AT HOME WITH EDWINA BARTHOLOMEW:
The arrival of daughter Molly has helped Edwina Bartholomew find some much-needed perspective. She invites Tiffany Dunk to the property where she and her new family have created a sanctuary from the world.
meet baby Molly!
“When the world is chaotic outside, the dayto-day of being a mum doesn’t change.”
As our car bumps along the winding drive towards Warramba, a sandstone country cottage in the Greater Blue Mountains region of NSW, a jean-clad woman pushing a wheelbarrow comes into view, her brow shining with perspiration. Raising her arm in acknowledgment, she gestures us to park next to the sheds, before hurrying to welcome The Weekly to her home.
“We’ve got enough wine and toilet paper if anyone wants to stay for a while,” she laughs, swatting away flies and offering to open a bottle in honour of our arrival.
It’s an unexpected first meeting with a woman we’re more used to seeing in a full face of make-up and decked out in designer duds. But for Sunrise star Edwina Bartholomew, this is the new normal and one she’s relished since welcoming her first child, Molly, three months ago.
Along with her husband Neil Varcoe, 38, and brand new baby, Edwina, 36, has been hunkered down in recent days at their family farm. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.
Since making her grand entrance just a few days before Christmas, Molly has borne witness to some of the most extraordinary events to grip the world in recent history. From the horrific summer bushfires, which almost took the property we stand on today, to the COVID-19 pandemic which, as we arrive, has yet to escalate to self-isolation, it’s been a time of stress and panic for us all. But among the chaos Edwina and Neil have found comfort in Molly, in their farm, in their country community and in each other.
“It’s been such a strange summer to become a new parent,” Edwina reflects now, picking up Molly for a cuddle. “But I’ve found it really comforting that, when the world is chaotic outside, the day-to-day of being a mum doesn’t change.
“No matter who you are or where you live or what you do for a living, the experience of loving a baby is universal. We are changing nappies, worrying about sleep, cleaning up baby dribble. It’s the same for everyone.
“There are days when it’s tough or it’s isolating and you’re not quite sure what you’re doing – and I’m sure that will continue for many years to come. Certainly I found the first few weeks completely intense and I was underprepared for it. I found the whole thing very overwhelming. But then ... I just feel like I sorted it out a bit. And you have this innate sense that what you’re doing must be right because she’s happy, she’s healthy and she’s thriving. And that’s a nice sense of confidence to have.”
It’s this utterly relatable, natural, everyday-woman personality that has endeared Edwina to Sunrise viewers since she got her start on the Seven Network breakfast show 16 years ago. Back then she was a wide-eyed, 20-year-old uni student who had won a competition for an intern position. But her mix of smarts, wit and warmth soon saw her progress from making coffees and printing scripts to producing her own small segment, responding to an odd array of viewers’ questions. “I’d research them and then answer them on air,” she says now of her introduction to the television game. “My boss has great joy in getting out those original tapes now, of me with very short hair, very fresh faced. Going from the uni dorm to suddenly working on a national breakfast TV show was crazy.”
Whyalla to the world
Hailing from the small South Australian town of Whyalla, Edwina is the youngest of three, born to childcare worker Cathie and steelworker Iain. Her childhood, she says, was an idyllic one with memories of “red dirt and sand”. At five she experienced her first dose of culture shock when the family moved to suburban Sydney. But that was nothing compared to the transition to the bright lights of Tokyo when Edwina was nine.
“It was a long way from Whyalla,” she laughs. “It’s the city that never sleeps, the fluorescent lights are always on. It’s this huge metropolis, yet so safe, so we had these extremely free teenage years exploring one of the greatest cities on earth.”
At first Cathie ensured her clan did something “cultural” every weekend – visiting a shrine, a museum, a temple, and taking Japanese classes. But as the years went on, Edwina’s weekends were more often spent with her friends from the International School, visiting Harajuku to marvel at the quirky fashion styles paraded on the streets or lazing together under the cherry blossoms in Ueno Park. “There were all these crazy subcultures in Japan, which actually gives you a good grounding for journalism because you get a great appreciation for difference,” she muses now.
It also gave her an air of worldly sophistication which quickly wowed her schoolmates when, in Year 8, she returned to Sydney to board at Abbotsleigh College in Wahroonga.
“She looked so grown up and, from having lived in Japan, so exotic,” fellow boarder and childhood friend Pip Brett tells The Weekly. “Also, it was when Dawson’s Creek was on TV and she looked just like Michelle Williams – she had the same pixie haircut. We were all, ‘Have you seen the new girl?!’ She seemed so much more mature than the rest of us.”
Her brother James, now 40, and sister Meg, now 38, had already returned to Australia to attend boarding school themselves, and Edwina clearly relished the experience. So much so, she says, that she and Neil (who left his hometown of Lithgow in NSW to also attend boarding school in his teenage years) would send Molly there in a heartbeat should they end up making the farm their permanent base.
