of You.

One recent Wednesday morning, having dropped off three-and-a-half-year-old Alice at kindy, Freedman is in his cluttered kitchen in Sydney's Newtown, fixing himself a cup of tea, talking giddily about kindergarten appointments and parental duties.

How did he keep being a dad secret for so long? "I don't think people really care, as long as I put an album out every two years."

When I suggest that perhaps most music journalists were too timid to ask, owing to his prickly reputation, he smirks.(read more)