Hello, and welcome to Something to Talk About for Stella Podcast. I'm Sarah La Marquin, to your host, and every week I sit down with some of the biggest names in the country because when Australia's celebrities are ready to talk,
they come to Something to talk about. There have been thousands of big news stories over the last thirty five years, and my guest today has covered them all, from being the first Australian journalist to cover the events of nine to eleven and from war zones to Olympics to royal weddings. Sandra Solly has been bringing the headlines to TV viewers on ten News since nineteen ninety. But as you're about to hear, it wasn't Sandra's goal to be a newsreader.
It was a career she fell into by accident, and because of that, she's always felt like a bit of a fraud.
I always felt a little bit fraudulent, a little bit of an impossible that I started very late. This seriousness came over me because I had to play catch up.
But Sandra, Sally is the real deal and on today's episode, she joins me in the studio to discuss her incredible career. The harrowing experience of being held at gunpoint as she got out of her car after driving home from work one night, and why you never hear about her personal life. Sandra Sually, Welcome to the Stellar Podcast.
Thank you, thanks for having me. It's nice to have you here.
I have met you a few times over the years. We have worked with you before at Stella, but I have never sat down in conversation with you, So thank.
You for me to.
The trigger for this is because thirty five years this year you have been at ten News. It's quite remarkable in a time when people tend to turn over jobs and employers pretty frequently. I wanted to start our conversation by showing you a little bit of video that I have here from one of your earlier bulletins in the early nineties.
So let me is that with padded shoulders, with.
Action at last over Sidney, these hotel fire traps first at five the Hampton Court ordered to close down. What do you think when you look back on those early years? Do you look back on those early years to people like me make you look.
Back on those Yeah, and I'm gonna blame you, Sarah. Look, it's just a walk back in time you are transported there momentarily to you know, the feelings and what your thoughts were, and how nervous you were. You know, I remember all of that and how lucky AIR was and you know, wracked with I wouldn't say anxiety, but you know, anxiousness about doing a good job. And I'm actually reading
the news in Sydney. There's a lot to process. But yeah, when I see that stuff, it takes me right back there and I feel very lucky, you know.
And also, of course there's always that thing whenever anyone's looking through photos or videos of the reminders of what you wore, of the different haircuts that you had over the years, and we always look back and think, oh my gosh, I look so young, even though we didn't think it at the time, even if it was just last year, a lot of us look and think, look
at that person. So there's also that time capsule component when a big part of your life thirty five years has been visually documented in that way.
Yeah, exactly, And I see many of those images and think, what was I thinking? You know that I really think that looked good, but look, you go with it. At the time, I do remember I was called into the news bosses offices, actually the station offices, and they were trying to work out, these three elderly men how they could make me look older. And one of them, who was head of finance I think at the time, said hmm a French rule I think would be very elegant. What did you try that?
And did you try that?
I don't think so. I just remember thinking, what would you know?
You don't take care and fashion tips from the head of finance on a regular basis.
Oh, look, we've put it up and probably tried something, But I mean I wasn't in a position to argue at the time. I just remember thinking, this is surreal. Seriously. Have you had that sort.
Of unsolicited advice over the years about how you present yourself? Because that's a big part of working in media, it's a big part of being a woman, whatever industry you work in, has that something that's been thrown at you a lot? And have you found that you've learned to speak up a little bit or do you just let it go?
Look, it's part and parcel of the job. I've had unsolicited advice in my whole life. But who hasn't And when it's about your appearance. In our industry, that can be a little bit tedious because men aren't provided the same unsolicited advice that you know, they literally go through. I mean, color will the same suit for a year, nobody noticed exactly. At the same time, women enjoy being able to play with fashion and hair and jewelry and makeup, so we can't have it both ways. I'm never going
to complain. I've just learned how to manage that and process it and park it in the right spot. You know, who did take notice? Often who not to look. I've got colleagues that actually hate that hour in hair and makeup, and it's the best part of my day? Is it really every day?
In what way do you? Is it a time where you.
Have It's a time where I'm still and quiet. Usually I'm working, I'm on my computer, usually while they're doing my hair. But oh, someone playing with the hair and makeup for an hour every day, knowing that I could not do, you know, an adequate job on my own. So relieved that someone else who is a professional is taking charge, because you know, heaven help the viewers of Australia, they had to see my best efforts. You know, I really am hopeless at it. I don't rely on the experts.
