Transcript: Kate Langbroek on Italy, Leukemia, COVID Lockdown, and the Gift of Saying Yes
And We're Rolling with Stephanie Hunt | Season 2
STEPH: Kate Langbroek, fantastica. Benvenuta, Ciao Bella. Congratulations on your new book, Ciao Bella: Six Take Italy. It is so fabulous. I immersed myself in every page. It was like a nice, beautiful bath. I felt like I was back amongst the red hues of Bologna with you all, and now I'm jacked up and ready to sell everything and take the family over there as well.
KATE: Well, I won't take any responsibility for that! But it's funny — when I was writing it, when we were in Italy, I would send chapters back, particularly to the people I was writing about. And of course I was often sending to people who were in lockdown. And my girlfriends were like: oh my goodness, I really needed that. And I was like, wow — that's a lovely but unexpected response. The therapeutic nature of it. I think I've visited Italy a number of times and I've just taken it for granted. I really have. Now I'd do anything to be back there.
STEPH: We realise now there's a lot about our lives we've taken for granted. And to be denied Italy, if you love Italy — once you know Italy, that's very cruel. Whoever it was who said — some famous writer, I should remember but I don't — who said: God, take the world, but just leave me Italy.
KATE: Oh, exactly. So true.
STEPH: I've been a massive fan of yours throughout your radio career, obviously, but old school — original, The Panel. Amazing show. Love the D-Generation, The Late Show, all of those. Each Christmas we'd get the CD, the live recordings of The Panel. And I love that you breastfed on live radio. Lewis! Can we talk about that? Was that the first time ever? Had that ever happened before?
KATE: I mean, I believe women have breastfed before. I certainly had, because I had a four-week-old baby. So that was all I knew to do when he expressed any kind of desire for anything — I just put my boob in his mouth. I had gone back to work to do our first show post having the baby. I'd been at meetings with Rob and Tom and Glenn and Santo. But the first time on air, my husband had come and he was holding Lewis up the back of the studio. I had said to the guys: I don't know how I'll go doing the show. And I'd said to Peter: if at any point Lewis is upset or you think he needs me, I'll just step out of the show, it's fine.
Anyway, we were nearly at the end of the show and the baby started squawking. We were in an ad break and Peter brought him to me and I just popped him on. And when we came back from the ad break, there he was. I wasn't freeing the nipple — I was, in fact, enslaving the nipple for the purpose for which it was intended. We just finished the show. I think we were in the last segment.
And then it became a massive deal that I had breastfed, which I wasn't expecting — with my four-week baby brain, or even just as a human being. It was in the days when we had an answering machine, and I remember in the middle of the night the answering machine going off. It was the BBC or CNN. Peter came back to bed and told me, and I was like: that's so strange. Turn it off. Couldn't even think what that would be about. And then the next morning of course we realised — milk comes out of a woman's breast. God forbid.
International news. And I had not done it to be anything other than just how obedient you are to the needs of a baby. And he was so contented there in my arms. The fact that you're even out of the house at four weeks is exceptional and brilliant — you should have the music from Chariots of Fire playing as you make your way.
STEPH: You had four kids under six. And I love in your book how you write about being in the grind of urban modern life — the endless to-do lists, the fights about technology, trying to pack lunches. It can be like molasses trying to get yourself out of that grind.
KATE: It's a lot. And I hasten to make clear in the book that I'm not complaining, and I know it's my choice. But that doesn't mean it's not a massive, massive amount of work. The relentless work. And to do it well — not many people set out to do it poorly, I imagine — but to do it well is a life of sacrifice. Just to do the basics of looking after a family, let alone the incursions from the outside world. Just to contact your school you've got to enter something called a portal. What are they trying to do to us? And with four children, of course, there's all the sport and attendance. It was a lot. We were ground down by it, even though we had a beautiful life — a life a lot of Australian families would recognise, busy and fulfilling. But there was a sense for me and Peter that we wanted something other than exhaustion at the end of the day.
STEPH: Hugely successful radio career with Hughesy — 18 years together. And in your book you write: we were busy, busy, busy, and then we met cancer. Leukaemia for Lewis, and four years of treatment. I cried in bed when I was reading about that period for you.
KATE: Gee, your husband must have loved me. What are you reading? Aren't you meant to be immersed in Tuscany or Bologna or something?
