A father’s journey

He’s been hit by the brutal waves of cancer, depression and loss. But Barry Du Bois tells Tiffany Dunk that investing in a positive attitude has helped his family triumph.

Growing up in Moorebank in Sydney’s western suburbs, a young Barry Du Bois didn’t have far to go when he felt the need to escape. Right across from the house he shared with mum Margaret, dad Bob and his two younger siblings, Michael and Elizabeth, flowed the Georges River.

“The happiest times in my life were just exploring, dreaming, going up and down that river in a little tinny my dad bought us,” The Living Room star recalls. “I always enjoyed being on the water. I love surfing and anything to do with nature.”

It was a healing place, a place for family communion as well as private reflection. In the years since, he’s continued to live within a stone’s throw of open water, and the 59 year old tells The Weekly, being on the water plays an important role in balancing his emotional, spiritual and physical wellness. So it’s no surprise that his passion for sailing is one he’s keen to pass on to the newest Du Bois generation.

“I always say that for us, on a boat, it’s a little love fest,” he chuckles while watching his seven-year-old twins Arabella and Bennett scamper about the yacht we have boarded for today’s photo shoot and interview. “Everything is polarised – you can get cabin fever, or you can embrace it. It’s one or the other. For us, we embrace it. With two young children and your family on a boat, it’s a 24/7 connection.”

Rolling in the deep

Being a dad, especially as Father’s Day approaches, is something that Barry never fails to remember is a gift. When he married his wife, Leonie Tobler, in 1999, they were desperate to start a family but fate seemed just as keen to thwart their wishes. Thirteen rounds of IVF had only served to produce a series of tragic miscarriages. The final round had led to twins – a gift the couple happily celebrated. But when Leonie suffered another miscarriage in 2005, losing both babies, she was handed even more bad news – she had an aggressive and severe form of cervical cancer and would need a radical hysterectomy.

Cancer had already almost broken the Du Bois family. Barry was still reeling after losing his beloved mother to bowel and breast cancer just months prior. In addition, he was in pain from having broken his back and, as a result, he says, had fallen into a deep depression.

“I felt very alone,” he says of those incredibly dark days. “I’d lost my mum, I’d broken my back, my wife got cancer and we lost the ability to have children naturally, if you will. Without realising it, I started to draw myself away from society. I guess I started to resent society and humanity a little bit. I drew myself back from conversations with people that I love. And when you draw yourself away from conversations with people you love and trust, you start having conversations in your own head.

And they, just like the news on TV, will generally focus on the negative.”

It was around this time that his love of the water once again kicked in and came to his aid. “My dad and I, really the whole family, were struggling,” he says. “A good mate of mine bought

and sold boats, he was a broker, and I had an idea – I’d buy something small that would give my dad, brother and I an excuse to hang out and maintain it, just bond and get our minds off Mum.”

It was not only a much needed bonding time for the Du Bois men, but it “was the start of my healing” thanks, he says, to an unexpected new career. As a result of some savvy property investment, Barry had essentially retired early from the building trade. So, at Leonie’s urging, he took to the seas to deliver yachts all over the world. “I knew I had to own my own boat so I started with an amazing guy by the name of Fraser Johnston and we delivered yachts together,” says Barry. “It was fantastic for my mental health. When you are out in the ocean you get a lot of time to think. Plus he’s an intelligent man so we had some great conversations about life. Covering about 1500 nautical miles in a year, I learnt a lot really quickly.”

He bought a boat docked in the south of France, Bella Sogni, and Leonie, by then in recovery, quickly caught his passion for sailing. “She wasn’t keen in the beginning but she knew I was struggling a little bit with my mental health and decided that whatever I required, she would go along with,” he says of the woman he credits as his greatest support. “But she was on the yacht for about three seconds and she was in love, she adores it. It’s part of our family now...

“A yacht connects you to the planet. There’s nothing more beautiful than being on a yacht in the night and realising how insignificant you are. You’re just a dot in the ocean. But how big is the world and you’re a part of it because you can see the stars and the enormity of it all. It’s a really special thing, to me anyway. And you’re earthed. I know that sounds funny because you’re on the water, but you’re connected to nature. You’re powered by the wind, powered by the sun, drinking the water that falls from the sky. It’s pretty special.”