That vision that I was just showing you was your former colleague Ron Wilson, And when we profiled you in Stella some years ago, Ron told Stella at the time, I've worked with over a dozen female partners on Channel ten, and virtually all of them have fallen by the wayside. These were pretty tough women. But Sandra has survived all this time and still has a smile on her face. If you can do that for this long, something is right.
What do you say to that? What might that something be that is so right?
Thank you? Ronnie. Oh look, I think in many respects it was about opportunity and good timing, you know, not being afraid to seize a moment. But when I worked on late News, and I did for nearly eighteen years, I was out of the cut and thrust the fray of politics of a newsroom, and it served me really well. They left us alone and they focused on the main game, which was five o'clock, and I needed that quiet time
and to be out of everyone's gun sights. You know, I'd not long been divorced and gone through an assault, and the Late News was a really safe space for me. We had a small team, really agile. We were left to our own devices, and we had a lot of
fun and it was a really tight team. It was hard work, the hours were tough, but I liked the fact that, you know, the bosses left at six o'clock and they left us to it, so we had a lot of freedom and license to, you know, really enjoy the product and get our hands dirty and be really responsible for it, you know. So I think in many
respects that gave me a national profile by default. It wasn't anything I chased, and Forward left and she sort of said, Silent's your turn, you know, good old Fullers, and I hadn't you know, it wasn't anything I chased or wanted. But when the opportunity came up, I knew
it was the right call for me. And I think I'd learned over the years that you know, to have a national profile in such a cutthroat industry, it meant I could get a job somewhere, you know, if the worst happened, because it does every day of the week in our game. So it was, you know, a kind of remote insurance policy of sorts. I never knew at
the time. I'd be there for seventeen and a half years, and then when it ended, you know, I got married and I got back from my honeymoon, and I got called into the boss's office and he said, do you want to do five o'clock? Choice? He said none, He said not really. He said, well, we're acting late news. I went, okay, tokyo, Yeah, there really is no choice mortgage and yeah. So for me, it's been hard work, seizing opportunities and good timing.
I wanted to ask you about the different time slots that you'd worked in, not only in terms of the professional way. As you say, you had a little bit of freedom at the late news, and then at five o'clock you're there and there's no where to hide, and the suits are still in the building, and it's all eyes on you for better ultimately, And of course it does bring risk with it, but just also sandra from your routine and your life. And there's always fascination in
anyone that works shift hours. I put those in inverted commas because obviously a lot of people, especially in this time of hybrid working and remote working and technology, working different locations and different times. But with the five o'clock. What does a day look like for you? Because I think most people understand you're not rolling in the door at four point thirty. I mean you're there doing headlines throughout the afternoon, You're preparing you scripts, researching, meeting with
producers and other people in the newsroom. There is as we talked about the visual component of hair and makeup. Did you have a preference in terms of your lifestyle between time slides?
Although I reluctantly did the five o'clock job, but I had just got married and I figured the universe was telling me I needed to adopt better hours for my new husband so that I would be home and not always sleep deprived. When you're a shift worker, you are sleep deprived. And I think if you do either midnight to dawns or super early start, you become quite sleep obsessed. But you know, I did it for nearly two decades, and it taught me the rigors of looking after yourself.
While it's important to manage yourself well in this industry, with those hours, five o'clock was a big adjustment, and it took me a long time to kind of get with a program. But in a nutshell, when I was on late news. I was completely wedded to radio, and you know, I'd get home anytime from midnight till two in the morning. And I'm a TV person. I grew up with TV, very strong TV family, and I can
fall sleep in front of the telly. But I knew that if I sat up for too late, when I got home, it'll be two or three in the morning. But the world still expected me to connect and be engaged available at nine, So I would go to bed and put the radio on. So to this day, I go to bed and put the radio on. Now it's morphed into the world of podcasts, which we've all fallen in love with, but I've been in the podcast world for twenty five thirty years. Yeah, you're at So I
go to bed listening to BBC or you know. The rest is politics or great podcasts that I really enjoy, and it can be silly stuff, crime stuff, whatever, and then I'm awadded to the radio as soon as I wake up, basically Radio National in the morning, but you know, I'll scan all the major radio stations to hear what's going on. And then as soon as I wake up and not necessarily out of bed, and I download the major full papers of every day, scan all of those
so I know what the major stories are. And while i'm reading those, I've got a running commentary from a radio current affairs show about what's going on. Then I might get into my day, and most days i'm kind of in the office somewhere between twelve and one, but that varies. You know, today was an eight thirty start, so it does depend. And then I go straight into hair and makeup. I don't even go upstairs because I can see the rundown remotely on my computer laptop either
at home. When I'm in hair and makeup, I've got a laptop in my dressing room so that I can start working and looking at the bulletin, reading people's scripts, trying to get a handle on the flow of the bulletin, what the shape looks like where there's a bit of light and shade, where it's super heavy obviously in the entire first break, and what those intros is starting to
look like. And then I'll leave that laptop in my dressing room and then head upstairs, sit on the production desk, get ready for updates, keep.
