Speaker 1: We'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land
Speaker 1: on which this podcast was produced, the Galligle people of
Speaker 1: the orination. We pay our respects to Elder's past and present.
Speaker 1: This episode contains discussion of suicide. If this raises any
Speaker 1: issues for you, support is available through the links and
Speaker 1: phone numbers in the show notes.
Speaker 2: It's twenty twenty two and Julie Goodwin's phone is ringing.
Speaker 2: It's the producer of Master Chef inviting Julie to come
Speaker 2: back for the Fans and Favorites season, thirteen years after
Speaker 2: winning the first Australian season. Julie is utterly terrified at
Speaker 2: the thought of returning to where it all began. You
Speaker 2: are first Master Chef. This show completely changed her life.
Speaker 2: Her win catapulted her into the spotlight and with it
Speaker 2: came book deals, a cooking school, radio show and hosting gigs.
Speaker 2: But in twenty twenty everything came to a grinding holt.
Speaker 2: Julie couldn't cope with the pressure any longer and didn't
Speaker 2: want to be here anymore. Her despair reached crisis point,
Speaker 2: resulting in a five week stay in a mental health facility.
Speaker 2: Two years on, she's in a much better place. Despite
Speaker 2: being terrified, she says yes to the opportunity, a far
Speaker 2: cry from the woman who couldn't step into a kitchen
Speaker 2: just a couple of years prior. Julie is back in
Speaker 2: the pressure cooker. I'm at Middleton and this is Headgame today.
Speaker 2: Julie Goodwin on the conversation that kept her alive. Julie,
Speaker 2: we first met on Dancing with the stuff.
Speaker 3: We are dancing buddies, aren't we.
Speaker 2: We are dancing buddies, and we got on really well.
Speaker 2: I really enjoyed your journey. I really enjoyed your your presence,
Speaker 2: your aura, your energy. Have you always been like that?
Speaker 3: Oh god, I don't know. I don't know, I've always
Speaker 3: I don't know. I just love new experiences and getting
Speaker 3: to sort of chuck myself into something completely different. And
Speaker 3: always the best part of those things is the people
Speaker 3: that you meet, isn't it, And what you get to
Speaker 3: do with the people that you meet. And you know,
Speaker 3: I really loved I really loved seeing you sort of
Speaker 3: progress through that competition. But your acknowledgement, because obviously such
Speaker 3: a sort of physical beast specimen, your acknowledgement of the
Speaker 3: dancers and how fit they are, and what what a
Speaker 3: different kind of discipline ities and that you can you
Speaker 3: can be really at the top of your game in
Speaker 3: one area and still have no dear about other other things,
Speaker 3: and you know, things you're unfamiliar with. It was so interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I sort of swapped out my army boots for
Speaker 2: dancing shoes, and you swapped out your spatulate hand for
Speaker 2: dancing shoes. Let's go right back before we get into
Speaker 2: the nitty griitty of master chef and your life and
Speaker 2: you know where you are today, Let's go back to
Speaker 2: how where it all started as a youngster growing up?
Speaker 2: How did life look for you?
Speaker 3: I grew up in the suburbs of Sydney, blue collar family,
Speaker 3: sort of fairly fairly normal, I would say, you know,
Speaker 3: Mum and dad both had a working ethic. I was
Speaker 3: raised by my stepdad, who is still my dad. Like
Speaker 3: mum and dad had been married for coming on fifty
Speaker 3: years now, and so my biological father left when I
Speaker 3: was very young and what age just I was three?
Speaker 2: Oh wow, do you remember your biological father?
Speaker 3: I do?
Speaker 2: You do?
Speaker 3: I have? It was like one of my earliest memories as.
Speaker 2: Well, your early memory.
Speaker 3: The first thing I can attribute to that time in
Speaker 3: my life was the memory where he had left. Mum
Speaker 3: was pregnant when he left, and he popped back to
Speaker 3: collect some of his things, and I was so excited
Speaker 3: to see him because I hadn't seen him for ages.
Speaker 3: You know, little kids get excited. And Mum said, I
Speaker 3: must have been so excited. I need to go to
Speaker 3: the bathroom. And when I came back, he had gone again.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and I didn't see him again until I was, oh, gosh,
Speaker 3: coming out for fourteen fifteen years old.
Speaker 2: Wow, So that memory was it was a positive one
Speaker 2: in the excitement, but ultially a super negative one because
Speaker 2: when you came back, he'd obviously popped in, grabbed his
Speaker 2: stuff and left.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't think he wanted to do the goodbye.
Speaker 3: I don't think he wanted to tell me that it
Speaker 3: was goodbye.
Speaker 2: And for that to be one of your first memories
Speaker 2: as well, so obviously in plant as he does, right
Speaker 2: as it does. How did that affect you sort of
Speaker 2: moving forward with your let's say, your your your new father,
Speaker 2: your your stepfather, and your mom did was there any
Speaker 2: sort of hurdles there where there was resentment or anything
Speaker 2: like that or age. I suppose you're quite multiple, aren't you.
Speaker 3: Totally? And when my stepdad dad came on the scene,
Speaker 3: I just loved him and he loved us, and so
Speaker 3: he like he just stepped into that role and has
Speaker 3: maintained that role. He took me to band practice, and he,
Speaker 3: you know, loved my mom and he we're a family,
Speaker 3: you know, So I'm I adore him and he adores us.
Speaker 3: So you know, I don't feel like I missed out
Speaker 3: on having a father figure in my life because they
Speaker 3: got married when I was six, So I had this
Speaker 3: beautiful male role model in my life. But now what
Speaker 3: I've just been unpacking through all this psychological journey I've
Speaker 3: been on for one of a better word, is that
Speaker 3: that early leaving it does shape how you interact with
Speaker 3: the world, and so my persona And when you ask
Speaker 3: if I've always been like that, I guess what I've
Speaker 3: learned is that that always trying to be really shiny,
Speaker 3: do really well at school, make everybody happy, never let
Speaker 3: anybody down, all of that really comes from a terror
Speaker 3: of being left.
