Australian Story: August 12

Monday’s Australian Story profiles NBC journalist Sara James and the medical fight she and her Australian family have endured for daughter, Jacqueline.

Introduced by Terri Irwin.

Emmy Award winning television journalist Sara James had the job most journalists would dream of – as an anchor and foreign correspondent for America’s NBC.

She spent 15 years at 30 Rock, the home of NBC New York and enjoyed a Manhattan lifestyle as well as reporting from Somalia, Sudan and Pakistan/Afghanistan.

Then she met an Australian journalist nearly ten years her junior and fell in love. After many years of trying to make a long distance romance work, Andrew Butcher took up the role of Rupert Murdoch’s main media spokesman in New York so they could be together.

In New York they had one daughter Sophie and then a second, Jacqueline. And that’s when life started to come unstuck. Sara James knew something was wrong with Jacqueline when she didn’t hear her cry after shen was born.

“This doctor shakes his head as he looked at the EEG, and he looked at me and said you need to know this is a bad brain. And then a nurse came over and she put her hand around me and she just walked me out of the room away from the doctor and she said, you need to know they don’t always know everything. I’ve looked at your little girl and she has bright eyes, don’t give up.”

The couple returned to Andrew’s home town of Muckleford, two hours north of Melbourne to raise their family and seek a diagnosis and treatment for Jacqueline.

Sara James has been fighting for her daughter ever since and has also created a role for herself as the first Australasian correspondent for NBC.

8pm Monday on ABC1.