Going and what time do you finish up? Now?
Then about six thirty. Yeah, but you know, for three or four years I did two states, so I did New South Wales and Queensland. So that was three and a half hours of reading and the magic of television cutting and working between two states and daylight saving and it was rigorous.
How do you feel when every day you're just about to go on air, presumably the floor manager's doing the classic countdown? Do you still is there something that kicks in in you? Is it a hit of adrenaline? Is that excitement?
Is it nerves? Not so much nerves any anymore, but there is a conscious realization and acknowledgment that this is live television and there is no safety net. And we have a running gag in the newsroom and for twenty five plus years, I will I will occasion, you know, we'll say Chuckers break a leg, or I will squeal I'm not ready. I'm not ready, which makes us all laugh because I'm you know, a creature of habit. But
also it's about actually getting you up. Not that you want to read that first story, you know, smiling and giggling, but you've got to get your energy levels up, and at times, with the heaviness of stories, you know, you can peek and trough all day and then you kind of want a flat line, but it is there's a performance element to what we do, and you need to be very switched on and focused because with live television and breaking news, there's no one that can help you.
Obviously, you consume a lot of media.
What you've just talked us through what a day looks.
Like, and when you're not working, you take a break over summer. It's obviously February a lot of us have come back from a bit of time, are really getting back.
Into the work.
Here. Are you able to unplug from the news cycle? And is that even anything that you would want to do?
I never used to, but now I think it's good for my mental health, so I do kind of switch off. I do like listening to political podcasts, which drives my husband completely spare. So I've often got to, you know, have headsets on or something. But that's not the daily cycle of news. It's not driven by the headlines, and for me, it's getting more behind the scenes and understanding the bigger picture, and I really enjoy that. But yeah, I can switch off, and I know I should, and
I do because it's good for me. I mean, I was traveling in the States last year for a couple of weeks and other than watch some local news just to get a sense in the build up to the election, you know what were the local saying how big a deal was it? But you know in Detroit they didn't really care.
It must be so fascinating. Obviously, I want to ask you a little bit about some of those moments that have really stood out, and the people that you have met, and the historical scenes that you have found yourself bringing to the country. But that question there just also makes me think about the changing nature of the news cycle. And it's obviously something that we in the media talk
a lot about. Is that there used to be a time where you have a certain newspaper arriving at a time and then turn on the TV and get that certain bulletin, and of course now news is coming at us all the time. Is there a sense that your audience now might be across certain things and you're bringing it to them with a slightly different tone than maybe you were thirty five years ago.
It's thirty five years ago we knew they wouldn't have seen the pictures by five o'clock or unless they'd heard something on radio. So much of the day had largely gone by unnoticed and undocumented other than within newsrooms and journals around the country, So your average viewer didn't really have a great sense of what had happened, and they
tuned in to find out. These days, we must always assume that we've got to take a story somewhere from six o'clock and eight o'clock, and we've we've got to present the news at the end of it, the evolution of a day as that story has evolved. And you know, we often get frustrated with sports stories. I mean, you really rarely want a sports break that's just full of results that happened in Europe last night, because soccer fans knew that when they woke up or they were up
watching it. It's changed the dynamic of everything we do. Everyone is twenty four to seven. I mean, the internet
actually wasn't invented that long before I started. So you know, I remember, you know, journo's out with pages and they had to stop at a phone booth and put in money to ring so that we could say, listen, we've got the address of the family of and then they say Okay, we'll call back in an hour and let you know if we found them, and then you just didn't hear hear from them for two hours, not knowing what they were going to come back with. Now everything
is so instantaneous. I mean, it's another reason why ten launched the Late News as a digital product first, you know, because people don't watch news on traditional platforms, so we need to be where the eyeballs are. You know, you can see breaks of our new service on YouTube, Yes, on Facebook, on Tenplay. We need to be where the eyeballs are, and the metrics we have to wait for them to catch up, but we know you know that they're not an accurate reflection of the viewing landscape.