STEPH: It's just so sad. And the fact that your mother-in-law Marie sort of picked up that something wasn't quite right.
KATE: Which the nurses at the hospital told us is often the grandmothers — because mothers are busy, and mothers operate on the assumption that it's a thing that happens and they'll get better. But grandmothers have seen nearly everything. And Marie was like: this is not right. She had an argument with the doctor the third time. Luckily it was her who took Lewis back to the doctor — I'd already taken him twice, we'd had antibiotics that hadn't done anything. Marie said: I'll take him. And she had an argument with the doctor, and the doctor said: if you don't like what I'm saying, why don't you go to the Children's Hospital? And Marie said: I will.
And that night we were in the Children's Cancer Centre. She had been my doctor the whole time I'd been in Melbourne. And I do appreciate that a GP is not going to see mercifully many cases of childhood cancer. However, I could never go back to her as my doctor.
And that was four years of treatment. We had a good outcome, which not everyone has — and that kind of changes the context of everything that happened with our lives beyond that. I'm very appreciative. When you're in the Children's Cancer Centre you're in there with the other families, and when some of the other children fall, it hurts everybody. It destroys their parents. But we came out of it cautiously at first, because you're so used to so much you can't do. Then as Lewis got stronger, and we all got stronger, we all kind of recovered from it. I mean, we probably still are recovering, I guess. But we seized every opportunity to do something joyous or adventurous.
STEPH: You kept it quite private, but you had Peter Hellier and Mick Malloy and lovely friends who were so quick to jump in and take a radio shift if you could leave the hospital.
KATE: I was doing Nova Breakfast in Melbourne with Hughesy and Yumi. And it was well known within our fraternity of showbiz people. There were people in the media who knew about it but kept it private, which I really appreciate. Which is not the template for now, that's for sure.
STEPH: Then you write that you couldn't leave on a holiday when Lewis was sick. But the ultimate sign of his wellness was being able to go on a family adventure. Is this essentially the catalyst — along with breaking away from the grind — to go to Italy?
KATE: I guess it is. The reason I hesitate is because my husband Peter doesn't think there's necessarily such a through line. But I don't know if you know this, Steph, but women tend to be highly interpretive. For me, it made perfect sense that Lewis's recovery was part of what made us go: let's go live in Italy. But Peter was just like: I thought we just loved Italy. I'm like: yes, yes. I think we're both right.
It wasn't like I had some internal alarm — Lewis is well, now we must go live in Italy. It wasn't that obvious a motivation. But for me, cancer's like lockdown: if you don't come out of that with some self-reflection, there's really no hope for you. Even though we still barely had time because we still had four little kids, I think I did think consciously or subconsciously about the life I wanted to live.
When we had the idea, we knew it was a huge idea. But we didn't really realise how huge it was until we started telling people. When we told people, their reactions conveyed to us what an undertaking it was, and how strange it seemed — that I would leave my job, especially that job doing national drive radio, and that we would take our children out of their schools and leave a place we knew to go somewhere where we didn't know anyone and didn't speak the language. When I put it like that, it does sound odd.
People don't like you to change their life, because us leaving would leave a hole in our friends. So they don't say don't do that — they think of reasons why you can't. What about the kids' school? What do your mum and dad say? I'm like: they hate it. They hate it and I'm doing it anyway.
Because we just kind of had to. We felt the pull. Once we had the idea, we couldn't un-have it. Even though my husband said to me: I don't think you'll be able to give up work. I was so certain that I could and I would.
STEPH: And you did.
KATE: And I did — although I did work for the first six months I was there. That was my negotiation with Hughesy, who was devastated and confused, like any man is when his work wife leaves and they have a happy on-air marriage. I mean, Hughesy has his own beautiful wife, Holly, who I adore. But I was his work wife for sure, and we had a great on-air marriage.
STEPH: I totally understand. My husband and I left our jobs at Channel 7 Sunrise and went to Africa for a year. I get it. I haven't done it with four kids, but I understand people questioning it. What do people say when you go to Africa?
