Starting over: craft queen Tonia Todman’s TV return
Starting over
After a long absence from screens, audiences can once again exclaim “I thought I saw Tonia Todman!” The Queen of Craft reveals the reinvention which led her back to TV.
Tonia Todman fusses around the rambling cottage garden at her Victorian country home. “It’s looking a bit dishevelled at the moment,” she says of the sprawling beds of Australian roses, poppies and perennials, positively blooming to the untrained eye.
“We planted seeds before the fire to grow a wild English garden and it certainly is wild,” she says with a hearty laugh while tending to a Queen Anne’s Lace that almost towers over her.
“Apparently gardens don’t really like fire trucks, retardant and canon hoses! We’ve got a lot of work to do to get everything back in order but we’ll roll up our sleeves, it’s a new beginning.”
The much-loved television presenter, who was an endearing presence on our screens for more than two decades and earned the moniker ‘Queen of Craft’ for her frugal to fabulous cooking, craft and home decor segments on shows like Good Morning Australia and Healthy, Wealthy and Wise, is finally preparing to move into the house rebuilt after her historic bluestone home burned down in 2018.
Proudly showing The Weekly the herringbone floor made of bricks salvaged from the devastating fire, and the sprawling laundry where she will throw herself into restoring furniture plucked from the ashes and making keepsakes for her grandchildren, the iconic television presenter says that after a rollercoaster three-year recovery, life is finally coming full circle, which includes a return to television.
“It was just what I needed after all we’ve been through, it was so much fun,” she says of her role as a guest judge on Network 10’s new series Making It Australia, described as the ‘MasterChef of upcycling’.
“I loved every minute.”
A rude awakening
It was just before dawn on a very cold winter’s morning in July 2018 when
Tonia and her husband, Michael Dowding, were woken by a guest staying in their converted stables B&B banging on their bedroom window.
“She was yelling, ‘Michael, the chimney is on fire!’,” Tonia recalls. “We raced out of bed. I was in my nightgown, I grabbed my rubber boots and my garden coat and ran outside, not ever thinking that the clothes on my back would pretty much end up being all I had.”
Much to Tonia and Michael’s horror, shingles in the roof of the national trust listed 160-year-old building caught fire from heat in the chimney after the guests stoked the pre-dawn hearth to warm up the cottage. Thankfully the guests were safe, but the fire was spreading very quickly.
Showing incredible bravery, Michael covered himself in wet towels and commando crawled below thickening smoke to close off the doors and windows around one wing of the home which had been built in 1910, fortuitously saving it.
“He was just remarkable,” Tonia says, “and we ended up living in that part for a time afterwards.”
Sixteen fire trucks attended the blaze, along with a crane to attack flames billowing from the roof, which collapsed soon after.
Tonia and Michael grabbed their dogs, cat and a pet bird but had little time to think of anything else.
“I was very functional but quite numb at the same time,” she recalls, “I didn’t think about getting our documents, passports, clothing, so we pretty much ended up with nothing. I don’t think anyone expected anything sensible out of me for several days.”
Over the previous decade, the couple had painstakingly restored and refurbished the once derelict bluestone building on the outskirts of pretty Kyneton to its former glory. Known as ‘Highbank’, it was built at the beginning of the Gold Rush in the late 1840s by the Watson family from Scotland, who also built Melbourne’s iconic original Carlton United brewery and many of the heritage bluestone railway bridges in the surrounding central gold fields. “I thought all my dreams had come true when we found it,” Tonia says. “I’d moved around so much during my time on television, this was my forever home.”
Tonia and Michael built a thriving business at the property, with a cooking school, craft and home décor classes and Bed and Breakfast
accommodation, which was booked months in advance.
They also planted a vast garden with hundreds of roses which were often open to the public to enjoy.
“Everything went,” she says, taking a deep breath, the pain of the loss still very raw three years on. “You know, you’re never quite prepared to lose everything, I don’t think anyone is quite prepared to lose a lifetime of possessions or clothing that you loved wearing or pictures or things like that, it’s a very strange feeling.”
The local community rallied, arriving with food and suitcases of clothes to get them on their way again. The local fruit shop sent boxes of veggies, despite Tonia having nowhere to cook it!
“People were extraordinary, it really humbled me. Even the Salvos sent an enormous box of things for us, it lifted our spirits. People I didn’t really know well were kind and incredibly generous, it reminded me how wonderful country communities are. I don’t think I could ever live in the city again.”
Amazingly, one of the few things that did survive the fire were her mother’s precious handwritten
“You are never quite prepared to lose everything, it’s a very strange feeling.”
– Tonia
diaries, documenting family life from the 1950s right through to the 1980s. “It was a miracle and they are even more special to me now, they really are something to treasure.”
