Latest / Salt of the Earth / Ep 116: Lisa Millar _ Part B

Transcript

Ep 116: Lisa Millar _ Part B · Salt of the Earth

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Understanding how much trauma can affect you.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the hanging of Van Wing.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome back.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: The coffee's been made and we're back with Gold Logie nominee Lisa Miller.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: We start with love because sometimes life surprises you.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: Then we head into some of the biggest events of our time.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: September 11 changes the world.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: Lisa heads to Washington soon after.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_01: In a world still shaken from it.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_01: Terrorism, civil unrest, fear, pressure.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: And Lisa takes us inside what it was really like.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_02: I started feeling like I wasn't coping and I didn't know how to cope.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: Then it's on to London.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: More global upheaval, more huge stories, and some very personal heartbreak too.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_01: This conversation is honest, it's powerful, and it's unforgettable.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's get back to Lisa Miller.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm here with Lisa Miller, but I've just had a very special coffee brought to me, and I feel quite privileged by an international airline pilot, your fiance Simon.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Simon.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: You're very welcome, Darren.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hello to you.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: Hello to your listeners.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: We were just learning about you in part A.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: How does it feel to be engaged to a gold logi nominee?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Possibly someone that's going to have a gold logi.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because I was out of the room.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: Is this like one of those TV shows where you ask one person something and uh and then we match up the answers?
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I haven't I haven't prepped for this.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: How does it feel to be?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, well, I'm incredibly lucky, obviously.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Lisa's wonderful.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: She is that person you see on TV, the uh the warm, chatty, engaging person, is exactly as I hope you're experiencing the same thing in real life.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's a privilege to be in her life and and be in her orbit.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, and look, if I can get to go to the Logies again for another year, that's fantastic too.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a really fun party.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Simon, I was on a job just recently and I was with some professors and doctors, and I said how excited I was coming to interview Lisa Miller.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And they said, Oh my god, we're on a plane fight just in the last six months.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: And the pilot announced that he had just got engaged to the one and only Lisa Miller.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Right, yes.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, yes, that would have been me.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I hope it was me, unless there's someone else out there.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: To be perfectly accurate, that was exactly a year ago, and uh we were just coming up towards the logies.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_00: And look, I'm pretty competitive and uh really hoping that Lisa would do well.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: So as we're approaching Melbourne, I got on the PA and said, Oh, ladies and gentlemen, the weather's gonna be like this, the time changes that, and it's been lovely having you on board.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and as an aside, I'd just like to give a shout out to my fiance, Lisa Miller.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: She's not on board, however, she has been nominated for the gold logie and for the Americans on board, that's a bit like the Emmys.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I spoke to her before departure and she said that uh son, look, it's close.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just need another 400 votes.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: So, ladies and gentlemen, there happens to be 400 of you on board.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, it's all gone to tvweeklogies.com.au and uh give your votes to Lisa Miller.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I'd really appreciate it.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: So uh yes, hopefully we've got a few votes out of that.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: So the story goes.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: So I went to the logies, it was wonderful, walked the red carpet, and uh very happy to be alongside Lisa for that.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I don't know if your listeners know the thing with personalities, these TV folks, they use everyone's last name.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: They shout out Miller, ah, Glenday, all that sort of thing.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so I mean, in my job, I insist that people call my mother first name, which is of course Captain.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, we're at the Logies and during the ad breaks they all run around and network and all this sort of thing.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: And there's an actor called Robert Taylor, who was in the territory and he's been in a few cop shows.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's you know, rugged, uh tall, handsome bloke.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, he shouts out, Miller, Miller, get over here.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: Miller, I was on my flight back from LA the other day, and the so-and-so pilot got on the so-and-so PA and he says, put your votes in for Lisa Miller, and my wife, who was sitting next to me, elbows me in the ribs and says, Uh, why isn't the pilot promoting you?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: You're up for a low.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: And uh Lisa says, pointing towards me, oh, you mean that pilot?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I give a little wave.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, I got to meet Robert Taylor.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: We had our photo taken together.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a nice little aside.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: I love it.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great story.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: It was good.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Great fun.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: And let's keep barracking for Lisa Miller.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Get your votes in.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's for the gold and for the Burt Newton and for Mustard.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, get your votes in for all three.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for this magnificent couple, Captain.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_02: He loves having a chat, Darren.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_02: This is why I think he loves his PAs when he's on board a flight more than he does even the flying.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: I've got to make sure that if I do win this Logie, that he doesn't get up to give the speech.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_01: But we're talking not a personal assistant, a microphone, is that right?