I would now love to ask about some of the moments that have stood out for you over the thirty five years. One, of course, I'm sure you think I'm going to bring up September eleven, two thousand and one, because I know that's something that you're constantly asked about because you were the first Australian journalist to bring that news as it was unfolding. You were on air doing the late night News when that vision came through.
Now that do some breaking news just through and CNN is reporting tonight that a plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.
The only thing so let's just start by'm not talking about that too much unless you want to, because, like I'd say, I'd love to ask you to nominate some of the other moments that have stood out that you
maybe haven't spoken about as much. But my question to you is when something like that happens nine to eleven or something similar and you are there seeing this absolutely or in the moment clearly absolutely horrifying event happened, huge loss of life, and then probably having that instinct that of course this was going to be a moment that would change everything, which it did. When you go home at the end of that, is that a really bad
day at work? Or is it actually a day at work that proves exactly while you're there and is actually the most important kind of work and a privilege in a way? Is it a good day?
It's a good question, I think, and I do get it a lot. I have realized mostly through the discussions I've had with my husband his observations of me. Obviously, there's a lot of adrenaline on a big news day because you want to get it right and cover as many angles as you can and present the most accurate picture of a significant story like that to viewers. I think when I get home, I probably a mostly quite and just processing it all or a bit flat. I
wouldn't say I'm energized. I'm probably drained and trying to process it. I try not to wallow in it. If I wallow in the images, then I'm just that's silly. Like I've learnt to, I can't. Can't you know, there are times when as a human being, of course, there are plenty of days when it's really hard, but I'll just be quiet and try to work out how to switch off.
For you, what are the big moments that would stand out from some of the stories that you've covered, particularly the ones that you were on location.
Well, these I wasn't on location, but you know, I just moved to Sydney from Canberra, and it was all the Gulf War, you know, every day reporting on the fall of Saddam Hussein, and then when they found him, and then it was you know, obviously September eleven, but then it was the assassination of a summer bin laden. How that played out. I think you know, I've been desk bound for a long time, so I can't really claim to be on location. But the Fukushima nuclear bi
down was pretty gold smacking. Archa was horrendous, so many.
What about some of the lighter moments as well, because obviously there's also been royal weddings and and you know big obviously Olympics and big cultural and sporting.
See I'm sorry, I was on location on a holiday Threadbow when the Threadbow landslide disaster happened. I was in Atlanta covering the Olympics when the bombing occurred, so those were significant. But yes, there's been lots of great upsides there, really, there really has. And covering the Atlanta Olympics was amazing. Conwealth Games of Victoria incredible in Atlanta, seeing Muhammad Ali and on pill side Karen Perkins wins gold from Layin eight, Madame Butterfly wins gold.
Ridiculous there for history front row seat. And that's right with the Threadbow landslide in nineteen ninety seven, you were, I believe they're on location when they found Stuart Diver, which is a moment etched into the minds forever of so many Australians to be there for that moment must be again overwhelming at the time.
But who well I was. We were on air and I remember getting into trouble from my news director when I got back to Sydney because I was emotional and I shouldn't have been, but I'd been there a week and we had been immersed in Threadbow with a village and a community that were grieving the loss of so many of their colleagues, friends and family, and we were
considered the pariahs. We were hated, understandably that it was such a sensitive time for everyone and the relief that they'd actually found him, Plus we all knew the ordeal that Stuart had gone through at the time as well, losing his wife, lying next to her for days. Horrendous, horrendous. But yes, on a brighter note, lots of incredible stories and random, great fun you know at the network that I've been afforded.
Can I just go back to you mention when you came back from covering the Threadbow landslide and the discovery of Stuart Diver, that your news director you were in trouble for being emotional. Was that being emotional on air? Was it being emotional behind the scene, so it was really frowned upon to show any sort of emotion.