Speaker 2: Wow, And that makes complete sense because when that gets
Speaker 2: snatched away from you, I suppose it sort of lived
Speaker 2: as you you know, it's like, what did I do
Speaker 2: wrong or how could I do things better to make
Speaker 2: sure that this doesn't happen again?
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yep, absolutely, And you know I didn't know until
Speaker 3: recently how much that shapes you, you know, because I've
Speaker 3: always thought, you know.
Speaker 2: And when you say recently recently as in the last
Speaker 2: couple of years, or recently as in your adulthood, past
Speaker 2: past four years, past four years, yep, Wow, when did
Speaker 2: that sort of trigger and when did that sort of
Speaker 2: click in?
Speaker 3: Well, it clicked in when I started having pretty intensive
Speaker 3: therapy for a complete mental breakdown. So that's all been unpacked,
Speaker 3: all that and a bunch of other stuff that happened.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's traumas that happened in childhood that aren't
Speaker 3: acknowledged or resolved. They don't go away very similar they do,
Speaker 3: and you can paper over the cracks all your life,
Speaker 3: but it'll find a way out. And so that was
Speaker 3: all part of the cumulative process towards completely falling apart.
Speaker 2: Did that affect your school where you're a good kid,
Speaker 2: were your cheeky kid, were your naughty kid?
Speaker 3: Was super good?
Speaker 2: You're super good, super good? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I believe that that sort of had an impact on it,
Speaker 3: so to be hard to swallow. You know. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: I worked really hard at school. I did well at school.
Speaker 3: I was a real goodie two shoes. I would have
Speaker 3: been of pain in you.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I was the school captain at Hornsby Girls High School. Like,
Speaker 3: achieving was really important to me, and it upset me
Speaker 3: to find out that that might be because I was
Speaker 3: frightened of being abandoned. That's how I learned that that's
Speaker 3: how you make people happy with you. And if you
Speaker 3: make people happy with you, they stick around. So I go, well,
Speaker 3: hang on a minute, if I'm just a set of reactions,
Speaker 3: who am I? Who am I? So you've got to
Speaker 3: sort of tease out what's your natural state and what
Speaker 3: came about because of what happened to you and all
Speaker 3: that sort of stuff. So it's all a bit of
Speaker 3: a tangleballer wall.
Speaker 2: Do you come from a big family or you an
Speaker 2: only child? No?
Speaker 3: So I have a little sister. She was the one
Speaker 3: who was in the oven back when my father left,
Speaker 3: and for a while I had a couple of step siblings.
Speaker 3: But I was pretty energetic and active, and I a
Speaker 3: round a lot, and I loved sport hyper competitive, but
Speaker 3: my schooling was more geared towards academic and musical, So
Speaker 3: that's sort of where I leaned into study and music,
Speaker 3: choir and band and all those hyper cool things.
Speaker 2: You were roper goodysues. If you could fit the persona
Speaker 2: of a goodye SSU school, it's bad, it's it's in love.
Speaker 3: That massive.
Speaker 2: Going into sort of your later education, was there any
Speaker 2: sort of career that really really excited you? And I'm
Speaker 2: obviously going to get into cooking, but before that was
Speaker 2: did you have a have a good idea of what
Speaker 2: you wanted to do and were you It sounds like
Speaker 2: you were very settled and very structured in your life.
Speaker 2: Was there a career path that you decided to take
Speaker 2: before obviously you got whisked away onto master chef. Oh?
Speaker 3: Yeah, When I was at high school, I wanted to
Speaker 3: be I was tossing up between criminal law and journalism.
Speaker 3: So those were the directions I wanted to hit in.
Speaker 3: Those were both you needed, like good marks and all
Speaker 3: that sort of thing to do those things. In year eleven,
Speaker 3: I had a bit of a thing happened. I had
Speaker 3: a memory resurface, a suppress memory from childhood which was
Speaker 3: a trauma and that I didn't really know that that
Speaker 3: set me off the rails until I sat down to
Speaker 3: write my life story in an autobiography and then the
Speaker 3: timeline just was there in front of me.
Speaker 2: And that was that was that recently that you wrote
Speaker 2: your book last year, because you're exactly the same as
Speaker 2: myself when I started writing my memoir. You sort of
Speaker 2: go back and because you just go back and you
Speaker 2: sort of break down those memories and you go really
Speaker 2: into your find a detail of it, you start to
Speaker 2: you start to learn so much about yourself. You start
Speaker 2: to learn so much about what happened. You start to
Speaker 2: rely understand what were the triggers for here, the things
Speaker 2: that you never knew that you would do. Unless you
Speaker 2: really dig in. It's extraor memoir.
Speaker 3: It's extraordinary, isn't it? And I would actually recommend it
Speaker 3: to anyone, even if you just write your life out chronologically,
Speaker 3: if it's not for publication. The learning in the understanding
Speaker 3: that came from that process was quite mind blowing. I
Speaker 3: actually needed a bit of therapeutic help through the process
Speaker 3: because it was really hard, and I remember I sat
Speaker 3: down to write I'm not sure at what point the
Speaker 3: wheels fell off these ambitions. But as I'm writing it,
Speaker 3: I thought, look when it happened this. The wheels fell
Speaker 3: off just after I had this memory resurface, and all
Speaker 3: sorts of stuff started to go wrong after that, you know,
Speaker 3: that's when everything changed. I was a skinny little kid.
Speaker 3: That's when I started to put on weight and eat
Speaker 3: in an unhealthy way. That's all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 2: Went wrong from this memory.