KATE: Well, I remember my boss Adam Boland at the time saying: but what if it doesn't work? And I was like: what do you mean? He goes: well, what if it doesn't work? He was being really kind, really friendly. And I was like: oh, I don't know. It'll be all right. It'll be fine. And it was the best year ever. Peter and I would say all the time: if we don't like it, we'll come back. Australia's still going to be here. Which may sound a bit frivolous given that there are still Australians trying to get back to Australia now — but we didn't know that in 2019.
I will say, though, learning Italian is bloody hard.
STEPH: So hard. I studied from kindergarten through school, a little in high school, and when we were in Florence I did some studying there as well. And I still speak like a six-year-old.
KATE: I speak like a two-year-old. Every word ends in a vowel, and then when Italians speak they drop all the vowels in between. I can read now. I can make my way through reading comprehension. I'm fantastic in a restaurant.
STEPH: Fantastic. Whatever you want, Kate, in a restaurant!
KATE: But when our Italian friends would start in rapid fire — see you later. Peter's quite good now, he's persisted. But because I was finishing the book, I always had an excuse for why I wasn't practising. It's bloody hard.
STEPH: In the book you take us through all the beautiful parts of Italy — Bologna where you're based, Florence, Venice. It really is a love story about Italy. I love Bologna and Rimini. I've got a good friend who lives in Rimini.
KATE: Oh really? I know that area. Rimini is where Artie got stung by a bee when we had one of our first outings after lockdown, where obviously we were very frisky and so were the bees. That was the only time I can happily say we ended up in an Italian hospital. But Rimini's gorgeous. A bit strange to Australians with the sea of umbrellas and deckchairs. But how stunning that whatever beach you go to in Italy has a restaurant right there. On the pebbles. You could starve to death on an Australian beach. Never in Italy.
STEPH: How did you feel being an Aussie in Italy? My Italian mates think we eat too much red meat, too many eggs, and that we put parmigiana on everything including seafood dishes. And they freak out. Forbidden!
KATE: Well, you'd never be accused of eating too much red meat if you're anywhere near Florence — and Bologna was close enough. Bistecca. Peter and I would often go: how are their bowel motions? Because in Bologna they eat a lot — I mean, it's called the city of fat. They prize themselves on their mortadella and prosciutto. But we really did not eat a lot of vegetables when we ate out.
Our Italian friends — one set in particular — were actually very un-Italian. They would have a savoury breakfast, eggs, very unusual. And they ate a lot of vegetables. When we'd go to theirs for dinner they always had an aperitivo — little containers of carrot sticks and celery and whatever, which you'd eat with giant chunks of parmesan. They're not animals. But our other friends, it was just always — I loved it, because I love meat. I fell in love with mortadella, which I wasn't expecting. And when we'd go to Florence we'd have a Fiorentina steak — it's a giant, mind-boggling steak. You could share it with a family of six, but sometimes you'd see Italians determinedly working their way through one alone, or just two guys at lunch. Guys constantly having lunch together in Italy. I love that.
STEPH: And I love that you describe Italians as mahogany-skinned beauties. Like Adonises. They are beautiful, aren't they?
KATE: The first year we went to Sicily, the sun is so different to our sun — very mild, but it's still sun, still my enemy. But I was so swept away by the Italians. On the beach, literally, you would see them pouring olive oil on each other. Still. Like the 70s. They put sunblock on the children sometimes. But the grown-ups just bask in it all day. They turn their chairs to face the sun. Whereas we were all squinty and freckled and pink.
I said to Peter: I can't be bothered with sunblock, I'm going to do what the Italians do. At the end of summer I was so well-baked and I felt beautiful and healthy and glorious. Then we went back to Bologna and the seasons changed just a little bit. I looked in the mirror and I realised what I thought was bronzed and beautiful was actually the head of a croissant. That golden colour, sure, but kind of crispy and flaky and buttery. It wasn't right.
But they are — Italians are sunflowers. They worship the sun, they turn to face it, and the sun loves them. And the shoes, the outfits, the hair — stunning.
STEPH: So it's all going along beautifully. You've done your six months, you've been hanging out with Jacopo, the guy with the little doily. Beautiful, silent Jacopo.
KATE: Yes, the coffee. I love it.
STEPH: COVID hits Italy. The entire nation goes into shutdown. From Australia we saw Wuhan as the first lockdown. And then it was you — Lombardia. How was it?