“It was fantastic to have those really formative years with what was like a bunch of sisters,” she enthuses. “Plus I think it gives you a really healthy relationship with your parents because you’re away for all those teenage angst years – you’re driving someone else crazy! You live and breathe school, which sounds super boring and some people’s nightmare, but I absolutely loved it.”
She was a top student and was voted head prefect by both the boarders and day girls. She wasn’t, she says, “a goody-two-shoes but certainly wasn’t out the back smoking cigarettes or sneaking off into town. I was somewhere in between.”
“Edwina was – and is – really good fun,” says Pip, who today runs Jumbled, a clothing and furniture store in Orange. “She’d do silly things like, when the Knox boy – which was the boys’ boarding school nearby – went streaking across the oval, she ran after him. She actually fell over with her big pile of books chasing the streaker across the oval. She was always up for a good time and had a good laugh.”
Edwina also encouraged her friends to dream big. For Schoolies, she organised a month-long trek around Asia, catching sleeper trains and refusing to fork out an extra dollar for hot water when they could spend it on more adventuring. “I would never have been brave enough to do it without her,” admits Pip. “She took control and I went along with it.”
It was also abundantly clear, even then, adds Pip, that her school friend was destined for success. She wasn’t surprised when Edwina was plucked from uni to join the Sunrise team – even less when, after she’d finished her studies, they offered her a full-time job.
The pair was, by then, living in a small share house in Sydney’s Bondi, and Pip recalls hearing Edwina getting up at 2am each morning for another long day in the office. “I’d hear her getting dressed and putting on her high heels and clonking along the hallway and I’d think, ‘Oh you poor bugger’,” she laughs. “But I always knew Edwina was going to do well. She’s so smart and interesting and hilarious as well.”
A newsroom love story
When Edwina quit Sunrise in 2006 to do a Master of International Relations, she also took on a stint in the 2GB radio newsroom. While there, she quickly found herself winning over a whole new audience. One of those was her now husband, Neil, a colleague and fellow journalist. Today they are
“Going from uni to working on a TV show was crazy.”
clearly head over heels, and Neil relishes being both a husband and a dad. During our photo shoot he’s on meal duty, whipping up a hearty breakfast, then lunch and making sure Edwina eats between breastfeeds. But back then, both say, it wasn’t an instant love match.
“I was fairly happily single, I’d say,” laughs Neil at his obliviousness to the impending connection. “I was 27, at the peak of my powers, being at the pub with my mates on a Friday and Saturday night, so I wasn’t really looking for anything. But I think Edwina saw things more clearly than I did from the beginning, as she tends to do.”
“I thought he was pretty cute,” Edwina acknowledges of her memory of clapping eyes on Neil for the first time. “But we didn’t start dating then, that was further down the track.”
It was almost four years later – after both had moved on from the radio broadcaster – that their futures finally converged.
They’d started chatting on Facebook. “Pretty cringe-worthy conversations,” Edwina laughs. A date was set to see Geoffrey Rush and Yael Stone perform in Diary of a Madman at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre.
“I think she thought I was a lot more cultured than I was,” Neil recalls with a smile at his wife. “I’d also moved the night before and was hideously hungover. So we got through the first part and then there was the interval. Me not having seen a lot of theatre, I thought it was all over. So I said to her, ‘Well, that was great, shall we go to the pub?’ And she was like, ‘No, there’s another two hours to go!’”
Their first date lasted an epic six and a half hours, only ending, Neil says, as Edwina had somewhere else to be. “I literally called a friend as soon as I got home and said, ‘I think I’ve met the girl I want to marry,’” Neil confesses.
Little did he know, Edwina was busily doing the same thing. “I knew straight away that I would marry him,” she adds, gesturing at her husband as he whips up a batch of freshly brewed coffees for our team. “He’s so kind and thoughtful.”
Her friends certainly agree that she found her perfect match in Neil.
“One of the first times I met him was when I was in Sydney for my
30th birthday and Edwina sent him on his own to the party,” Pip marvels of her workaholic friend, who was forced to skip the event due to her travel commitments for Sunrise.
“I felt really sorry for him, I thought, ‘Good on you for coming with all of us girls.’ He handled it well. Right from the start you could tell that Edwina was really settled and happy. They are both into the same things, have similar interests and he’s lovely in that he challenges her and is very supportive of her.”
“We’re opposite in many ways,” Edwina demurs. “I’m messy, he’s tidy. I’m impatient, he’s extremely patient. I worry a lot and he’s always cool, calm and collected. I hope that Molly ends up following after her father in many respects.”
Quite early on in their relationship, Edwina casually told Neil that he could ask a couple of friends what ring to buy when he was ready to pop the question. She’d picked it out, she said. Five years later, he did just that, only to find out that her friends had forgotten the details. Luckily, he’d remembered the name of the jeweller, but when he tracked it down, he found the ring was no longer being produced. Determined to make his bride-to-be happy, however, he organised a custom-made version. After a few false starts he finally proposed, here at Warramba, the property they had just bought and at which less than a year later, in 2018, they would hold their wedding.
