Sylvia Jeffreys: "We'd love a house full of kids"
The TV news presenter relives the happiness of her childhood Christmases and tells Michael Sheather of her hopes for children of her own.
Christmas simply wouldn’t be Christmas for Today show news presenter Sylvia Jeffreys unless it has four essential ingredients – sunshine, surf, seafood and the gritty feeling of sand between her toes. “My childhood Christmases were very free and easy,” recalls Sylvia. “And they were always sunny and beachy.”
Mostly, she says, the Jeffreys family spent their Christmas holidays at Broadbeach, on Queensland’s Gold Coast, where her grandparents owned a pair of beachside holiday units.
“We would pile into these two units with all our cousins, our aunts and uncles, and spend one or two long weeks – long, slow weeks – going between the unit, the beach and the local school, which was close by,” says Sylvia, born the youngest of three children.
“The school had an oval and a basketball court, and all of us kids would run around together like a pack before swarming down to the shop for an ice-cream. It was so very Queensland and just free and easy and simple, and those moments are the foundation of the happiest memories of my childhood.”
And those memories may form the foundation for many more. In
a far-ranging interview, Sylvia talks for the first time about her wish for a family of her own and how she and her husband, 60 Minutes reporter Peter Stefanovic, plan to one day have a home on Queensland’s Gold Coast, where they can let their children run with the same freedom they both had in their childhoods.
“Our hope is that, down the track, we could have a house on the Gold Coast so that our kids can have the same experiences with their cousins that we both had as kids with our cousins. We want them to have that big family festival, the extended family kind of vibe on Christmas Day, so they can build those same foundations at Christmas and create those important memories, too.”
Christmas Day in Sylvia’s childhood was very much a communal affair with lots of food and family-oriented fun. “Everyone in the family would try to bring one particular part of the feast,” says 31-year-old Sylvia, who was born and raised in Brisbane.
“One of my aunties would do the turkey and the other one would do the ham – it was all served cold and there would be buckets of prawns to start with. We would carefully count out how many prawns each person would get and, typically, one cousin would have a few more than the rest.
“It was a long day of grazing in fact and we kids would be able to duck over to the beach for a swim while the adults did all the preparation. Nothing fancy, nothing over the top.
“Often, we would spend the day at the units and then drive back to Brisbane to have Christmas dinner with Dad’s side of the family.
“My father’s mother was much more in the grand Victorian style, so there was usually a traditional hot meal with roasted potatoes and gravy and such, followed by pavlova and pudding and all the trappings. It was the best of both worlds really. Though we were never all that hungry by the time we got there, we always managed to dig in and fill up all over again.”
For Peter, Christmas was also a time for family and gathering. “We used to gather together by the Christmas tree on Christmas Eve,” he says.
“We’d have dinner. Mum would set out the nice china and we would all gather round the table, stare at the Christmas tree and wonder what presents there were for us under there. It was all very exciting, growing up in Cairns. We all got together with our cousins, aunties, uncles. It was just a gas.”
For this special Christmas shoot for The Australian Women’s Weekly, we invited Sylvia’s extended family along for some festive indulgence by the beach, including her mum Janine, her sister, Claire, and her husband, Dean, their children, Fraser, five, and Lewis, four. They joined Sylvia’s restaurateur brother Andrew, his wife, Aki, and their children, Yuumi, four, and Aya, 18 months.
The day managed to engender all the crazy hectic chaos of a Christmas celebration, with people scrambling to get ready amid piles of presents and plenty of food. Sylvia – known to the kids as “Aunty Silly” – led a procession down to the beach pulling a trolley manned by two of the youngest children, Aya and Lewis, before the family set to a game of beach cricket.
Sylvia, who her mum, Janine, says was a classy netball player at school, is also a dab hand with a cricket bat and looked elegant in a dramatic long, white cotton skirt. It was an easy and joyous occasion with lots of fun.
These days, with Sylvia living in Sydney with Peter, Christmas is a little more disjointed, but no less enjoyable. Her mother, Janine, and father Richard are separated, her brother and sister have their families
“We want them to have that big family festival.”
and, of course, Peter and Sylvia have a life of their own, too.
“It’s all about balance now,” says Sylvia. “My family has a close relationship with both our parents and increasingly, over the past few years, we have had Christmas with both Mum and Dad there.
“Last year, we hosted Christmas at our house and it was our first Christmas as an engaged couple. It was four months before we were due to marry and we wanted to get both our families together, so they could spend time with each other, get to know each other and celebrate the year ahead and all that was coming.”
Sylvia and Peter put up their own tree. “It was also our first Christmas in our new home,” says Peter. “It was great. Seeing the tree there with all the decorations on it and the lights, it’s hard not to get nostalgic about the past and think about what you want for the future.”
Then there was the food. “Some of the family are Italian, so one person did the turkey, another did lasagne,” says Sylvia. “I did the ham and everyone brought a different salad, and, of course, there was seafood – lots and lots of seafood.