Speaker 3: And now I know it's I didn't know it then
Speaker 3: because I shoved it, shoved it straight back down. I
Speaker 3: wanted it, but it you know, it's like trying to
Speaker 3: unring a bell, you know. And so from going to
Speaker 3: wanting to be a criminal lawyer to a journalist to
Speaker 3: I just kind of gave up a little bit, and
Speaker 3: so I didn't I knew I wasn't going to get
Speaker 3: the marks I wanted. So then I thought, well, I'll
Speaker 3: be a teacher, which was lower a lower entry score
Speaker 3: into university. And then I went to university. I only
Speaker 3: lasted eighteen months at university. I turned into a ghost.
Speaker 2: And was it. Do you think that that memory that
Speaker 2: you had in year eleven is that you like your exams?
Speaker 2: That's quite a critical year. How old. Are you at
Speaker 2: that stage? Yeah?
Speaker 3: I was sixteen. Yeah, when the memory came back, I
Speaker 3: had completely suppressed it and then I remembered it, and
Speaker 3: it was not a welcome memory, and it wasn't there
Speaker 3: wasn't a big light bulb moment. It was almost like
Speaker 3: it was like a book on a bookshelf that I
Speaker 3: hadn't looked at for a really long time. It had
Speaker 3: always been there, but on this one particular day, I
Speaker 3: just took the book out and looked at it and went, oh, oh,
Speaker 3: that's right, there's this book on my bookshelf. And as
Speaker 3: a sixteen I didn't know what to do with it.
Speaker 3: So I stuck it back on the shelf and I
Speaker 3: put my back against it, and I braced my legs
Speaker 3: against it, and I held it there as hard as
Speaker 3: I could. I didn't want to know. I didn't want
Speaker 3: to know that book was there. That's that's as n
Speaker 3: close as I can get to describing what happened.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great analogy, and that's what we do,
Speaker 2: you know, especially when we can't face it, and it's
Speaker 2: something that did you have it? Did you have a
Speaker 2: support network that you could have spoken to or I
Speaker 2: suppose at sixteen. You don't. It's a case of you do,
Speaker 2: don't you shove it away.
Speaker 3: It was the nineteen eighties, exactly. It was the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 3: and it just wasn't spoken about enough. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: spoken about, you know, and that led to actually in
Speaker 3: year twelve. And see again, this is stuff I hadn't
Speaker 3: thought about for years until my world fell apart nearly
Speaker 3: five years ago. Now I hadn't thought about any of this,
Speaker 3: but that that was I had an attempt on my
Speaker 3: own life in year twelve.
Speaker 2: So the domino effect of it. Was it the domino
Speaker 2: effect of this memory, yep, and you.
Speaker 3: But I didn't know that's why I did that, and
Speaker 3: didn't know it until I wrote it all down. I went,
Speaker 3: oh my god, that's why that happened. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: that's why that happened. I now know that when I
Speaker 3: went to university, I was severely depressed. I would go
Speaker 3: whole days without speaking to anybody. I didn't have friends,
Speaker 3: and went from being, you know, the school captain of
Speaker 3: my high school and involved in every extracurricular group you
Speaker 3: could think of, and in this leadership role to go
Speaker 3: to university where I would not speak for whole days
Speaker 3: at a time.
Speaker 2: You're well just flipped upside down ultimately.
Speaker 3: Completely, and I just never knew why until recently. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: So it was a big, big thing to come to
Speaker 3: terms with.
Speaker 2: And you mentioned just in year twelve there that you
Speaker 2: that you wanted to take to take your life. Was
Speaker 2: that planned? Did it sort of escalate into right, going
Speaker 2: to plan this, so I'm going to do it? Or
Speaker 2: was it just right? In this situation, I don't want
Speaker 2: to be you anymore.
Speaker 3: There was so much pressure, And this is why every
Speaker 3: year when those exam results come out, I reach out
Speaker 3: to everyone I know who's waiting on them, and I say,
Speaker 3: this is not the rest of your life. This is
Speaker 3: one moment in your life, and it will only determine
Speaker 3: what you do next. It will not determine what you
Speaker 3: do for the rest of your life. So whatever happens,
Speaker 3: don't worry, because I know the despair I felt as
Speaker 3: And it was the day before I had a trial
Speaker 3: HSC exam and I was left on my own in
Speaker 3: the house to study, and I just decided I could
Speaker 3: not face that exam the next day, and so that's
Speaker 3: what I did. And the response then and again it
Speaker 3: was the nineteen eighties. There was no support. It was
Speaker 3: there was quite a sort of sneering attitude towards kids
Speaker 3: and their cries for attention. So it was decided, and
Speaker 3: you know, with all great love to my parents, their
Speaker 3: belief was they were doing the best thing for me.
Speaker 3: It was kind of decided that we would just keep
Speaker 3: it to ourselves because stigma. Because of the stigma, they'll
Speaker 3: take the school captaincy away from you. You'll never get
Speaker 3: over this. Your reputation will be destroyed, you know.
Speaker 2: Into the family as well.
Speaker 3: Shame, the shame of it, and so you know, the
Speaker 3: hospital can't talk about it because they're bound not to.
Speaker 3: And we decided as a family that we would never
Speaker 3: to speak of it again. And so I had no
Speaker 3: there was no unpacking of that. There was no psychological support.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget the social worker who came into the
Speaker 3: hospital after a few days I've been in and she says, well,
Speaker 3: are you going to do that again? And I said no,
Speaker 3: She said all right, then she signed me up. That
Speaker 3: was That was the extent of the mental health support
Speaker 3: that was available to me.
Speaker 2: So after that moment when you decided to take your life,
Speaker 2: did the dominoes keep on falling thereafter, or did you
Speaker 2: decide to sort of get your life back on track.