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I mean.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, he's a fantastic person, and I'm just so glad that he is in my life.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: And it's been a wonderful, unexpected development for my 50s.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_02: Honestly, Darren, the universe just keeps dishing up incredible things.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know that's what Judy Brewer said to me on the way here?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: I said how lucky I was to meet Lisa at her place just recently.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, It's the universe, Darren.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was just meant to happen, and now here we are.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there you go.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm loving learning about you, Lisa.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: You leave Brisbane and head to Canberra.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_02: Townshell.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_02: I leave Townsville and head to Canberra.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: As a young political reporter, I spent two years there and learned the ropes, had incredible mentors, uh including Jim Middleton and Russell Barton.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_02: Paul Lynham was there at the time.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_02: There were so many people with big brains that I could just learn from.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: And it was a very, very special time.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: I also, I think in that, you know, whirlwind of politics, you meet a lot of people who become your friends who are still my friends to this day.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that is one of the special things about that period when I look back on it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: I learned a lot about reporting on politics.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_02: Happy to not go back there and do it again.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I kind of, isn't it funny given that dad had been there for 16 years and that had kind of helped spark my interest in journalism?
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: But I knew that that wasn't really what I wanted to do.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I came back to Brisbane after those two years and became a state political reporter and host of Stateline and did a bit of work for 730 Report.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_02: But by that point in my life, I just wanted to be overseas.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: I wanted, I knew it was glamorous and exciting, and I wanted to be at the center of the biggest stories in the world.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: But being in that federal press gallery, that was sink or swim.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, for sure.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've sunk a lot.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_02: I can remember, it was back in the day when Paul Keating used to ring the office at like three minutes past 7 p.m.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: to voice his displeasure over any of the stories that might have gone to air.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_02: So imagine this.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like it would never happen now.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: But the Prime Minister would ring the office and sometimes I'd answer the phone and you'd hear his voice and he'd say, get me Middleton.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_02: And you put Jim on, and then you could just hear Jim go, yep, yep, but but but but but and he'd try and interrupt, and then the phone call would be finished.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, he was um renowned for doing that.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: Didn't hold back if he wasn't pleased with something.
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: So was it from Canberra you had that desire to go?
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I kind of it had been building, and it I guess things became more clear for me that that was what I wanted to do.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_02: So when I went back to Brisbane to be the state political reporter and host of Stateline, I guess what I was doing at that point was trying to tick all the boxes because I knew that if you were going to get an overseas posting, you had to prove that you could be a radio current affairs reporter, that you could be a TV reporter short form, that you could do long stories for 730.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: So it became very much for me then.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: What am I missing from my skill set?
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_02: How do I build on this and get that overseas posting?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And live crosses all the time too.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_02: No, not necessarily, because back then we didn't have, yeah, live crosses over there, but we didn't really, you know, we weren't doing live crosses necessarily in Australia.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was doing State Line, which, you know, was there was a lot of live work, but oh, it just makes you realize when you have these conversations, Darren, how rapidly the media has changed and how quickly, when I think that I started this career when mobile phones didn't exist, and it was a big advancement when we had a pager that was attached to our belts on our jeans, and now I'm picking up my mobile phone, which is on the table, and I could literally go live into the ABC from this dining room table.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_02: And to think that all of that has happened in less than four decades, it's just blows my mind.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_02: But um, I one of the things the fear of flying was still bugging me, you know, over that period.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_02: I was still dealing with that.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_02: And I only recently confessed to people that I had actually been offered the job in Moscow almost on a silver platter.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: They'd come to me, the ABC, and it said, Would you like to be the Moscow correspondent?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: And I said no.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I found, well, because I didn't want to fly aeroflot, I was scared of the planes.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_02: But you were ready for it.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: You felt you had your skills set together.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but I didn't, I was still afraid.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_02: I was still afraid of flying.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I know, and I felt so embarrassed.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, I didn't tell the bosses that.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_02: I used some other excuse.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: I said that that's right, I remember because I was newly married at the time, and I said my then husband didn't want to go, it wasn't gonna work for him.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I used him as an excuse because how do you get taken seriously if you're too afraid to fly and you want to be a foreign correspondent?