Rocking the boat

Life, it seemed, was getting better. But in 2010, cancer once again returned to the Du Bois household – and this time Barry was the one in the frontline. He’d been putting up with a sore neck for months and, after cracking it in the surf, finally went to see a doctor only to be diagnosed with plasmacytoma myeloma, a cancer of the immune system. He underwent surgery, radiation and received a titanium implant in his spine. But, in typical Barry fashion, he turned to the healing powers of the water – as well as overhauling his diet and exercise routine – to regain his health.

In 2011, re-energised, he made his TV debut as a judge on short-lived reality series The Renovators. Then in 2012 his life changed in two major ways. First, he landed his spot on

The Living Room couch. The series went to air in May 2012 and has gone on to win many fans and industry awards, with fellow hosts Amanda Keller, Chris Brown and Miguel Maestre becoming members of his extended family.

Second, and even more joyously, Barry and Leonie finally achieved their dream of having children. The pair turned to surrogacy and, using a donor egg, an Indian surrogate and Barry’s sperm, on June 1, they were “crying, smiling and screaming,” as they finally welcomed their muchlonged for twins into the world.

“Arabella came out first and she struggled a bit so she had to go into a little oxygen chamber. She had a bit of fluid on her lungs and we were nervous wrecks,” Barry recalls.

“Being a dad is one of the most amazing things that can happen.

There are 75 billion cells in your body. The job of every one of those cells is to procreate and create a legacy of the next generation. It’s what we’re here for, it’s what I was meant to do and I’m going to spend the rest of my life seeing that they’re installed with the legacy of honesty, integrity and self-belief.”

Certainly, it seems he’s doing his job. Bright, incredibly polite and quick to laughter, the pair engages easily in conversation, clearly confident. Their eyes light up as they watch their dad working on the boat and beam when he’s asked to describe their innate qualities. “They’re both very caring, that’s for sure,” he says. “They’re very close, they’re both creative. I see my mum and dad in them. Arabella is competitive. Benny is an incredible little sportsman and he has a soft nature, which I love.

“I’m conscious as a parent, and a more mature parent [Barry will be 60 next year and Leonie is 52], to maintain their natural personalities. I’m conscious not to influence them into any area, but to allow them to see everything.”

The family has had many seafaring adventures “all over Europe, North Africa, the Middle East – as far as the Straights of Gibraltar right up into the Suez and everything in between. Maybe it’s all in our imagination but we’ve seen pirates and pirate ships and giant whales,” he chuckles.

The next charter

Last year, the Du Bois family was forced to miss their annual trip. Barry’s cancer had returned – this time far more aggressively as multiple myeloma. Announcing the news during an emotional episode of The Living Room, he vowed he would fight back again. True to his word, he has. “I’m in great shape at the moment,” he says.

“For good health you need a good nervous system, good mental health, good spiritual health, good physiology and good nutrition. I’ve got those things well in place and that’s reflecting in my blood test results.

“There are no odds against us, I don’t see things like that,” he adds

“You’re a sum of every day of your life added up. I’m happy with my sum.”

firmly. “You can see my children running around on this yacht – I’m the luckiest guy on earth. If it wasn’t for these things that have happened in my life, some tougher than others, those guys wouldn’t be here. You’re a sum of every day of your life added up and I’m happy with my sum, I don’t resent a second of it.”

This unflinchingly positive attitude has spurred him on to support initiatives that help spread his core messages, including The Cancer Council and mental health initiative RU OK?, for whom he sits on the board.

Barry also recently signed on as a menswear ambassador for Harris Scarfe and reveals that, along with Network 10, they are looking at coming on board an as yet unveiled project through which he hopes to pass on his knowledge and passion for sustainability to a new generation “to make things better for children who are the same age as my own.”

Admitting he was initially sceptical about putting the words “fashion ambassador” next to his name, Barry says the brand’s core values won him over. He believes they have “integrity, honesty and believe in the same community pillars we do.”

With that, Barry turns his gaze to his proudest legacy, his gorgeous twins who – he says – he’s already spotted making plans for a fun Father’s Day.

“I know when they are starting to make their little presents and writing their little cards,” he says. “They can’t stop glowing and smiling and asking me questions that you know are going to go onto that card, which is really special. We’ll have brekkie together and read the cards that they’ve made and things like that will mean an incredible amount to me.” AWW