Moving into their new home, which is built almost to the same footprint as ‘Highbank’, has been a long and at times challenging journey. Over the course of three years, Tonia and Michael have moved 10 times to accommodate building, a process which was often frustrated by the insurer’s builders.
Tonia was particularly heartbroken when they refused to allow her to keep the thick bluestone walls which framed the former building and remained intact and undamaged from the fire. “Unfortunately, they insisted everything be demolished; that broke my heart, but we’ve kept the stones and we will have a very big stone garden!” she says, smiling.
“I love doing television. I seem to thrive. The camera becomes a friend I am talking to.”
Crafting a career
Despite the ordeal, Tonia has lost none of the relentless good cheer and joie de vivre that made her one of television’s most loved faces.
Her career began with Vogue Patterns, where she sewed samples, a role which led to her becoming the editor of Kerry Packer’s Mode Made magazine. At 40, she got her break on television with Creative Living and Healthy, Wealthy and Wise and during her career wrote 28 books about craft, décor, food and home.
Her quirky, fun-loving segments about craft, cooking, home décor and interior design were such a hit that soon she was a regular alongside Bert Newton at Good Morning Australia.
At the show’s height, Tonia was so popular the network employed two full-time mail openers to deal with the volume of letters arriving for her every day. She received more mail than Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan combined.
Mail bags arrived by the truckload after one particular segment where Tonia taught the show’s viewers how to make ‘sexy French knickers’ from applique lace.
– Tonia
“I remember the producer saying to me ‘you can’t make knickers on television, have you got something else we can do?’ But I insisted. We received more than 60,000 stamped selfaddressed envelopes requesting the fact sheet on how to make them,” she says. “Everywhere you turned in the office there were letters. I’ve wondered many times since whether all of those people made those knickers and what they did with them!” she laughs.
Just like Bridget Jones, Tonia knew what made good TV and she was game to have a go at anything. That included the day she was sent off out into Sydney Harbour in a rowing boat and ended up having to be rescued as the little dinghy she was in drifted in a strong current into the international shipping lane.
In another segment, the kite she was holding took off with her still attached to it.
She knew she had truly made it when her good friend Rove McManus created the skit ‘I thought I saw Tonia Todman’ for his show, Rove Live, and a float was commissioned in her honour for the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.
“They were fabulous times; it really was the golden era of television. I love doing television, I seem to thrive, the camera becomes a friend I am talking to.”
Coming home
Tonia’s return to television as a guest judge on Making It Australia, a show created by US comedic genius Amy Poehler, couldn’t have been timed better. With the rolling lockdowns Australians have endured, zhoozhing up our homes and doing more with less has never been more pertinent.
Making It Australia showcases the artistic flair of contestants who must make something fabulous with very little. One winner will be crowned ‘Master Maker’, taking home $100,000.
“People will love it, every age group from little kids to the nursing homes,” Tonia says. “There’s something for everyone. The contestants are amazing and it’s a beautifully made show at a time when we have all been locked up and looking for things to do.
COVID has arguably inspired our creativity again, doing things at home we haven’t done for a long time, like baking sourdough bread. Perhaps I’m biased but I think it’s a show that’s good for the soul.
“Craft is about making something for someone to enjoy forevermore. There’s a sense of personal achievement that comes from creating something and it’s a bonus if someone wants to keep it or hopes you give it to them. Handmade presents are often the best, whether it be a jar of jam or a tin of biscuits, it makes me feel fabulous to know that someone has done that for me. Craft is timeless.”
A fresh start
Not surprisingly, during the three years she was wrestling with builders and insurance people, trying to rebuild her life, Tonia didn’t sit on her laurels. Grandma Tonia, as she is affectionately known, has lapped up every minute with ‘the apples of my eye’, her grandchildren Poppy, eight, and Humphrey, five, who lifted her spirits when she needed it most. She shares their crafty adventures on Instagram.
And, with one eye on the future, she has studied to become a civil celebrant.
Once she’s settled into her new home, she will be available to officiate over life’s most precious moments. “I’m calling myself Hatched, Matched and Dispatched,” she laughs, adding interested parties can get in touch via her website, toniatodman.com
She’s also intent on finishing a quilt she began knitting after the fire to take her mind off what had happened. “Michael calls it my agony quilt. I’ve released all of my frustration during the fire and COVID with knitting needles. It’s enormous!”
Most of all she is looking forward to attacking the blank canvas before her where she will lovingly craft a new forever home.
“I lived in and out of hotels for many years when I was on television, and I can tell you there’s nothing like being home. Women like to nest. We need a familiar spot to come home to. If it’s yours and it’s comfortable and safe you couldn’t want anything more in life.” AWW Making It Australia premieres Wednesday, September 15, 7.30pm on Network 10.