Yes, and I just I heard what he said. I couldn't go back and change it, I said, I just disagree with you. I don't, I said, I don't remember losing it. You know that my voice was breaking, and clearly it was, you know, everyone was overwhelmed with relief and that in the circumstances, I just sort of thought, Okay, I'll go back. I mean, I would always go back and look at the vision and how I went and what I should change, always ruminating, ruminating and ruminating.
It's just an interesting I think, also snapshot of the time, what we're talking about earlier, how things change. Because obviously you as a journalist, throughout your career, you haven't put yourself. You have never made yourself the story, and so it's not as though you were making the focus about your
human reaction to it. But I think as a society we've become a bit more forgiving, and actually people really like that glimpse, especially I think when it's coming from someone who isn't doing that all the time.
I don't think you should ever really the story you shouldn't be the story. It's not about you, no, But look, the casualness of news is a relatively new thing. It's far more conversational than it was when I started. It was very formal. You know, we had jackets, we had shoulder pads, we lived in a small box. We really smiled. Except for the light and fluffy story at the end of the bulletin. It is far more conversation. We do ten times of reading that, you know, than the original
news readers back in the day. I mean, there's endless scripts and endless copy and not everything you've seen before you get a chance to read it. So the audience has become more forgiving, fortunately, but the work's harder and there's a lot more of it. But that's okay.
Coming up the violent attack that Sandra very rarely speaks about. You mentioned that you were really fascinated with TV before you broke into the industry, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about what you thought the job might be like when you were growing up, and the way that we see the nature of being on a news desk replicated in popular culture. I mean, at the moment, there's an ABC show called The News reader obviously the
famously there's the anchorman years. I'd love to know if you know Ron Burgundy meant that everyone was, you know, coming at you with the real life version of memes quoting that to you, and how how was that era?
Well, I think a lot of people think that I always wanted to do this job, but the truth of the matter is I fell into it quite by accident. You know, I worked in health and fitness, you know, torta aerobics. Loved the health and fitness world, but realized it was probably more of a hobby than a career. And one of the ladies in the running club, Barbara, she was leaving Channel seven and going to set up the entertainment for Expo and Brisbane, and you know, I
was looking in a gym. We had five centers, twenty five instructors, one hundred and twenty five classes a week. I'm a really organized person and I wanted to go and work with Barbara setting up the entertainment. And she said, Sandra, I won't have a job for a couple of years, you know, Expos a little while away, but there's a great job going up to Channel seven. I said, I don't know anything about television. She said, no, no, no unit manager,
you be fine. Production system. Okay. I fell into it by accident and I started as a production system Maxie McHugh started as a director's assistant. Lee Sales started. I think a similar way to myself. So I had no idea what being a newsreader or a journalist meant. I think in some respects, because I always felt a little bit fraudulent, a little bit of an impost and that
I started very late. You know, this seriousness came over me because I had to play catch up and I hadn't I didn't have that gene because I've worked on a current affairs show and then on April Fool's Day, the Current Affair show got axed and I got absorbed into the newsroom because they went to an hour and they needed two production assistants and I was literally bored because there wasn't enough work to do, and I'd hassle the news director for things to do. So again, what's
the foreign feeds? Tell me what you like? And at the time, I was doing a Bachelor of Business and I just loved it. So in a nutshell, I was encouraged to apply for a cadet ship, and I said, only if I can swap my degrees and you give me time off so that I can learn this job properly, even though you know I'd got my cadet ship. So I think I always felt like I was playing catch up and I wasn't born to be, you know, a journalist, let alone a newsreader, like that was the last thing
I even considered. It all happened by accidents. So sometimes I think that's part of the straight jacket, is I always feel like I don't know enough.
I love those sliding doors moments, and I think it's always great to hear because sometimes we assume that especially successful people knew exactly where they're going, because we do hear those stories a lot. I mean, people will write entire books about that. But I knew exactly what I wanted, came out of the womb, this was the plan. So many things in life happen because of unexpected detours and then finding our feet, and I think that's a really great thing for us to talk about a bit more.
Yeah, I do think opportunities present themselves organically, and it's really about timing and where your head's at and if you have any clarity at the time about are you ready to receive that opportunity or can you see it? Other people can often see opportunities before you. As I said,
it wasn't anything I ever wanted to do. And then fortunately for me, when i'd started in the newsroom in Brisbane, the Fitzgerial inquiry was underway and I was asked to basically be a supporter for our senior journalist who was down covering the Fitzgeral inquiry. And so I got to see really powerful journalism make a difference when I started in the newsroom. What gave me the fire when I you know, when I caught the bug, was to actually
see the difference it made. You know, It's just so powerful.
