Sobs and [BLEEP!] at news daughter on way
The transtasman bubble announcement has proven too much for one ecstatic mum, who sobbed her way through a heart-warming radio interview and accidentally let slip a swear word live on air.
Aussie mum Michelle Daniels couldn’t control her tears yesterday after her Kiwi-resident daughter Chelsea called her live on Newstalk ZB radio to surprise her with news she had booked flights home.
Adelaide-born NZME reporter Chelsea had not been back to visit her family in more than a year after the Covid-19 pandemic restricted travel between New Zealand and Australia last year.
She then revealed to her mum on air that with quarantine-free travel across the Tasman beginnng on April 19, she had booked tickets home for May.
That left Michelle sobbing in joy. “I can hardly talk, I’m that thrilled,” she said on air.
“I’ve missed her and not being able to see her — it has just been so hard.”
The Daniels family were expected to be among thousands of New Zealand and Australian families rushing to buy the first available quarantinefree tickets between the two countries.
Chelsea said her dad bought her flights home straight after Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern gave the official green light for the bubble yesterday afternoon.
“He got the flights immediately — no, not immediately, he asked me if I wanted a window or aisle seat,”
Chelsea joked.
“And I was like: ‘Shut up, it doesn’t matter just get them’.”
Chelsea told radio host Heather du Plessis-Allan she had always been able to go home for the big family events, but last year was the first Christmas she had missed.
And in that time her nanna had been diagnosed with dementia.
“I already know from phone calls and FaceTimes that I’m not going home to the woman I left, so I think that is the most important thing at the moment,” Chelsea said, breaking into tears.
Chelsea then warned viewers her mum was a character and likely to drop in a swear word before anyone else could get a word in.
And mum Michelle didn’t disappoint.
Thinking she was just on a call with her daughter, Michelle began telling Chelsea that the sight of a private number calling had left her wondering “who the f*** is this”.
Amid laughs, Chelsea quickly jumped in to surprise her mum with news she was coming home.
At first, an impatient Michelle could only ask “when, when” her daughter had booked the flights for as the tears began to flow.
“So you can’t come now . . . when have you booked Chels, when have you booked?”
She then recovered to express her joy.
“Oh my God I am absolutely ecstatic, isn’t this wonderful news,” she said.
“God bless Jacinda, she came through.”