Speaker 2: How did you manage to do that, because ultimately you
Speaker 2: had to do it by yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, like I say, I didn't really the idea
Speaker 3: of depression was not a part of our family vernacular.
Speaker 3: That's actually people feeling sorry for themselves. That's what that
Speaker 3: was defined as people who can't pick themselves up by
Speaker 3: their bootstraps and put a good face on it and
Speaker 3: all that sort of all that tough talk, you know,
Speaker 3: which you know, my parents were raised by people who
Speaker 3: went through the war and the depression and all that
Speaker 3: sort of stuff, and it just flows on and I
Speaker 3: understand it. I completely understand. There are eras where you know,
Speaker 3: that's what you have.
Speaker 2: To do, or situations that were lasted so long, i e.
Speaker 2: The wars that you had to you had no choice.
Speaker 3: You would know you can't be talking about depression when
Speaker 3: you're in the middle of the battlefield. It's like, let's go.
Speaker 3: But you also have to leave the battlefield on the battlefield,
Speaker 3: right and bring compassion into other areas of your life.
Speaker 3: So I didn't know that that's what was happening, and
Speaker 3: I didn't realize that that's what had happened until I
Speaker 3: wrote down my story and when the light bulbs were
Speaker 3: going on all over the place. I left Ginnie and
Speaker 3: I drifted through a few sort of not very important jobs,
Speaker 3: and I was trying to find my place in the world.
Speaker 3: I met the boy who I fell in love with
Speaker 3: and I'm still married to decades and decades later. So
Speaker 3: I really landed on my feet with the right person,
Speaker 3: my life partner. And you know, eventually I found my
Speaker 3: way into youth work, and that's where I found a
Speaker 3: real affinity. That's what I loved to do.
Speaker 2: Oh, youth work helping others. Ultimately, did that give you
Speaker 2: a great sense of achievement of purpose?
Speaker 3: It can be. I don't know. I think I was
Speaker 3: always looking for purposeful things to do. You know, where
Speaker 3: I met my not yet husband was in a some
Speaker 3: vincent de poor youth group. So we used to go
Speaker 3: out and do dawn patrol in King's Cross and handout
Speaker 3: sandwiches at three o'clock in the morning and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: So I was always looking for purpose.
Speaker 2: Home meat sandwiches, Oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, we'd pick them up from the Matt Talbot hostel.
Speaker 3: Whether our made in dreadful coffee and earns and stuff.
Speaker 3: So yeah, youth work really gave me a sense of purpose.
Speaker 3: And I ended up at Frank Baxter Juvenile Detention Center
Speaker 3: after I got married and moved up the coast. So
Speaker 3: I was working up there in detention with those lads.
Speaker 3: And that was thirty years ago now and I'm back
Speaker 3: there now. So I'm back there, but I've developed a
Speaker 3: cooking course which I go in and teach the boys
Speaker 3: how to cook and we sit down. The cooking is
Speaker 3: and you wouldn't think you'd hear me say this, but
Speaker 3: the cooking is actually secondary in this course. So the
Speaker 3: most important thing is the act of doing that together
Speaker 3: and then sitting at a table together and having a
Speaker 3: family meal. So instead of being served food onto their
Speaker 3: plate which they eat and go back to their cell,
Speaker 3: we sit at the table. It's all served family style.
Speaker 3: So they've got to share, they've got to communicate, you.
Speaker 2: Know, to work together. And it's got a problem solve.
Speaker 3: Yes, absolutely, And they've got to look to left and
Speaker 3: right and see if everyone's got enough, and they've got
Speaker 3: to you know, and there's table rules, family rules, you know.
Speaker 3: And I've been the mum, I'm just like, well, you know,
Speaker 3: don't go I don't like that. I don't like that.
Speaker 3: And I say, well, you know family dinner rules. You
Speaker 3: don't have to like it, you don't have to finish it,
Speaker 3: but you have to taste it, and you know, so
Speaker 3: they're trying new things, and so it's been a beautiful
Speaker 3: full circle to actually go back into youth work and
Speaker 3: to be able to bring the cooking along with me.
Speaker 2: So cooking. Have you always been a sort of a chef?
Speaker 2: How did the love for cooking which ultimately changed your
Speaker 2: career and changed your path in life? When did that
Speaker 2: sort of become serious? When did you know that you
Speaker 2: were the chef extra half?
Speaker 3: Well, I still don't know about that, but I think
Speaker 3: Matt Preston described it really well once during Master Chef.
Speaker 3: He said, the greatest cuisines of the world come from
Speaker 3: that country's poverty. So you know, you think about patai
Speaker 3: in France, Well, let's liver. When you don't figure out
Speaker 3: that taste good unless you're really hungry, I'm sorry, So.
Speaker 2: Unless you're using everything, every.
Speaker 3: Single thing, because there's nothing you can't afford to waste anything.
Speaker 3: That's how I started cooking. So I didn't cook a
Speaker 3: lot growing up because I'm messy, so Mum didn't let
Speaker 3: me messing up the kitchen too badly. But I think
Speaker 3: watching the way she cooked and my nan and everything.
Speaker 3: When I moved out into my own home, I love
Speaker 3: to eat. I'm greedy little person, and so I wanted
Speaker 3: to eat nice food. But we had no money. We
Speaker 3: had no money. With you once you've got a mortgage
Speaker 3: when you're very young. We're only twenty four. If I
Speaker 3: wanted to eat nice food, I'd to work out how
Speaker 3: to make nice food. And so I learned how to
Speaker 3: cook things that tasted nice with zero budget, like just
Speaker 3: a few bits and bobs in the pantry and have
Speaker 3: to put them together nicely. And we couldn't afford to
Speaker 3: eat out. So if we wanted a special meal, I
Speaker 3: had to be able to cook it because we just
Speaker 3: couldn't afford it.