“I love that collaboration, with everyone chipping in and having a specific job and ownership of the day as well, instead of just having one dish. That was a great, fun day. My brother, who works in restaurants in Brisbane, brought a keg of beer. He was a popular man on the day.”
The celebration is one of Peter’s favourite things about Christmas. “When I was a kid, I’d really obsess about what presents you were getting, but now it’s all about the food,” says Peter, who is also a sometime guitarist. “And it’s all about that case of
XXXX Gold that you might have or the good whiskey that you climb into during the afternoon.
“My brothers and sisters, and Sylvia’s family came around and it was a lot of fun last year. That’s what Christmas is about – pulling together the people you love and having a bloody good time, maybe even playing some music if you can. I play the guitar – not very well – but I try.”
Words were also Sylvia’s passion when she was growing up. She dreamed of being a journalist from a young age. Inspired by her grandmother, who also wanted to become a journalist (and once wrote an article published in
The Weekly), Sylvia signed on as a script assistant in the Nine Network newsroom in Brisbane when she was just 19, but quickly made the switch to on-camera reporting.
Within a few years, she found herself as the Brisbane weather girl, at the same time covering major news stories, such as the devastating Brisbane floods in 2010 and 2011, and the widespread damage from Cyclone Yasi that year, one of the most destructive tropical storms ever to hit Queensland.
Management soon recognised her talent and appeal, and she moved south to Sydney to become a reporter on the Today breakfast show. Five years later, Sylvia is a star in her own right, with a rapidly expanding national profile.
“Who’d have thought?” says her mother, Janine. “I never thought that Sylvia would become such an identity as she has, even though I knew she’d do well. She was always good at school. I would not have believed for a moment that she’d be this much of a star.
“But she’s always had something special. Her Grade 1 teacher, Mrs Sykes, always said, ‘Sylvia’s my little ray of sunshine.’ And that’s what she was like; she was always a little ray of sunshine and a lovely personality.”
It’s safe to say that the recent unexpected departure of host Lisa Wilkinson has left a vacuum on the Today set. “To admire someone for so long, to watch them on television for so long and to follow their career, and then to sit beside that person as a colleague is a special experience,” says Sylvia.
“I really value the friendship that I have with Lisa and I know I’ll continue to enjoy that relationship
“That’s what Christmas is about – the people you love and having a good time.”
down the track. I consider myself very fortunate to have worked beside her.”
Moreover, while Today is the vehicle for her professional success, it also played a role in Sylvia’s personal happiness. It was on the set of the show that she first met Peter, who is the younger brother of her Today co-host Karl Stefanovic.
“Pete and I met when he came in to co-host Today with me over the summer,” explains Sylvia. “At the time, he was the network correspondent for Nine, based in London, but also reporting throughout Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
“We struck up a rapport almost immediately and it was pretty clear that there was something more to it. But Peter had to go back to London and we had this long-distance relationship for more than a year.”
Peter, a music lover, would select songs he thought Sylvia would like and send them to her via the internet. “Whenever I heard something new,
I’d send it off to Sylvia and then ask her what she thought,” he recalls. “Music became a touchstone for us, something we could share even though we were so far apart.”
“It was actually a combination of music and words that formed the start of our relationship,” recalls Sylvia. “We bonded over a love of music, but that was only one part of it.
“As soon as he left to go back to London, we started writing and there were many long emails and WhatsApp threads, even hand-written letters and postcards, and he still sends postcards when he is sent away for 60 Minutes. So it was all about words and music.”
There was never a moment of doubt in Sylvia’s mind that her relationship with Peter was heading in the right direction. “He never wavered in his communication,” she says.
“There was never a thought of is he interested? Is he not interested? It was consistent, whether he was in Gaza, or Baghdad or the Ukraine. At every moment along the way, we were electronically inseparable.”
Their separation lasted a year, but after nearly a decade overseas – five in Los Angeles and four and a half in Europe – Peter found he’d had enough of life away from Australia and Sylvia.
“When he came back, he resisted the temptation to move in with me into the bachelorette pad with two girlfriends in Bondi,” recalls Sylvia. “Instead, he moved into a flat with a mate in Bondi for a while, but it didn’t take long before we found a place together and we moved in.”
They married in a mostly private ceremony earlier this year. “It’s April 1, April Fools’ Day, so it’s an easy anniversary to remember,” says Sylvia.
Since the couple has only been married for a matter of months, it might be a little too much to expect them to be contemplating children.
“Sadly, it’s not happening in the immediate future,” says Sylvia. “We’re not in a rush to get there. Life is good and we are only seven months married, so we are looking to enjoy our time as much as we can. We’re also very understanding of the fact that things don’t go to plan for everyone ... So we look forward to that time in our lives and we’ll be excited when it happens.
“Besides, between both of our jobs, it would be a bit of a miracle if we can get a weekend together at this stage. It may need to be an immaculate conception if it is to happen any time soon!” For all the recipes made for Sylvia Jeffrey’s family beach Christmas, turn to page 114.