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: So what then happened was that I thought this is a very low moment for me, and all of my dreams are going to just come to nothing if I can't get past here.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_02: So the next job that became available was the North America TV reporter.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought, well, I've got to apply for it so they know I'm serious, and I'll tell them that, you know, my then husband and I had had a conversation and he was ready to go overseas now, and so I had to prove, I thought I've got to go through the process.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_02: I know I won't get it because it's such an incredible job, and I'll just I'll show them that I am serious though.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: And it will be good practice to go through a um job interview for a foreign posting.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_02: Well, then I bloody got I got it, yeah, and I got it, and I remember the phone call to this day because I got the phone call to say that I was the successful candidate on September the 8th, 2001.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_02: So for three days I was just blissfully happy and excited and heading off to this incredible posting.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_02: And then from our home in Brisbane sat on the couch and watched the world change when the terrorists attacked New York City on September 11 and Washington, DC, and Pennsylvania.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: So three whole days that was it.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And then, you know, it was this weird situation because when they're sending you overseas for the ABC, you don't just kind of pack a bag and go.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_02: You've got to do hostile environment training, you've got to have all your medical in a row, you've got to go to the dentist to make sure your teeth aren't gonna fall out while you're overseas, you've got to sell your house or rent it out, you've got to sort out what you're doing.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_02: There's so many things that you've got to do.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And we don't know about that.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_02: No, but and you know, the the hostile environment course was, you know, they put you in the back of in the boot of cars and pretend you're being kidnapped and all this kind of stuff.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's really full on.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_02: And they've changed it a bit these days, but back then it was pretty intense.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: And there is still a course today.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: Oh gosh, yes, you have to do refreshers quite often when you're overseas.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, they'll teach you how to put gas masks on and try and get out of tunnels that are filled with gas, and they'll take you into a hotel, like a you know, big kind of four-star hotel in Sydney, and they'll put blindfolds on you, and you then have to try and find the stairwell to get out if the place was on fire.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_02: And they teach you how to know where that stairwell is, and there are all these different tricks of the trade.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: I had no idea.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is another reason we should be voting for Lisa Miller.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, it's pretty intense.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: But so here we are, September 11th's happened.
• 14:23
  SPEAKER_02: I haven't done any of the things required to go overseas, and I can remember thinking this story is going to be over before I get there.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_02: Which is such a weird, selfish way to think about things, and listeners will have to just forgive me that I was ambitious and young and just was thinking more about missing out on the biggest story in the world.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then, of course, it went on for years and still goes on.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: You know, that that the the ramifications of what happened on that morning in America because it happened at about 8 43 a.m., I think from memory, and they are still going on.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: You've been there to cover them, but we're going to get to that in a sec.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: So the next step was that Washington?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I landed there on December the 1st.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_02: So it took three months from getting the job to actually taking up residency in Washington, DC.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that would have been probably three months of being a little bit uh very anxious, but scary.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: What are you going to do?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, everything.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_02: And remember, I'm still only just recovering from my fear of flying.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_02: So everything about it was.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then when I got to Washington, DC, that place was still on high alert.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: The F-16s were still patrolling the skies of Washington, D.C.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_02: 24 hours a day.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: They were just circling the city, getting ready to shoot down any plane that was not answering the call or, you know, may have been heading in the wrong way.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: So we learned how to put on a big kind of plastic protection suit because there were fears that there was going to be a dirty bomb exploded near the White House.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_02: And our office was only a few blocks from the White House.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: We were advised to tape over the windows of our office to try and limit any exposure from a dirty bomb if it went off.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things, when I think back on it, it just seems so odd to even be talking about it now.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: But that it had you on high alert all the time.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: All the time.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, each day was unknown.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Who would have ever thought that was going to happen?