“It wasn’t the original ring I’d picked out but I adore it,” she says, gazing down at the diamond sparkler. “Every time I look at it I think about how much effort he went to.”
Motherhood beckons
Starting a family was always on the cards for the pair but, says Edwina, she was nervous that, at 35, she wouldn’t fall pregnant easily. To her relief not only was Molly conceived without a hitch, the pregnancy itself was “brilliant”, apart from one surprising side effect: the knock to her body confidence.
Edwina’s bump started to show early, which led to a frenzy of tabloid speculation about the pregnancy; a nightmare for any 35-year-old mother-to-be wanting to wait for the 12-week mark to announce their coming arrival. Add in the pressure she was putting on herself to fit the glamourous TV mould and she felt increasingly uncomfortable over the changes pregnancy was making.
“I struggled with the way my body changed and with putting on weight in such a public way,” she says candidly. “I’ve never been a small size, and whereas other women tend to pop out the front, I felt like I popped out everywhere. So I’d be lying to say I didn’t feel kind of vulnerable at times because of that. I think I just felt insecure because I guess everyone on TV is supposed to look a certain way and I felt like my body was changing. Even though it was a wonderful thing, I found it hard to squeeze into tiny outfits and even tinier shoes.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d felt a lack of confidence over her natural curves but, she admits, it hit harder than she anticipated.
Today there’s a new pressure added – the pressure to lose the pregnancy weight ahead of her return to work later this year. It would induce anxiety in anyone, not least someone whose every lump and bump is endlessly dissected by the viewing public.
But Molly is playing a vital part in keeping her calm. Now, Edwina says, she is simply concerned with eating well and looking after herself because, as a breastfeeding mum, “I’m really conscious that what I’m eating, she’s eating, too.”
Not only that, she wants to make sure her daughter picks up healthy values – and that includes a healthy respect for herself and the wonderful things her body is capable of. The other day, Edwina confides, she was critically analysing her post-baby body in the mirror when she caught Molly, wide-eyed and happily gurgling, looking up at her.
“She is too young to appreciate what she is looking at but it made me realise I have to be so careful,” Edwina reminds herself. “Daughters so often emulate their mother’s body image and behaviour. I want her to grow into a confident, kick-arse female and that process starts with me.”
This is a typical example of Edwina’s perpetually sunny outlook and determination. It’s an attitude that has helped her last the distance in an industry where the axe can fall on your career at any moment. And it’s an attitude that both she and Neil hope will also help their farm succeed in these uncertain times.
“Ultimately for us this is a circuit-breaker and a place to create memories,” says Neil, giving Molly a quick cuddle as her mum heads off to change into a new outfit. “And we loved it so much we wanted to share it.”
They almost lost their country home – which they list on Airbnb when they’re in their Sydney workbase – in the recent bushfires, along with the herd of Highland cattle they breed there. On Christmas Day, when Molly was barely a week old, Neil banded with his neighbouring farmers to form an informal fire service, patrolling and converting their farm trucks into fire trucks. He also brought in extra pumps and firefighting hoses from the city, along with coffee donated by Allpress Espresso for the weary workers.
Not everyone in the community was lucky enough to keep their livelihoods going, however, and Edwina and Neil are determined to pay it forward and help rebuild local businesses. Ahead of the COVID-19 pandemic they had dropped their mid-week rates by
$100 and put together itineraries with details of where people could spend that money along the way to their holiday. They hope that, once tourism rebounds, more people will come and visit the region and help those places rebuild.
They are also passionate about the environment. Having created a regenerative farming model for Warramba, Edwina and Neil have also partnered with 1% for the Planet, an initiative that sees 1 per cent of farm revenue given to charities working to protect the Earth.
Last but not least, Neil has pioneered a wombat program in the region to help bring the beloved native animal back from the threat of extinction in the wild.
Collaborating with Dr Chris Brown and his local WIRES, Neil devised a system to save wombats infested with mange by placing medication on ice-cream container lids and bottle tops at the entrance to their burrows. To his utter delight, not only has the system worked, the farm is now overrun by the hairy creatures. And their night-time antics are such that the family’s Blue Heeler, Mate, now has to sleep inside (much to his displeasure).
“There was so much activity, Mate was going off his brain,” Neil laughs. “Normally wombats are seen as the enemy of farmers. And, you know,
I’ve put the tractor in a wombat hole and it’s not fun but everything has its role to play here. Even if I don’t understand what that role is, I know it’s our job to protect it, so we very much protect our wombats and let them do their own thing.”
That joy in nature and country is now a tradition that these new parents hope to pass on to their daughter.
“We’ve been really embraced by this community,” Edwina says, reflecting that, while she’s lived most of her life in big cities, to be considered a local here has special meaning for her.
“For someone to say I’m from the country makes my heart sing because it shows that I do have a connection to the land and the people out here, and we try to give back as much as we possibly can.” AWW
“For someone to say I’m from the country makes my heart sing.”