Speaker 2: And it just wasn't you just grabbed what you try
Speaker 2: this with this. I've got a bit of this, let's
Speaker 2: not waste it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, some of that. And sometimes I'd eat something nice
Speaker 3: at someone else's house and I'd ask them how they
Speaker 3: did it. Back then this is pre internet, you know,
Speaker 3: so you couldn't google something, so if you ate something nice,
Speaker 3: you had to either work it out by trial and
Speaker 3: error find out the recipe from whoever made it. You know,
Speaker 3: there were a couple of cooking shows on TV, not
Speaker 3: a lot, but I watched what I could when I
Speaker 3: had the time. But it just became a real passion
Speaker 3: of me.
Speaker 2: So it was an underlying passion that you didn't realize
Speaker 2: was a passion until you started doing it, and then
Speaker 2: you became really good at it. Did anyone ever egg you?
Speaker 2: Because I know my brother's a great cook, right, and
Speaker 2: we always say to them, you should open up a
Speaker 2: little care or a little restaurant. Was that ever sort
Speaker 2: of mentioned as you were growing up with your cooking.
Speaker 3: Kind of not as I was growing up. When I
Speaker 3: was a grown up, it was, you know, and I
Speaker 3: have my little kids, and their happiness with what I
Speaker 3: cooked made me really happy. But you know, and I
Speaker 3: always entertained friends, so I always had people over on
Speaker 3: the weekend, and I love to cook for people. And
Speaker 3: but anytime anyone said, oh, you should do a little
Speaker 3: catering business, or you should do parties or whatever, I'd
Speaker 3: be like, oh god, no, it's far too much hard work.
Speaker 3: I love doing it for joy, but I would never
Speaker 3: want to do it for work, you know, until you
Speaker 3: know the contestant call came from us today.
Speaker 2: Take me back to that moment. Did you apply for it?
Speaker 2: How does that happen?
Speaker 3: Well?
Speaker 2: I loved and what you egged on with people going
Speaker 2: you should do masters, the show called Masters.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it was my best friend that did that,
Speaker 3: my best friend Tash. So I've been watching the British
Speaker 3: one and I've been telling her all about it. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, they made this and they did that. You
Speaker 3: should have seen it. And so when there was a
Speaker 3: contestant call for Australia, she said, oh, you ought to
Speaker 3: try out for it. I'm like, yeah, yeah, that'd be fun.
Speaker 3: But I kind of kept putting it off because I
Speaker 3: was busy. We had our own it business by that point,
Speaker 3: Mick and I and and in the end it was
Speaker 3: like the day before applications closed, and she said to me,
Speaker 3: if you don't put in that application, you're never allowed
Speaker 3: to talk to me about food again.
Speaker 2: Got a figure you don't really love cooking? Yah?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah yeah yah yeah yeah yeah. So I did,
Speaker 3: and you know, I forgot all about it and a
Speaker 3: few months later, I got the phone call just saying
Speaker 3: we want you to come in and audition, and I did.
Speaker 2: Wow. And at this stage you said you and your
Speaker 2: partner had an IT company. Yeah, yep, and the life
Speaker 2: was good, life was heading in the right direction. Was
Speaker 2: this quite a scary, scary change to go on on
Speaker 2: to TV and you know, having to take time out
Speaker 2: of work, time away family, You know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of sacrifice there, right.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, but I didn't even know what it was
Speaker 3: going to involve. So I went and did the audition. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we were running our own business, three little boys, beautiful life,
Speaker 3: busy life, you know, take them to sport and do
Speaker 3: their homework with them, and working in the business in
Speaker 3: the daytime. And so going on to I sort of
Speaker 3: in my head it was a cooking contest. It wasn't
Speaker 3: a TV show, So that flipped pretty quickly. I didn't
Speaker 3: know I would have to live out a home to
Speaker 3: compete until I was days away from moving into this
Speaker 3: other house. I didn't know I'd have my phone taken
Speaker 3: away from me, I wouldn't be able to have my
Speaker 3: computer with me, I wouldn't be able to see my family.
Speaker 3: You know, I didn't know i'd be restricted to two
Speaker 3: phone calls a week. You know, this is sixteen years ago,
Speaker 3: so I know label laws are being upheld a bit
Speaker 3: better these days. And I think contestant welfare is Contestant
Speaker 3: welfare is far more important now than it used to be.
Speaker 3: It wasn't a thing back then. It just wasn't now.
Speaker 3: And I know, because I've been back now, I know
Speaker 3: that it's a much It's number one priority really. So
Speaker 3: I didn't know any of that when I signed on.
Speaker 3: And if I had known that, it's good that I
Speaker 3: didn't know, I wouldn't have applied. I would have said, well,
Speaker 3: that would have been fun. But I've got three little boys,
Speaker 3: I've got a business. I can't just disappear for what
Speaker 3: turned out to be five months.
Speaker 2: That's what I say. On says Australia as well. If
Speaker 2: I'd known what was never would have done it won
Speaker 2: for there. But you so you take on master Chef.
Speaker 2: Not only do you take on Master Chef Judy, but
Speaker 2: you you know, the nation falls in love with you, live,
Speaker 2: you become this mother to everyone and then you go
Speaker 2: and win it. What was that feeling like? Were you
Speaker 2: ready for the aftermath of being projected? Into the limelight.
Speaker 3: No, no one can be ready for that.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 3: It was such a it was so weird. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you sort of start with the premise that we've
Speaker 3: been locked away for five months, over five months not
Speaker 3: out in public, not really seeing little bits of what
Speaker 3: was going on in the newspaper and stuff when we
Speaker 3: managed to have time to look at the newspaper and
Speaker 3: so forth, but until we got out of that house,
Speaker 3: and it was two weeks between the finale being filmed
Speaker 3: and it going to air. It's a lot longer now,
Speaker 3: but back then it was only two and a half weeks. No,
Speaker 3: I had no idea what was waiting for me on
Speaker 3: the outside, had no idea, And it was quite surreal.
