The Australian Women's Weekly April 2017

Every now and then, I’ll pull a book off a shelf at home and spot an inscription on the title page that’ll make me smile, cry or feel vaguely guilty. The latter is usually a library stamp from 1994, which causes me to wonder if it’s really too late to return it and whether, if I braved that particular establishment now, sirens would blare and doors would slam around me. The inscriptions that make me smile are usually from friends – wishing me a happy Christmas in 1985 or, more recently, awkwardly signed copies from brave, brilliant friends who’ve written books and whose tomes I proudly displayed on a shelf of their own. When my lovely girlfriends ignored my reluctance and threw me a baby shower a few years ago,…

Letter of the month I’m sitting here with my heavy heart. It’s the day after the fifth anniversary of my 14-year-old son’s death. The last words of Editor-in-Chief Kim Doherty’s March letter impress deep in my mind. “I hope your family – whatever size or shape it takes – brings you joy this month, too”. It shoots me back to the day I found out I was pregnant with twins. I was crying, as I already had a five-month-old at home. What was I going to be like with three babies under 13 months? I am now outside pathology and a lady asks if I am okay. I tell her my story. She holds my hand and says, “You’re a lucky girl. I was never able to have children.” I…

ROYAL WATCH Still tall in the saddle on the eve of her 91st birthday, Queen Elizabeth II enjoyed the first days of spring with a ride along the banks of the Thames near Windsor Castle. By her side was head groom, Terry Pendry, and her mount was one of her much-loved Fell ponies. The Queen has been riding since she was three and her first pony was a Shetland called Peggy. Her Majesty rides regularly and breeds Shetland, Highland and Fell ponies. Style Queen The Queen has resumed her duties with style and energy after suffering a heavy cold. From far left: In magenta at an exhibition of Pacific art; catching a train to London in an overcoat of mint green; a turquoise theme on Valentine’s Day; a royal blue…

“You look down at this tiny being and say, ‘We created this’. It is an extraordinary feeling.” When 60 Minutes reporter Ally Langdon finally held her baby son for the first time, he was already 12 hours old. Ally had given birth at 7am that morning after a 32-hour labour, but her baby was pale, floppy and unresponsive. Medical staff resuscitated her first-born with oxygen and immediately rushed the baby to the hospital’s postnatal special-care unit. Physically exhausted and emotionally depleted, Ally and her husband, Mike Willesee Jnr, 49, spent the next 12 hours waiting anxiously on a knife’s edge, as their baby – known in utero as MJJ, for Mikey Jnr Jnr – struggled to recover. “I would wheel Ally into the special-care nursery,” says Mike. “And when she…

Bert Newton From 1967, when he was presenting to a room that looked like “Vesuvius”, because everyone was smoking and drinking, to his most recent appearance in 2010, Bert Newton has seen it all. He’s hosted TV’s Logie Awards 19 times and taken home 18 of the coveted statuettes, four of which were Gold. Yet, as he tells The Weekly, there are a few moments that really stand out in his memory. “We had a lot of people coming over from Hollywood,” Bert says of his earlier years. “John Wayne, Rock Hudson, Sammy Davis Jnr, Bob Hope, Sophia Loren.” Many of the guests he knew “from a fan’s point of view” and so to engage in a little banter with them on stage was exciting. “I’ve been a film buff…

Family is everywhere in Chloe and Bill Shorten’s home in leafy Moonee Ponds, a tram-ride from Melbourne. Paintings of daughters Georgette and Clementine sit side by side in Chloe’s study just inside the front door. In prime position on the living room wall is a rather ethereal black and white photograph of Chloe as a baby in her mother, Dame Quentin Bryce’s, arms with her older brother, a toddler, gazing up at them, while on the side table is a proud photo of a grown-up Bill with his beloved mum, Ann, who died in 2014. And as I sit down to chat to Chloe and Bill, their two slobbery, barrel-chested bulldogs, Theodore and Tilly, lumbering around to bid welcome, it’s clear that their family of five, now seven years together,…