Australian Story: Oct 14
Australian Story updates a 2011 episode, that featured Maggie MacKellar, left widowed and pregnant in harrowing circumstances.
- Published by David Knox
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Monday’s Australian Story updates one of the programme’s popular episodes and is introduced by ABC Tasmania newsreader Peter Gee.
Three years ago Maggie MacKellar, daughter of a former Federal Cabinet Minister, was living on the family farm near Orange trying to reassemble the pieces of her life after traumatic loss.
A writer and Sydney Uni academic, Ms MacKellar was left widowed and pregnant in harrowing circumstances. She seemed resolved to raise her daughter and son alone and on her own terms in the country.
The original airing of her story in February 2011 drew a big response.
Among the emails was a message from a stranger – a divorced 49 year old sheep farmer in Tasmania. They struck up an email correspondence and talked on the phone.
“Having lived with farmers I was prepared for how he sounded on the phone,” she said.
A few weeks later she agreed to meet him at Sydney airport and says she immediately felt a ‘connection’.
I thought “I’m in serious trouble here” she says because she knew that he was ‘never going to leave his farm’.
In January last year, she moved into Jim’s 200 year old stone cottage set on a 3000 acre farm and now writes full time.
She says they are “incredibly different people, but he’s a lovely bloke.”
8pm Monday on ABC1.
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2 Responses
I was very disappointed in this programme wrt its views on mental illness. It gave the impression that is was an evil presentation in Maggies life which she called a betrayal on the part of her husband. It was a condition that her husband obviously had no control over, even being admitted to a psychiatric hospital which you would think would be able to treat his psychosis and avoid his tragic death. Why is it considered a major betrayal of nondisclosure when he might have had a underlying heart problem or some other severe
medical condition which also could have resulted in his death. Her husband may of been in a fatal accident but why was she so bitter in the fact that he had a mental illness. Would she not have married him if she had known and classed him as an ‘untouchable’ I feel just because she was an academic the daughter of a former federal minister she was above being…
I too was married to the strongest man I ever knew. It turns out that he also had suffered from long term depression but nobody, including him, When this was discovered, he was considered not bad enough to be hospitalised. He took his own life in the early hours of Good Friday in 1993. When the Police arrived I thought, thank goodness they’ve found him and he will be a crying mess but at least he will be in hospital. Not so. I really felt sorry for the very young police who had to deliver the news. Youngest son cried for a day. The eldest was very angry so I gave him an axe and I told him to chop down two bushes I hated. Lots of other terrible things happened in the 90s and as a result, if I ask when such and such happened, if it was during the 90s, I have absolutely no recollection of these events. I have been in a good place for many years now. I’m really happy you’ve found love…