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_02: And there were attempts still being made.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: There was one where on one of the jets, you know, months after September 11, that this guy had explosives in his shoes and he tried to light those explosives in his shoes on board the plane.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, he was stopped by passengers who saw what he was trying to do.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it wasn't as if it was an irrational fear.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_02: America was under attack still.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_02: And then internally it was like just civil stress and tension because of the war in Iraq, which so many Americans were opposed to and felt that they were being lied to.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it was an incredible time, an incredible experience.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: But I can remember when I finished that posting in March of 2005 that I got on the plane and I thought I need to go back to somewhere where people are happy because it felt like the whole country was grieving and angry.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: And when you are absorbing that every day, it can't do anything but start having an impact on you.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_02: And so I recognized that that had happened.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: What did you do?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: Well, I didn't, well, I went back home to Australia and came back to Brisbane and got distracted by getting divorced, which is always kind of, you know, like I was too busy with kind of, you know, trauma in my own personal life to then worry too much about the impact that my job had been having on me.
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_02: But because I was then based in Brisbane and I was able to go at short notice to jobs that were happening elsewhere, I got called upon to do kind of quick fly-in, fly out overseas things.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a second bombing in Bali that I was sent to.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_02: There was Chappelle Corby that was kind of through that period as well.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, and then there was the story that was the beginning for me of understanding how much trauma can affect you.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_02: And that was the hanging of Van Nuyen on December the 1st, 2005.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_02: He was a young Vietnamese Australian from Melbourne who had been caught smuggling drugs in Singapore and was given the death sentence.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I waited outside that prison and for the hangman to come that morning.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: And we'd been waiting every day for two weeks, watching his mother come in and visit, watching his friends.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think he got to speak to his mum, is that right?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it was the whole situation was just so distressing.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: It was so distressing.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: And at the time, Alexander Downer, John Howard, so many people were making pleas to save this young man's life.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_02: But the Singaporeans have very firm views on drugs, and there was no changing.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_02: No, no changing.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_02: So I didn't realize at that point that that was going to start being a trigger for I don't know what you would call it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_02: I was going to say a sadness, but that you can only absorb so much in your life.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so by this point, I'd already done, oh, you know, 15, 18 years of at times some pretty tough reporting.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think back to those years as a police reporter for the Daily Sun doing the Death Knox.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started feeling like I wasn't coping and I didn't know how to cope.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_02: And what came about after that was such an incredible experience for me because I became involved with the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma, which was an international group.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_02: It was named after a family, the Dart family.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_02: And it was an international group that concentrated on the mental health of people going out into the field, not just into war zones, the mental health of young cadets covering a car accident and seeing their first dead body, and all of the things that you can put in place to try and protect yourself because you can't not see things and you can't not feel the sadness and grief when you are interviewing people, and you don't want to shut yourself off.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_02: You want to feel what people are feeling so you can allow them to tell their stories in a way that does their life justice, you know, like you want that, but that comes at a cost because you can't keep doing that every day without starting to pay a price for your own mental health.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: And I definitely discovered that was going to be the case for me.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_02: That I paid a price.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: It would definitely, I feel like I don't mind being very honest.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: About having sought professional psychological help to try and unpack different things I've had to look at and face to enable me to be able to keep doing my job.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: Such a great message to get out there.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And Lisa, do you find now that there's you've got some of those tools that you learned at that course now that you'll have to pull out different ones every now and again?