Being able to change something, bring an injustice to lights, see legislation, change seed decisions overturned. This is the absolute privilege, surely.
Absolutely doing it, and that underscores everything and galvanizes me, you know, on a profound level, because I've seen that societal change that's been really important to the betterment of Australian's lives. Now I'm not responsible for that, but just being a part of that industry, I'm really really proud of I know when I started, I was really I
loved news. I love the imitates immediacy of it. I love the fact that the next day a new chapter was written, or brand new chapters, brand new stories were written. And in those days, it was all about wanting to Beyana and who didn't want to be Jana because Jana was Yana. But I didn't want a career in long form journalism and all current affairs. I really I didn't. And I remembered them all telling me, well, you know, that's where you need to go, and I said no, no, nope, no, no,
no nope. So then I went regional and went to Canberra and worked in a brand new newsroom. And then you know, ten went through another series of massinations and cutbacks, and basically I got hired because I didn't have to pay relocation fees. Could just you know, already living in Camera, I just moved up the hill anyway, thrown in the deep end federal politics. Didn't know anything about it. Hopeless, I was hopeless.
I wanted to ask you, if you don't mind me asking about it. You mentioned earlier an assault and that I was in nineteen ninety seven when you had come home from doing the late news one evening and you parked your car, and then we're getting out of your car. You were getting your handbag off the passenger seat and realized that you weren't alone, and you were knocked to the ground by a masked assailant who actually held a gun to your head and pulled the trigger not once but twice.
Thank god the.
Gun didn't go off.
Yeah, I was very lucky.
Spoke to Stella about this twenty years after the attack, and you said, you think maybe screaming You were screaming so loud may have saved you. He suddenly stopped, he led the car.
I really believe that I was in a warehouse apartment at the time, and the garage driveway garages were was one long hallway of parking spots underneath two floors of apartments, but the windows to that parking space just had bars but windows. So there were little squattish cottages in Surrey Hills where I was living. And it was funny. I had a dream as a young woman most of my life about my most a really frightening experience, and that I would be trying to scream and nothing would come out.
And at the time I remember screaming, and I was shocked that it was coming out, and I knew I found out within a day or two that the people next door had called the police. And because I was making so I didn't stop screaming. Despite him pistol whipping me. He ran. That was the only thing that saved me. I was lucky because he had a gun, ballet, clava and handcuffs, so he met business.
And then you did go back to work, and you've spoke to sell. When we asked you about you said, yeah, obviously there's still things A loud noise will make you jump. Are very wary of your surroundings. I'm sure in multiple locations, but obviously in a car park we didn't necessarily understand. I don't think trauma at that time, even in nineteen ninety seven, as we do now. Do you think that you do you look back and think, wow, I mean, obviously I got back to work, and is that something
that you would treat any of it differently? Do you think that you gave yourself enough time to.
Really Yeah, look, I do, and I think I needed to get back to work. I think I had about a couple of weeks off, three or four, perhaps because I couldn't. I couldn't go back to that apartment because I never found the person, and because I was doing night shift, I couldn't be home alone, so that we had to move our temporary accommodation. Then we had to try and find some real sleeve. I had a security detail for ten years every night when I got home,
but that gave me real comfort. My marriage broke down not long after all of that, which was yeah, life shit sandwich, which happened sometimes. You know, you just got to work it out. I needed my job because I felt very alone and very vulnerable, and it was the one steady thing in my life that I could rely on as much as you can rely on being a journalist at a TV network, but I could. Yeah, but I didn't know that at the time, so I knew I had to just work really hard and turn up.
But it got me through. It got me through when I was my most vulnerable. I had no family in Sydney, just some good friends. And as I said, my mean I got married, but we didn't. It didn't last very long. We've been together a long time, but when we got married, it didn't. It didn't work out, and that's okay, but you know, you are very vulnerable, and I think people do understand a lot more now that I could arguably
call it PTSD to some description, to some degree. It's not a word or a term I've ever actually used before in relation to this, but it took me. When I spoke to Stella was the first time i'd spoken publicly. My close circle and family obviously knew what went down, but I really didn't want to draw attention to it. I didn't want this person. I don't believe that they had a clue that I was that woman on the news. I think they had done their homework and worked out.