Speaker 3: It was quite surreal. And I'll never forget the day
Speaker 3: when I kind of had a feeling of something, something
Speaker 3: really quite big and oddest happening here is. I was
Speaker 3: walking down the street and I just heard joy and
Speaker 3: I turned around and it was a road crew. It
Speaker 3: was these big guys in high views. And then you know,
Speaker 3: my kids were coming home. My oldest son, God love him,
Speaker 3: was coming home from school and he had had this
Speaker 3: meticulously kept handwritten list that he showed me, and he said,
Speaker 3: these are all the people who want to come over
Speaker 3: for dinner, and it's like every person who'd made a
Speaker 3: joke to him. There was teachers on the list. I'm
Speaker 3: just like Jo, I can't have all those people, and
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, but they really want to come. So
Speaker 3: it was just it was so surreal.
Speaker 2: How did you prepare on the move and how did
Speaker 2: you manage on the move or did you manage on
Speaker 2: the move? Well, I think we did.
Speaker 3: We like to think we do. You know, maybe over
Speaker 3: time I could look back and see that I didn't
Speaker 3: didn't always make the best decisions. So there was a
Speaker 3: lot coming at me fast, a lot of opportunities, a
Speaker 3: lot of and like, I want to preface this by
Speaker 3: saying that the things that have come out of Master
Speaker 3: Chef have been ninety nine point nine percent amazingly positive
Speaker 3: and beautiful, and I will never stop being grateful or
Speaker 3: pinching myself that that happened, because it's been wonderful. But
Speaker 3: there were things that I didn't manage as well as
Speaker 3: I should have, And one of those was the decision
Speaker 3: making around what to take on and what to not
Speaker 3: take on because I had fear and.
Speaker 2: You're talking of opportunities here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So if I don't take this on board now,
Speaker 3: I mean in twelve months time, this could all be over.
Speaker 3: I need to make hay while the sunshines. I need
Speaker 3: to take it while you can, take it while you can,
Speaker 3: and then I I can live out my days in
Speaker 3: some kind of peaceful you know, bliss and think, gosh,
Speaker 3: wasn't that an interesting time? Well, sixteen years on.
Speaker 2: I've had that mindset.
Speaker 3: Yes, so you know exactly what I'm saying. So I
Speaker 3: took on way too much and you can only do
Speaker 3: everything for so often. And again, in the writing of
Speaker 3: this book, I look back at my calendar, like my
Speaker 3: Outlook calendar from that time, and how the days were
Speaker 3: broken down into these tiny little chunks of all the
Speaker 3: different deadlines and the recipes and the columns, and the
Speaker 3: appearances and the interviews and the travel and all those things.
Speaker 3: There was no category for self care, there was no
Speaker 3: category for downtime. Family barely featured in that calendar. It
Speaker 3: was get from here to there, do this, do that?
Speaker 2: That family element. All of a sudden, you know, they
Speaker 2: come and it's called a spade. They come second best,
Speaker 2: don't they. It's like it's all of a sudden, it's like,
Speaker 2: take it was, it's there. Take it was, that this
Speaker 2: is going to benefit.
Speaker 3: They'll always be there, So you take them for granted, Yeah,
Speaker 3: you take them.
Speaker 2: It's a tough one, isn't it. And a lot of
Speaker 2: people don't realize that is that you are actually know
Speaker 2: the sacrifices that you make, right or wrong, in order
Speaker 2: to have this successful life can be at the difference
Speaker 2: sometimes well.
Speaker 3: And the truth of the matter is that at the
Speaker 3: end of those days or those weeks when I've been
Speaker 3: away and certainly further down the track when I opened
Speaker 3: a cooking school and I was on breakfast radio all
Speaker 3: at the same time, what I had left at the
Speaker 3: end of the day when I went home to my
Speaker 3: family was nothing, nothing, whatsoever. They got the least of me,
Speaker 3: They got the worst of me. I couldn't smile, I
Speaker 3: couldn't make a joke. I couldn't provide for them anything
Speaker 3: that I was supposed to provide because I had nothing left.
Speaker 3: There was nothing left in my tank at the end
Speaker 3: of each and every day. So you know, for me, now,
Speaker 3: I'm back to color coding my calendar and I look
Speaker 3: at it every day and make sure that there's balance
Speaker 3: and the categories in there. My mental health and my
Speaker 3: family are the two most important things in that calendar,
Speaker 3: and if they're not dominating that calendar, then I start
Speaker 3: dropping things off.
Speaker 2: And when did you realize after this Master Chef moment,
Speaker 2: you've got all these TV shows, you've got a cooking school.
Speaker 2: When did When was the moment you realize that you
Speaker 2: were taking on too much and that you know you
Speaker 2: were close, if not to burn out?
Speaker 3: Oh I hit burnout. I wasn't great at re the
Speaker 3: signals that my brain was sending me that it was
Speaker 3: all too much. I eventually went to a GP who
Speaker 3: you know, I got a diagnosis of anxiety and depression,
Speaker 3: went on medications.
Speaker 2: There a moment that you came back and you thought
Speaker 2: I need help.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there was, But it wasn't. It wasn't me
Speaker 3: that recognized the moment. It is no, it wasn't me.
Speaker 2: That was so engulfed in this world that you can't
Speaker 2: see outside of it. You don't not until someone.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I guess I found myself back where
Speaker 3: I was in year twelve.
Speaker 2: And talk about doing the full circle, so you've done
Speaker 2: it in the reverse this time. You know, you've done
Speaker 2: it in a full time to be where you are today.