KATE: Well, once you got over the what-are-the-odds-of-that-happening. It started off like the seven stages of grief — there's probably a seven stages of how we felt about coronavirus arriving. Disbelief: this can't be right. And then remember it was only going to be a two-week lockdown. Flatten the curve. And then there was the fear factor. I was very conscious of food because we're in a medieval city — there's not even a blade of grass in Bologna, you have to go to the outskirts. I was like: what happens if we have food security issues?
But once I realised food was okay, and once I stopped railing — I think a lot of us had this internal sense that this is an injustice being waged against me, being forced to homeschool. Who's even heard of such a thing? But once I stopped railing against it and sort of surrendered — it's like yoga, isn't it, where you're like: I can't hold it, I can't hold it, and then at some point you just breathe and it's okay. We ended up having quite a brilliant lockdown because I was like: this is time I've never had before and will never get with my family again.
Once I got past the quite large hurdle of cooking for six people three times a day plus snacks, and shopping — only one person was allowed to go shopping, so that was a huge job — and the washing. God, I hate washing so much. But luckily in lockdown there was less washing because they weren't out doing sports. And then I went: kids, there's no more changing of sheets. Those days are done. It ended up being surprisingly a nourishing kind of time.
STEPH: But mate, I was very happy the first time we stepped out. We could see the tidal wave coming from Australia, which can also be really terrifying — to see what's happening around the world before it arrives.
KATE: I think it's worse to see it coming, because we didn't even have time to process anything or anticipate — we just suddenly were in it. A girlfriend of mine, Soph, who lives in Sydney, said: you're like a prophet from three weeks in the future. It kind of was like that, and then of course we know the domino effect around the world.
STEPH: Was there a time — I've read the book, but was there a time where you and Peter looked at the option of coming home?
KATE: Yes, and that ended up being a non-option, because by that point no airports would let travellers from Italy transit through. There was no way of getting back to Australia without transiting through a minimum of one airport, and the routes we were trying to explore at that point were just crazy, crazy routes. So the decision was taken away from us. And we were already like: the kids are at school, the schools have pivoted really well into online learning, we've got the house here paid till the end of the year. And we always say: it'll finish, it'll finish. So we stayed. We had no option. And we're always: let's make the best of whatever is going on.
So we ended up having a lovely lockdown, and then we stepped out into summer in Italy. We went down south to Puglia and it was like it had never happened. Quite remarkable — the south, first time around, was quite untouched by COVID. We had such a stunning summer, like beyond. Friends from England came over, we went to Chianti. Other friends came over — we also went to Chianti. There was a lot of Chianti.
And my husband said — because I was like: we've slayed the dragon, we've done it — Peter said: oh, I think when autumn comes we might be back in lockdown. And I'm like: what? No! Everyone loves to say I told you so. And he was quite correct. So we went in and out of lockdowns until we found out we had our flight back home.
But in between we were still having a great time. We had a big party for all our Italian friends at our apartment. We went on day trips. We went with our friend Giovanni to his dad's province, Le Marche, which was just beautiful — like Tuscany but not quite as Disneylandish. The boys were back playing basketball. Even though parents weren't allowed in, we still, along with the Italians, made the most of it.
STEPH: And you look back now and think: what a wonderful opportunity for your family.
KATE: Amazing. Even the first year, which we'd originally thought was the difficult year — 2019 — because it was resettling, and schools, and I didn't know my way around, and we didn't speak a word. We thought that was difficult. But in about March of that first year, we were walking across the piazza and the church bells were ringing — they're always ringing — and I said to Peter: I'm not going to be ready to go home at the end of the year. We had originally only set off for one year. And Peter said: neither will I. And we just kissed in the piazza. Viva Italia.
STEPH: Writing the book — I know you've done scriptwriting for Neighbours. How did you find pockets of time throughout the year to bang out some chapters?
KATE: When I started writing properly, it was during lockdown in Italy. I'm not a disciplined writer — I'm cool to the keyboard. But it was a really great opportunity to have time where you knew you weren't forfeiting anything else. There was no sacrifice involved because there was nothing else to do. And I'm normally very collaborative in my work, so writing a book was a very solitary thing.