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: All the time.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: All the time.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_02: And even in the job I'm doing now, Mustards and Backroads, I'm still interviewing people who have gone through great loss, who have stories to tell that will have us both crying on camera.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: But now I understand what I can do to make sure that I'm not then wearing that and damaging the people in my life, my family, Simon, but also to make sure that we're looking after the people we're interviewing, that we're not causing more damage.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's why, if we go back to that first chat we had when I said I'd met this woman that I'd done the death knock on back in my early 20s, and I wanted to ask her if I'd made her life worse that day.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's been really important to me that whoever we are talking to, that we are not creating more trauma, that we're not making the situation worse.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_01: Lisa, I don't know how to exactly sum this up, but it seems like you've you're the perfect package, like you've got beautiful empathy.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: You're an amazing journalist, but you'll tell the real story, but then you need your tools as well to go and help yourself and your colleagues.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's camera operators as well, and so forth.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's an amazing circle that you've just taught me.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: Well, thank you for being so kind with your words, but honestly, I feel like I've made a lot of mistakes over the years and I've learned a lot, and I feel like I'm still learning.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_02: And that is just, I think, having lifelong curiosity to try and make things better for yourself or other people is something that I cling on to, I suppose.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: So I appreciate what you're saying, Darren, but I feel like I'm almost having this out-of-body experience again where I'm listening to what you're saying and your kind words, but I'm thinking, oh no, but I've got so much still to learn.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_02: I could be so much better still.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: We can never say we've learned it all.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_01: No, we've got to keep learning.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Use it or lose it.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh just going back to Washington for a sec.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Can I just say, listeners, that sound is the sound of papers being turned and more questions here.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Joe, I hope you're finding all this quite interesting.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: Stay here for the ride.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: This is going to be quite a roller coaster.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_01: I hope they keep driving like I did.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_01: They keep driving, they miss their turn, they're sucked into your story.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm loving it.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, thank you.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: Now, where was it?
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: You took on a triathlon.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, in Washington, DC.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_02: And that comes back to the fear aspect, right?
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because once you overcome a fear, you feel pretty invincible.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'd overcome the fear of flying.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_02: And that then made me think, oh, when someone suggested that I do an Olympic distance triathlon, and I said, but I can't swim really well, because here's the thing about growing up in country Australia, there were no pools.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: I didn't learn how to swim properly.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: So I knew I could save myself if I fell in a pool, but it's not like I could swim 1.7 kilometres.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_02: Anyway, so I took swimming lessons in Washington, DC, and completed this triathlon.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_02: And when people say how and why, it's because I overcame the fear of flying.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_02: It is that, and I think also when you ask me about the contradictions of my life about yes, I'm an extrovert, but everything scares me, and I put myself out of my comfort zone.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: It comes back to that great adrenaline rush of doing something that has made you frightened, but you do it and you go, actually, it didn't kill me.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's made me stronger.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_02: And so that's what keeps me doing things.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: And that leads us to some park runs, but we're going to talk about that in a sec.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: You came back to Australia for a little bit.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: You were still drawn to be foreign corresponding.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: I went back again after four years.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: I went back again because I thought I had unfinished business.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_02: I felt like I had learned more about myself.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: And perhaps a few more tools in the toolkit.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely more tools in the toolkit.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm so glad I had those tools because I did not know when I left Australia in July 2009 that I would then be away for nine years in the US and in London, and that it would go into another period of incredible upheaval and terror for the world, and that I would be at the forefront of so much of it.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: World news as well, but you had some personal grief too.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Mum and dad both dying while I was overseas.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big thing to deal with.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: And the breakup of a relationship while I was overseas.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_02: All of those things you just have to, ah, you know, look, I knew that mum and dad were very proud of me and wanted me to keep going.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I kept saying to my siblings, should I be coming home?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, is it time for me to come home and kind of do my job of looking after mum and dad?
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: And my siblings, I've got this five of us in the family, and they were all absolutely no way.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_02: What's dad gonna watch on telly if you come home?
