Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery: June 20

I’d like to tell you what’s on Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery tomorrow, but I can’t.

Under ABC’s strange new media embargo system it’s under embargo until next week.

STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL & EMBARGOED UNTIL JUNE 27. The contents of this episode cannot be communicated to – or used to seek comment from – third parties, including those featured in the program, until June 27. Any use of the content must credit “Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery”.

Error? Probably. But I don’t know who in middle-management thinks it’s a good idea to knock back promotional opportunities when they already have strained budgets.

Updated: ABC has now corrected its embargo. Tonight’s guest is Cate McGregor.

In a deeply personal Home Delivery, Julia meets transgender writer, commentator, and former military officer Catherine McGregor in her home town of Toowoomba. Their day starts at a lookout above the Lockyer Valley, before they climb into a HD Holden – just like Catherine’s first car – to head to the childhood home she lived in as Malcolm McGregor.

Catherine recalls a happy childhood and a close-knit family. But her father Jack was wounded while fighting in New Guinea in WWII and died when she was just eight years old. She remembers him as a tall, proud man who tried to nurture her nascent cricket talent. Catherine recalls making up her mind as a child that she would be a soldier, and that she would play sport for Australia.

gender dysphoria began when she was very young. She recalls experimenting with her mother’s clothing when the house was empty. But her attempts at covering her tracks were unsuccessful and her mother strongly expressed her disapproval.

Next is a visit to St Marys, the Catholic school she attended for nine years. Catherine began at St Marys a month after the death of her father and the all-male environment was a massive culture shock after being taught by nuns at a co-educational primary school. It was her talent for cricket that finally saw her accepted by her peers.