HER NEW UNIVERSE
LIFE FOR CATRIONA SINCE TAKING CROWN
HER swimsuit-clad, signature sashay helped propel her to the title of Miss Universe and a glamorous new life in New York City, but sometimes there’s nowhere Cairns-born and raised Catriona Gray would rather be than curled up at home with her dogs.
The 25-year-old Filipina-Australian, who won the pageant crown late last year, has packed plenty into her life, from an idyllic and “normal” upbringing on the beaches north of Cairns to a stint working with a charity in Manila’s slums, and a fledgling career as a pop star in the Philippines.
But even though she’s worked for eight years as a model and dominated the pageant scene in Australia and Asia for most of her life, Gray says she’s most comfortable in minimal makeup and less-revealing clothes.
A month into the whirlwind of being crowned Miss Universe, a role made famous locally when Jennifer Hawkins was the first Australian to take the title in 2004, Gray is still coming to terms with the changes in her life.
She has moved into a midtown Manhattan apartment and a daily routine that includes charity events and society appearances, international travel and TV interviews, all planned and managed by her full-time Miss Universe hand- ler. She has amassed 4.6 million Instagram followers and become a household name in the Philippines. “My life is honestly what I never would have expected,” Gray says. “But I think because I have the Australian attitude in me, you know, it’s all kind of low-key.”
Gray is the fourth Filipina Miss Universe and while she is representing the country of her mother’s birth on the pageant scene, the dual citizen is also proud to call herself halfAustralian. Born in Cairns to Ian Gray, now 75, a retired engineer who had emigrated at the age of seven from Scotland, and accountant Normita (Mita) Magnayon, now 54, Gray spent her early childhood moving through several min- ing communities, including Wagga Wagga in NSW, and Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory, for her father’s work.
The family also lived briefly in Sydney before returning to Earlville for her high-school years, at Trinity Anglican School.
After graduating, Gray says she took herself to Manila at the age of 17 with no clear idea about what she wanted to do.
She was last in Australia for Christmas 2017 and her birthday in early January last year, and while she still has some friends from school, “a lot have moved away from Cairns”.
“It was my first time back home since 2012, when I left. So that was a very sentimental trip for me because my parents still lived in Cairns and I went by my old high school and my old house, just going down memory lane,” she says.
Gray, a Christian, was making a good living modelling in South-East Asia but felt it wasn’t spiritually rewarding.
She started working with a charity called Young Focus, which provides free schooling to slum children, and plans to help promote education.
Gray is enjoying the platform her pageant wins – she was crowned Miss Philippines earlier in 2018 – bring to her charity work.
“Seeing the platform that pageantry had in the Philippines – we love pageants, it’s such a socially relevant thing to us,” she says.