Speaker 2: So you felt yourself going back to you don't want
Speaker 2: to be here.
Speaker 3: I had nothing left. I just had nothing left, and
Speaker 3: I had in my head because it's sickness, right, severe
Speaker 3: depression is a serious illness, and it's a life threatening illness.
Speaker 3: And my life was threatened by it. And I couldn't
Speaker 3: stop what I was doing. I couldn't stop because in
Speaker 3: my head, well, who else can do the Rabbit and
Speaker 3: Julie Goodwhen radio show if I don't turn up every morning?
Speaker 3: And who else can run Julie's place cooking school? I mean,
Speaker 3: my bloody name was on it. What a mistake. And
Speaker 3: you know, so I was going home at night. The
Speaker 3: only I could shut off my brain late at night
Speaker 3: was to drink wine. So I was doing too much
Speaker 3: of that. So I was self medicating. And that's a terrible,
Speaker 3: terrible way to sleep, because you wake up with your
Speaker 3: heart hammering and it just all becomes this massive, you know,
Speaker 3: self fulfilling prophecy. And I went, I went right down
Speaker 3: to the bottom of the well. And I had made
Speaker 3: a decision that everybody, everybody, my colleagues, my children, my husband,
Speaker 3: my family, everybody would be better off if I just
Speaker 3: racked off and let them all be. And that was
Speaker 3: the decision that I made, and that was the action
Speaker 3: I was taking. And I was stumbled upon by a
Speaker 3: couple of strangers who recognized that I was a person
Speaker 3: that needed some company, and they sat with me, and
Speaker 3: I was executing a plan. If it's no, it's okay.
Speaker 3: This is why you know. This is why I wrote
Speaker 3: the book, and because what I want is for people
Speaker 3: to recognize the earlier signs before they get to this point.
Speaker 3: So when you say, when did you know? I was
Speaker 3: nearly dead when I found out that I needed help,
Speaker 3: I was sitting on the edge of Brisbane water and
Speaker 3: I was ready. I was just trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what to do with my shoes. I didn't know what
Speaker 3: to do with my shoes, and I was trying to
Speaker 3: figure that out when this young couple came up and
Speaker 3: recognized how distress I was and said, do you look
Speaker 3: like you need some company? And they just sat with
Speaker 3: me for a couple of.
Speaker 2: Hours, really just passed passing by, not you didn't say.
Speaker 3: Hello, passed me by, and they turned around and came
Speaker 3: back and said, you look like you need some company.
Speaker 3: And so they just sat with me for a couple
Speaker 3: of hours and took to me. They had their dog
Speaker 3: with them, you know dogs.
Speaker 2: They knew, they knew that, they knew, Yeah, they absolutely knew.
Speaker 2: They thought, if we leave this lady alone, she's not
Speaker 2: going to be here. Yep, And you weren't.
Speaker 3: And eventually I said, I'm going to be all right now,
Speaker 3: I'm going to call my husband, and when I told
Speaker 3: him what had happened, he took me straight to the hospital.
Speaker 3: And then I became a client of the mental health system,
Speaker 3: and that's what I remained for quite a long time.
Speaker 3: I was in and out of hospital five times.
Speaker 2: So you're you're you're in the height of your career.
Speaker 2: You've got everything going on for you. Anyone looking from
Speaker 2: the outside in be like, she's made it, she's a
Speaker 2: successful But they can't look at the inside out, can they?
Speaker 3: Anyone listening to me on the radio would have had
Speaker 3: zero idea zero because that was the strength of some
Speaker 3: parts of my brain, was to be able to completely compartmentalize.
Speaker 3: And I've been doing that my whole life. I don't
Speaker 3: I and I used to say to my colleague, you know,
Speaker 3: because we used to say, six or nine is the
Speaker 3: show zone, and nothing enters the show zone. And so
Speaker 3: I would say to him, Oh, got some stuff going on,
Speaker 3: but I'll put it in the box. I'll put it
Speaker 3: in the brain box. And when we went on the
Speaker 3: Christmas break in twenty nineteen, it all just fell apart.
Speaker 3: When it was time to go back, I was I
Speaker 3: was in a mental hospital, and I just I said
Speaker 3: to him, I'm not going to be able to come
Speaker 3: back when I thought I was coming back, And he said,
Speaker 3: what happened? And I said, the box broke and he
Speaker 3: knew exactly exactly. He knew exactly what happened. And they
Speaker 3: held my job for as long as they could, and
Speaker 3: then they had to give it away. And I also
Speaker 3: had to acknowledge that that job was part of the
Speaker 3: downhill spiral because it's they're not hours that are conducive
Speaker 3: to also running a full time hospitality business, which has
Speaker 3: you up late at night and working weekends. I was
Speaker 3: literally working seven days a week and I had been
Speaker 3: doing it for four years. It is not a.
Speaker 2: Sustainable Candles from both fans and and yeah, wow, so
Speaker 2: how did you manage to recover and what was what
Speaker 2: was the recovery like and the support that you.
Speaker 3: Got recovery is ongoing. Because when I first went into hospital,
Speaker 3: I kind of thought, well, it's like, you know, if
Speaker 3: you break your leg, your leg heels and you run away,
Speaker 3: you know. And so when I when it didn't work
Speaker 3: and I had to go back, I was so angry.
Speaker 3: I remember going in and just being so angry and
Speaker 3: saying to them I did all the things, all the
Speaker 3: things you said, and I'm not better, So get me
Speaker 3: better drugs or get me a better doctor. But essentially
Speaker 3: it was like it was like they'd failed. But what
Speaker 3: I didn't understand was it's not like a broken leg.
Speaker 3: What it is like is your car. So you can't
Speaker 3: put petrol in your car and go, Okay, job done.