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: So they were very, very keen to make sure that I didn't.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I did, I used to come home for holidays quite often, like three times a year, I'd come home to spend time just with mum and dad because I thought, you know what, holidays in Europe will be there for the rest of my life, but mum and dad won't.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_02: So I feel like I almost had more quality time with them than I would have if I'd been living in Australia, because I probably wouldn't have said, hey, let's go to WA for a week together, or let's go to, you know, um, we went to Ireland, mum came to Ireland with me.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I spent time with them, but yes, it was a big nine years in my life.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_02: Big nine years.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I bet they've got their votes in already.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: Your mum and dad looking down on you, going voting gold for sure.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, you know what?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: Every time something wonderful happens, I do think, oh man, if mum and dad were here, they would be so excited.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_02: It took me a while actually to remember that they had died after they died, and I'm sure this happens with other people.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_02: I can remember on News Breakfast, there was one day I was wearing a red dress, I was feeling great, and I thought, oh, I'll have to ring mum after the show and see what she thinks of the dress.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then, God, mum's not with me anymore.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like it was that just that crazy feeling.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like, but they are both so much a part of our lives, and with the siblings, we're all in a WhatsApp group, and we often talk about mum and dad in that group, so they're still with us.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: Your life in London, this was also chaotic, as you said.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_01: You would go to bed not knowing whether you were going to get it, and this happened at phone call at two o'clock.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: By daybreak, you were in another country.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think Paris, the terrorist attack in Paris.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_02: When I forgot my passport, like the how's that first story?
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh god.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: When the Bataclan terror terror attack happened in Paris, and we raced to Dover to get a boat across because the planes had all been grounded, and I didn't have my passport.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_02: And honestly, it was, I just thought, you hopeless joke, Lisa.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_02: I'd just taken over as the bureau chief.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: But you know what that taught me though?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: This is the other thing that I've been able to do in my life that mistakes don't kill you, right?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: They, you know, you can make mistakes and you can survive.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_02: Your career can survive.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the end of the world, and you can learn from them.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, like it's okay, you know.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: It it is okay, and you still got there.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: You still got there.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the next the next day, though, I had to drive back to, well, by this time it was five o'clock in the morning.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_02: When I say the next day, it was already the next day.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_02: So drove back to London, got my passport, and then was able to get on a plane.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: This was happening often over there where you would be in another country by daybreak.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: By that night, you were in another country, you would have to work out do I stay with this story?
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: Do I go there?
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_01: And weighing up your reasons is crazy.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And you would only have one jacket.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_03: Oh, yeah.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think you'll send people off to buy some underwear, some drink bottles, and and and away for five days in the same clothes.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, no, all of that.
• 31:08
  SPEAKER_02: Because sometimes these attacks would happen so quickly.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: You had to cover the actual story was almost not as hard as the logistics of getting there because you were up against the big networks like CNN.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: And so I can remember when um there was a terrible attack in Nice on the boulevard, and a truck ran down deliberately, a lot of people, and we were trying to work out how do we get our crews there, and you're trying to make these decisions at midnight, one o'clock in the morning.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: You know, where do we get people onto planes?
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_02: CNN are booking out entire planes, and they've got so much more power when it comes to that.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_02: And so the logistics of actually getting somewhere.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_02: Can I tell you?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_02: I won't call it all a funny story, but when I was covering the earthquake in Italy, we got to the airport in Rome, and the only car that they could give us was a little Fiat.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: And the cameraman looked at me with all our 13 boxes, and he just said, we can't fit in a fiat, right?
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: And I just said, There is no other car.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: Like, this is what we've got.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_02: We've got to make it work.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: So we are bulging at the seams, but we've made it work.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: And as we're driving and we get to the first roadblock into this earthquake area, we see other networks in their massive four-wheel drives having been stopped by the police.
• 32:42
  SPEAKER_02: And we just gave a little toot and away and zipped through the roadblock.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, really?
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Because they thought we were just locals because we're driving a tiny little bit.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't look like a TV crew.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: So you were there before CNN.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Again, it's this other, you know, like sometimes you think you can be delivered a shit sandwich, but actually, in the end, it's either giving you a lesson or it actually isn't as bad as what you thought it was.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: There's always a silver lining, something happened anyway.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_02: I'll never forget that story out of Italy.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Did these times change the way you looked at Australia?
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, I didn't have time to be looking at Australia, to be honest.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_02: I did not have time.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: When I wrote my memoir and I had to check the dates of things happening, what I was most shocked about was that these string of terrorist attacks, and I covered maybe 10 or 11, plus the Grenfell building fire, plus the earthquake in Italy, like it was, they were sometimes there were just a couple of days in between these attacks.
