On a rudely gorgeous Sydney autumn day, Brooke Boney greets me with a warm hug. We’re meeting at the Botanic Gardens, resplendent with blue skies, a gentle breeze and dappled sunlight overlooking the Harbour Bridge. Birds are singing overhead and Boney is smiling widely. After spending the past eight months in the UK winter cloistered in Oxford University studying a masters of public policy, the April warmth is a much-needed balm.
The journalist and proud Gamilaroi woman has been popping up on Instagram, in bookstore windows and in public talks and interviews across the country since the release of her first book, All of It. She returned from the UK less than a fortnight ago. “Honestly, it’s crazy,” she says.
Since leaving TV in mid-2024 and immersing herself in study, she has been busy with essays, readings and tutorials and sequestering herself away for the past six months to finish the book that has been brewing for “years”. All of It is a series of essays covering a broad range of personal and philosophical topics from ageing and beauty standards and fertility to family history, loss and the politics of being in the public eye.
She writes about being followed by photographers, a prowler sneaking into her home while she slept. She shares how the experience of being in the public eye can distort her sense of reality, like how someone in a car drinking from a water bottle looks like they’re holding a long lens camera. “You feel like you’re losing your mind.”
Brookes’s essays are refreshingly readable, funny and relatable. The 37-year-old discusses her ambivalence and occasional longing for having a child before her “epiphany” and acceptance that motherhood may not happen.
“We cannot have it all … We have been sold a lie and we must stop perpetuating it,” she writes.
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Boney and I set about our walk, meandering through the wide paths before finding a comfy spot to sit and chat on the manicured grass. Giant Moreton Bay fig trees shade the path and clusters of families and tourists enjoy the late sunny afternoon. “It’s so grounding, you can’t be stressed on a walk,” she says.
We walk past the spot where she wrote about the aftermath of the 2023 referendum campaign.
Racism, misinformation and confusion marred the public debate – 60% of Australians voted against a constitutionally enshrined Indigenous advisory body, or voice to parliament. The result was crushing, Boney says. It raised challenging and uncomfortable questions in a nation built on forced dispossession of land, children and culture.
“I was in such a deep fog, a very heavy kind of grief, I couldn’t believe that this country that I love so much and all of the people in it, who I love so much would do something so damaging,” Boney says.
“In the past, we’ve been able to look at the things that happen to Indigenous people and say historically, ‘That was really bad. I can’t believe that we allowed those things to happen.’ But now we’re dealing with things in a contemporary context, and we’re a part of it, so it puts us in a really, really uncomfortable position.”
Boney anchored the Nine coverage of the result live. It was a responsibility she felt she had to carry. She wanted to be there to share the news and concluded the broadcast with a message of love and hope for First Nations viewers. But she says it’s a difficult broadcast to look back on. “It’s hard to see yourself in so much pain,” she says. “I wanted to be the one to say, like, ‘[The voice] isn’t going to happen and things are going to get really hard now.’”
She pauses as lorikeets screech overhead. “It’s just seemed so hurtful and paternalistic,” she adds quietly. “It was like not letting us decide what time we want to go to bed.”
Studying after covering news and current affairs for more than a decade was a welcome change of pace – but also, of perspective. Oxford University is inextricably linked to class and power; leading politicians and thinkers, alongside the world’s most privileged, have sat in its famed halls. Studying in this seat of power gave Boney insight into how policies and political leaders are formed.
Reading the same theories and texts that formed these world leaders gave her an understanding of the people and institutions whose policies have disadvantaged and dispossessed communities like her own around the world. “To see how they [leaders] landed at these positions and policies on nation building made me feel like maybe people aren’t just doing things without us. Maybe they genuinely think that they’re making decisions for the greater good, for the largest number of people.
“I feel like I lifted a bit out of the despondency that I felt after the referendum.”
She formed tight bonds and a solidarity with peers from around the world, many who lived through political experiences similar to the voice referendum such as Brexit, or the contentious 2016 vote in Colombia on a peace agreement with rebel groups . “This isn’t a unique experience,” she says, “Seeing it play out in other contexts that makes you realise, like: it’s OK, like we just have to keep going and figure out other ways to do things.
“It’s not personal, it makes it hurt less.”
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Oxford University, national television, book tours – Boney’s world is very different to the one she grew up in – raised in public housing in small-town New South Wales. In her book she writes how her driving force was family and community.
Family often take centre stage, with the journalist and presenter having her mum by her side when she farewelled her colleagues and audience on Today in an emotional speech.
After completing a journalism degree at University of Technology Sydney, Boney became political correspondent with the national Indigenous broadcaster NITV before becoming the first Indigenous women to cover the federal election campaign trail, and taking on roles at Triple J and Nine. She says the opportunities she has been given have been extraordinary.
“I don’t like talking about it like I’ve done this thing because I’m somehow able to work harder or be more successful than other Blackfellas,” she says. “There are so many social issues that stop people from being able to fulfil their potential. They shouldn’t look at what I’m doing as an example of what’s possible, because it’s so unlikely”
As an Indigenous journalist there is an unique strain to covering the often bleak news cycle, the daily stories filed but not forgotten. “[The] psychological and emotional damage to journalists, that can’t be overstated,” she says. “You can’t unsee things that you see. You can’t unhear things that you hear. Some of these stories [from] very early on in my career … I still remember, because they were so horrific.”
We head back, meeting up with her publicist and chatting for a few minutes while we finish up. I ask Boney what’s next for her. She’s not quite sure but says life in the media spotlight, despite the challenges, has always been about connecting and empowering through storytelling.
“I feel really grateful and lucky for it all. Being able to explain things that bring our experiences to the mainstream, to other people, help them understand us, and maybe help some people treat other people a little better.”
All of It: Notes on public life, private joy and everything in between by Brooke Boney is out now ($34.99, Allen & Unwin)