Speaker 3: I never have to do that again. You got to
Speaker 3: keep putting petrol in your car. You've got to keep
Speaker 3: taking it to the mechanic and keep it running, you know,
Speaker 3: and if you don't, it's going to fall apart. Well,
Speaker 3: your brain is like a car, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of there's a lot of practical stuff that needs to
Speaker 3: be done, physical stuff. It's a laundry list of things
Speaker 3: that I absolutely have to do to stay well. And
Speaker 3: that they involve physical activity, all the stuff we know.
Speaker 3: But once it becomes literally life or death, it gets
Speaker 3: a lot easier to do because it's like I will
Speaker 3: not compatient with it. I will not go back there.
Speaker 3: So what I need to do is physical activity. I
Speaker 3: need to do meditation, I need to see my psychologist.
Speaker 3: I take medication, and I know not everyone agrees that
Speaker 3: you should do that, but it has helped me. And
Speaker 3: while ever I'm in a good place, I'm sticking with
Speaker 3: what works. Time in nature, time with family, creativity is
Speaker 3: important to me. So there's there's a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: things that I need to do to stay well. And
Speaker 3: I don't drink anymore. I've stopped alcohol. It's coming up
Speaker 3: for four years now. And that was one of the
Speaker 3: hardest parts of the whole bloody thing.
Speaker 2: Probably one of the main contributing denominators to your mental health.
Speaker 2: Like you said, even if you have a glass of
Speaker 2: wine or two at night, you wake up and there's
Speaker 2: still that tiny bit of brain fall, your heart's still beating,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: But I got to a point where a glass of
Speaker 3: two never wasn't cutting it. So I just I had
Speaker 3: to make a very clear decision, and it's the lifestyle
Speaker 3: and the habits hardest part to break actually, but you know,
Speaker 3: and now it's easier. And I would say to anyone
Speaker 3: who's questioning whether or not they should maybe he's up
Speaker 3: a bit on it. Well, if you're asking yourself that question,
Speaker 3: the answer is probably yes. And b it gets easier.
Speaker 3: It gets easier. And I can make that promise because
Speaker 3: you know, I've interacted with now hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 3: people who are on that same path, so it does
Speaker 3: get easier. And now I like, I'm completely happy. I'm
Speaker 3: so happy that I don't have to have that to
Speaker 3: worry about, as well as all the other crap.
Speaker 2: You said that your memoir helped you as well, let's
Speaker 2: finish on your book. How has it helped you and
Speaker 2: how is it going to help other people?
Speaker 3: Well, it helped me by shining a light on some
Speaker 3: stuff that you know, what do they say, shamed eyes
Speaker 3: in daylight? So I brought out all the things that
Speaker 3: I was ashamed of and I exposed it all to
Speaker 3: the daylight. There's really nothing left, you know, And there's
Speaker 3: nothing left. I've brought it off, I've put it all
Speaker 3: out there, so judge me. If you will, and as
Speaker 3: you will, it's out, it's there, and it does die
Speaker 3: in daylight. It lessens because actually, now I've got ownership
Speaker 3: over all of it. Nobody can expose me for anything.
Speaker 3: It's mine and it's there. And what I can say
Speaker 3: to anybody else who's got shame over anything at all,
Speaker 3: just work through it, you know, talk through it, get
Speaker 3: whatever help you need. So the way I want it
Speaker 3: to help other people is by recognizing the early signs
Speaker 3: of mental decay and that downhill spiral. Recognizing those signs.
Speaker 3: If you're a perfectionist, if you're a people, please it.
Speaker 3: If you're the person who everyone says, I don't know
Speaker 3: how you do it, that's not a compliment. It might
Speaker 3: sound like one, it might be meant as one. That's
Speaker 3: a warning. That is a warning. If people are looking
Speaker 3: at you saying how do you manage? You probably shouldn't
Speaker 3: be managing all of that, And there's probably stuff going
Speaker 3: on underneath as to why you think you need to
Speaker 3: be managing all of that. Please take those signals that
Speaker 3: your brain sends you before they become life or death,
Speaker 3: you know, please get some help. Talk. Let's keep this
Speaker 3: conversation going. Let's keep being open about it and lose
Speaker 3: the bloody shame of you know, all the shame I
Speaker 3: saw in the people who were in that mental hospitals.
Speaker 3: The five hospitalizations I had, there wasn't a single one
Speaker 3: where there weren't people who were just so ashamed of
Speaker 3: themselves that they'd landed there. Forget that you're there trying
Speaker 3: to get well. You're the hero in this story because
Speaker 3: you are here trying to get well. Let's make people
Speaker 3: heroes for acknowledging that they need a hand every now
Speaker 3: and again. You know, you're the people that are making
Speaker 3: it easier for me to talk about it. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think we need to raise people up, approach other
Speaker 3: people with compassion, and approach yousselves with compassion as well.
Speaker 2: That's how I hope it'll shame dies in daylight. And
Speaker 2: I suppose when you acknowledge your shames and you bring
Speaker 2: them to the forefront, no one can use them against
Speaker 2: you either, because you know that you've already exposed them.
Speaker 3: And I've told that story. Bro go find a different one.
Speaker 2: I love that. I love that. Julie, thank you ever
Speaker 2: so much for coming on my podcast. Great to see
Speaker 2: you once again. And who knows you meet on another
Speaker 2: shows every time. Soon you know SA Australia.
Speaker 3: Do you know what smash that? Thank you?
Speaker 2: Julie has written an extraordinary memoir, so if you enjoyed
Speaker 2: this conversation, I urge you to pick up a copy.
Speaker 2: It's called Your Time Starts Now. I'll link the details
Speaker 2: in the show notes. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 2: of Headgame. If you like listening to the podcast, please
Speaker 2: leave me a review. I'm Att Middleton. You in the
Speaker 2: next episode.