But then when I finished the book and we came back to Australia — and we were also in lockdown back here, in Melbourne, for most of our time back — I would say to Peter: oh, I'm just going to spend a couple of hours in Italy. It was a really beautiful thing to go back to it in my mind. It was so vivid. And I wrote about experiences that were vivid, so they both fed each other.
STEPH: You transport the reader so beautifully back to that spot. You've captured the smells and the feelings and the surroundings really well. That's a lovely compliment from someone who's spent a lot of time there and speaks much better Italian than me. It made me really long to be back there.
KATE: Well, that's the beauty of a book — it can take you anywhere. But I was quite surprised and pleased with myself that I had that capacity, because it gave me the feeling. I thought: if it gives me the feeling, it's going to give other people the feeling, unless they're dead inside. And that was the genesis of it originally — because radio has always kind of been like a diary, but it's not one you can ever go back and read. I said to Peter: I'd love a record of this for our family, because even while we were living it, I knew it was a monumental thing. Often you don't realise till afterwards what an era was, but even while we were there, every moment, we knew it was incredible, that we were so lucky to be there, so lucky that we'd made it happen. Because there were a thousand obstacles designed to make you turn back. But with Peter's doggedness and my single-mindedness about just seeing — this vague imagining of how fabulous it would be — that it was better than that is incredible.
STEPH: This podcast chats with amazing women from all around the world about confidence and being nervous on camera. You just seem so authentic and warm and very confident. Have you always felt like that? Is being authentic your way of being great on camera and on air?
KATE: It's funny, because I work in showbiz and I work with a lot of people who are wildly talented but who I don't feel connected to because they always protect themselves. Maybe because I was raised a Jehovah's Witness and had to hide so much of myself for so long — when I left, I just couldn't be bothered anymore. I couldn't be bothered hiding myself.
I know increasingly there's a climate where people are fearful to say what they think or proffer a different opinion, and probably wisely so. But I still adhere to the belief that you are free to believe what you want to believe, and I'm free to believe what I want to believe. And it doesn't mean we have to be at war, and it doesn't mean anyone has to be cancelled.
But also, Steph — another answer is probably that I don't know how to be anything else. I don't have a lot of options to pretend to be something else. I was an actor for a while, but I just can't summon the interest in make-believe. I always just find the truth so interesting and so wonderful. Hughesy and I were always like that when we were doing radio. Sometimes you go to callers or someone's telling you a story and there's a tendency to wrap it up and put a nice finish on it. But the truth, even though it's not shiny-wrapped with a satin bow on it, has a richness to it that a made-up story never does.
STEPH: Being yourself, being authentic — that can help with being nervous on camera, because you're just yourself. You're like: stuff it, this is it, this is me.
KATE: That's right. And the other thing is you can bring that tentativeness with you. You don't have to not feel it. Just bring it with you. Bring the feelings with you. Don't think: oh, nerves, you're not — whatever. Bring it all with you and eventually everything will assist you, not resist you.
I remember Judith Lucy, the comedian, saying in a stand-up show years and years ago: whenever I hear celebrities say they don't talk about their personal life, I always think — why not? And it's such a funny little line, but it just stayed with me. Because none of us have experienced or felt anything that hasn't been felt by anyone else. Why wouldn't you share that experience? Why do you think that what's happening to you is so remarkable that of the 7 billion people here now, and however many came previously, this has only happened to you? It's very unlikely.
But that is another ego trick. Nervousness is an ego trick, because the ego is an insatiable beast. Particularly in showbiz, you need enough of it to do the work that we do because you invite being seen. But if you just start feeding that beast, it will devour you. You have to know at what point you're just really indulging yourself. So you're nervous. Big deal. Just do it, and find the laughter in yourself. Find the levity. The gift of laughter, the gift of levity, the gift of optimism — we need more of all of those.
STEPH: Amen. Kate Langbroek. Sunday service.
KATE: Ha! Thank you. Congratulations again on your book. I loved it.
STEPH: Auguri, auguri. I loved it.
KATE: Thank you, Steph. It's a bloody ripper. Ci vediamo. Ciao.
STEPH: Ciao, ciao!
And We're Rolling is hosted by Steph Hunt and produced by Stephanie Hunt Media and Habari Productions. Head to stephaniehuntmedia.com. If you like this podcast, please share it with everyone you know and follow, rate and review. Until next time, thanks for listening.