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_02: At one point, London had military vehicles on its streets patrolling the streets of London.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, at the time it was the biggest story in the world, and when we talk about it now, people will be scratching their heads, going, oh yeah, what happened there?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, remember the London Bridge attack, the Manchester Arena attack when Arianda Grande was singing and they thought that the speakers had exploded, but actually it was suicide bombers.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it was just, it was one thing after another.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: And so I used to pick up my phone, and if it if it was ringing, and I'd just, I answered my phone for all those years going, what's happened?
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what's happened?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's how I answered the phone.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: And it took me a long time after I got back to Australia to actually answer the phone in a way that was more conversational.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: Hi, how are you going?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Is there one global story that still sits with you today?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_02: 20 children aged like five or six.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, they died.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_02: And that was a tiny little town, Sandy Hook, and we waited outside.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_02: We got there while parents were still being kept at the fire station, not knowing if their children had been taken to hospital or if their children were dead.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I met one of the mothers weeks and weeks afterwards who agreed to do an interview with me.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_02: And I'll never forget her generosity in talking to me, and I'll never forget the pain of what those people went through.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_02: And to this day, I recall people saying the firearms laws in America will change because of this.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_02: They will change, and of course they didn't.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: They didn't.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_02: America still has a terrible gun problem.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_02: And if about 20 dead five-year-olds isn't enough to change America's approach to gun ownership, then nothing will.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: Nothing will.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: It was, and it's so that's why it sticks with me.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: A, because it was just the parents' trauma of having taken their kids to school, thinking it's going to a safe place, and then not having them home that night, but also the futility of it, that all those lives are lost, and America still couldn't make some tough decisions on gun ownership.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_02: So that one definitely stays with me.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: The trauma that those parents would have gone through and with your empathy, this would have been tearing you apart at the same time.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I ended up not being able to voice one of my stories because every time I tried to say the names of the children, and there was this little kid in particular called Noah, I just it would just crack, my voice would crack.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I feel like your body really tells you when you are reaching your limits of what is possible.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_02: And the ABC made a wise decision at that point to pull me out of Sandy Hook.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_02: And I went back to Washington, and another reporter came in to keep doing it.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: Because it was also the middle of winter, it was heavy snow.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_02: You're waiting in knee-deep snow to do your live cross at three o'clock in the morning.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_02: You can't walk away from that position because the other networks, I mean, the world's media was there, so you would lose your place, right?
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you just so physically and mentally while also telling yourself to harden up because hell, these people have lost their children.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_02: So shut up, Miller.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_02: You've got nothing to be bothered about.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_02: Your feet are cold, or boohoo for you, you know.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_02: So you're having these mental arguments with yourself while you're going through those kinds of experiences.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_02: But um, yeah, I'll never forget Noah and his mum and dad.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_02: And they were, yeah, no, they were pretty remarkable people.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_01: Tough one.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_01: A Walkley Award.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: Can you tell me about that?
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that was a group award.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you know what, well, thank you.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: That was back in 2005 after my first posting.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I was proud of the work I contributed for that.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_02: But gosh, it's just a reminder that so much of what we do in this industry is teamwork.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: And it was about Vivian Solon, who was a woman who had been incorrectly held and then sent from Australia because they didn't believe that she was actually Australian.
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was a tricky story to tell, but man, teamwork, you know.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why I keep coming back.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: Also, when we talk about the gold logi, it's a massive honour, but oh my God, if if I managed to pull it off, I would have so many people to thank that I would have the longest speech ever.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the logies normally go till about midnight.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_02: People will be going, oh, shut up, Miller.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_02: Come on.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: I can't wait.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_01: Come on, listeners, start voting.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're going to wrap up this episode for now.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's a big life, and there's still more.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: In part C, Lisa comes home to Australia, thinking she might slow down a little bit.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Instead, she ends up hosting live breakfast television, writing a remarkable book, and somehow handing me a silver logie.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's coming up next.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_01: And trust me, you'll want to hear it.