I was a target and I was gettable, but I didn't want to add any fuel to that fire of a person who worked out at all. They may it could have been me, and I wasn't going to found that in any way. So it was important for me not to really talk about it for two decades.
And completely understandable as well.
But I do feel completely over it as well, you know. I mean, I know that I sit there every night on the news and a shit sandwich happens to someone nearly in every story. The first break part of my language, but somebody has not seen drama unfold that is life changing and horrendous or tragic, whatever it may be. I do know that you do have to seize the day, and you do have to believe that you've got to
make the most of every day. So I know that what happened to me is nothing compared to what happens to a lot of other people. So you get perspective, put it in its right box, and get on with it.
And from what you've said as your approach to media, it sounds as though you've always had a fairly strong sense of EmPATH human That's not the word that you've viewed, so that's possibly an observation that you would disagree with. But you've had that sense of humanity and understanding that people are dealing with shit sandwiches even before you had that harrowing experience in nineteen ninety seven. But did it sharpen that or did it change any way that you approach your role as a journalist.
No, I don't think it changed anything. I think I'll give complete credit to my family and my parents the way I was brought up in the value system. That's always been important to me. You know, you're a human beings, as are all the people that are at the center of all of our stories. So you walk in their shoes for a second and you get a glimpse into how tough it can be. I'd like to think people can see that I get that and always have. That's really important to me.
I think people would, and that that's why I wanted to say that. I think that empathy's always been there. I think it's a really valid experience with somebody, whatever industry, there is something happens that changes the way that they look at what other people go through. And we've all
heard people say that. I mean, getting a diagnosis with the serious illness, for instance, can be a life changing event for a lot of people because, depending on what they'd been through at that point, it just completely opens their eyes to.
The vulnerability of all of us.
But some people always had that awareness, maybe because of things that they went through early on. You're not someone, from my observation, that had that before and after in terms of how you approached your job. So I really just wanted to know what your take on it was, and I think how you feel about it is certainly how I would have witnessed it from the outside.
Yeah, I am, well, I'm heartened to hear that that might be how it's perceived, but from my perspective, there's nothing content about it. You know, it's completely unconscious.
You've always obviously not really sought the spotlight, and people always think it's unusual when you're in a job where you're on television every day, but I see it all the time in this job, and so I really am grateful that you've sat down with me today because I know that you know, you're not somebody that necessarily loves talking about yourself in this way.
So let's throw forward a little bit to the future.
I mean, it would be unfair of me to ask to see your thirty five year plan.
We're talking about the.
Last thirty five years, what's the next thirty five years? But what is the future plan for you? Do you?
Well, I've never had a plan. I don't believe in plans.
I know.
I know a lot of you know, lecturers will be very annoyed about trying to encourage people to have goals, and I think you should have goals, But my goal is always I love what I do, and when I stop loving what I'll do, I'll find something else, or the network will make a decision for me, and that's life, that's TV. I don't I just want to be happy and well, you know, your health is the greatest gift, and being happy is always a goal, you know, because we've all got our own dramas. You know, I lost
my dad a year ago. You know, you can have an argument with your with your husband, or your wife or or your partner. All those things can derail you. You can get a bad medical diagnosis. I don't know. Just you know, my dad would always say, I woke up this morning. It's a good start. Yes, And I don't take that lightly. It's flippant. But life is incredibly
fickle and can be incredibly harsh. So if I have the good fortune to keep doing what I'm doing with the people who really are family, in a job I absolutely love, with a network I haven't left for thirty five years, go me, pick me. I'm there. Well, I wish you all the best.
I am looking forward to seeing what the next thirty five years brings. I mean, I think, as Ron Wilson said, you've got to be doing something right to survive in that sort of industry and survive with such grace and class. So Sandra Sully, thank you so much for your time today.
Thank you Sarah for being gentle with me. I hope that I was.
And of course you can watch Sandra Sually on ten News for Sydney week days from five.
Pm on ten and ten Play. Indeed, thanks Sarah.
Andre. You can also watch this interview of the Stellar podcast on YouTube by following the link in our show notes. Thank you for joining me today. If you've enjoyed this episode, let us know by leaving a review and make sure you're following something to talk about, because we'll be back with another exclusive guest next time week.
See you then,