The Aussie supermodel shows she’s still got it on a summer break in Byron Bay… and her trainer reveals how Elle keeps in shape.
It’s hard to believe Elle Macpherson is approaching her half-century, particularly after the admiring looks she drew on the beach at Byron Bay over the holiday break. “I think she was trying to be low-key, but when you see that body in a bikini, it quite simply stops traffic,” says one local surfer, with a laugh. “When she walked down the beach, every bloke there went, ‘Wow! Look at Elle!’”
The model arrived with her boys, Flynn, 13, and Cy, 8, to spend a sun-kissed Christmas with her sister Mimi and father Peter Gow on the NSW north coast. “It was very low-key but it was lovely to spend time with Elle and the boys,” Mimi, 40, says. “And yes, she really does look fantastic!” Elle, 47, credits her incredible body to a healthy diet and regular exercise, squeezed between running her own business empire and raising her two active boys.
“I try to put aside an hour a day, five days a week, to do some sort of exercise, whether it’s Pilates or running in the park,” says Elle. “But with two boys, I don’t always get that time. I surf and ski, and sport is a big part of my life.” She also does yoga, cycles and keeps in shape with squats and lunges. Her “holiday” exercise regime included jogging on the beach with her dad, who was diagnosed with prostate cancer 14 months ago, and taking to a surfboard to ride Byron’s famous waves.
Her personal trainer, James Duigan, says that while Elle’s body may seem unachievable to many, the diet and exercise regime she follows to maintain her genetically blessed body could easily be adapted to suit everyone. “It’s about balance, it’s about staying consistent,” James says. “She doesn’t do anything savage or weird or crazy. There is no set routine and her workout varies greatly.”
Read more about Elle’s amazing body in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale January 2, 2012. PLUS find out how to get Elle’s body, in the Woman’s Day diet book, free with next week’s issue!
Sexy, stylish, successful… it’s no wonder Angelina Jolie is the duchess’s role model.
One is Hollywood royalty. The other is a real-life member of the royal family. They’re among the most famous women in the world, and with their lush brunette locks, super-skinny figures and elegant poise, the similarities between Angelina Jolie and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, have long been striking. Now Woman’s Day can reveal the resemblance is no coincidence, with one of Kate’s close friends claiming Prince William’s wife idolises the actress, and even models her look on the Salt star.
“Kate makes no secret of how much she admires Angelina,” the mate tells us. “She thinks she’s stunningly beautiful and says she’d do anything to have Ange’s lips, cheeks and eyes. “Kate moans that no matter how hard she tries, she still ends up looking like a schoolgirl. She wishes she could be as sultry and sophisticated as Angelina. Kate simply adores her graceful, elegant style, and how she manages to make everything look so effortless.”
The royal newcomer, who turns 30 on January 9, first revealed she was a fan during planning for her and William’s visit to Hollywood last July. Asked which celebrity she most wanted to meet, Kate reportedly squealed, “Angelina Jolie!” Although Ange’s hectic schedule couldn’t accommodate the encounter, leaving Kate to “make do” with celebrities such as our own Oscar-winning Nicole Kidman and US stars Jennifer Lopez and Reese Witherspoon, the Changeling actress reportedly rang personally to apologise. Kate was said to be ecstatic when Ange promised they would meet one day.
In the meantime, the duchess paid tribute to her hero by arriving at a London charity event last November wearing a silk, one-shouldered Jenny Packham gown that, except for the colour, was identical to one worn by Ange at the Hollywood premiere of partner Brad Pitt’s film Tree Of Life. “She also had the same tumbling hairstyle,” notes Kate’s friend. “Angelina is Kate’s style icon and role model and, like any young woman, Kate is inspired by what she sees celebrities wearing on the red carpet.”
Read more about Kate Middleton’s admiration for Angelina Jolie in this week’s Woman’s Day on sale January 2, 2012.
I am a housewife with three kids and a husband. I love my husband and my kids, but they don’t appreciate me at all. I’m an unpaid servant who serves up meals, tidies the house and washes the clothes.
I don’t have a life of my own at all – I’m just a wife and mum. My husband and kids do all sorts of activities and they just let me drop them off and pick them up.
When I say anything about it they just think I’m moaning. How can I get them to take me seriously?
This is a very common situation if you’ve been at home when the kids are young. It is reasonable for you to want to feel appreciated for all you do and to have some enjoyment yourself. The best way is to sort it out calmly and firmly.
First, stop picking up after everyone. List the chores and share them out, show them how each task is done properly but don’t complete shoddy jobs or do them yourself because it’s too much bother to protest.
You need to set clear expectations and be firm with them. Privileges such as pocket money and fun activities can be withheld from the kids until their jobs have been successfully completed. This stance has the added benefit of helping to teaching them the value of hard work and money.
At the same time try to make it fun – Sunday morning could be cleaning time for the family for an hour, maybe even give it a competitive edge if that would help motivate them.
Don’t forget to praise jobs well done and then arrange a nice family activity for the afternoon – with the extra time you have saved with the family clean-up, you can relax and join in.
Arrange your own activities such as an exercise class or an evening with a friend and if your commitments clash with theirs, some negotiating needs to be done, possibly involving public transport.
The house might not be up to your usual standards for a few days, but you’re changing some long-term bad habits, so make it clear what your expectations are and give it time.
If that doesn’t sink-in see if you can organise a weekend away and maybe combine it with a course looking at getting back into work or furthering your skills – make it something you feel passionate about.
Don’t organise anything for them before you go – let them do shopping, cooking and sorting out clothes and equipment for their various activities. This way they will get a better understanding and hopefully appreciation of all you do for them.
When you come back don’t let anyone make you feel guilty and rather than get mad at the potential mess you will come home to, take the opportunity to point out the chore list and suggest they get on with it.
Lana Wood’s most memorable role might be the sexy Bond girl Plenty O’Toole from Diamonds Are Forever, but she’s aware the most significant part she’s played has been fighting for the truth about the tragic drowning of her sister, Natalie Wood.
“For the past 30 years, it’s eaten at my soul, not knowing what happened to someone you dearly love,” says Lana of the mysterious death of Natalie in 1981, after arguing with her husband Robert Wagner (known as R.J.).
“I was shaken to my very core. But as I’ve said, it’s far easier to believe the best and simplest explanation, to believe nobody close to Natalie would ever harm her. I want to believe the best, but inconsistencies keep hitting me in the face.”
Now, with police reopening the case thanks to new information, Lana, 65, may finally get the closure she craves.
As she explains, she’s always had questions about the official explanation for her sister’s death — that the glamorous actress drowned accidentally after slipping while trying to retie the dinghy to prevent it banging against the side of their motor cruiser The Splendour.
Natalie was found dead wearing just a nightgown, down jacket and socks about a kilometre away from the motor cruiser. “She never would have gone out late at night to tie the dingy,” says Lana.
Yet there has been another compelling factor for Lana. Ten years after Natalie’s death, The Splendour’s captain Dennis Davern started calling her, guilt-ridden he had not told police everything he knew.
“He was overwrought and said they [Natalie and R.J.] were having a horrible argument the whole weekend, and there was too much drinking going on. I don’t know what the fight was about, there were a lot of things coming into play, and a flirtation [rumoured between Natalie and Walken] may have broken the camel’s back.”
“Dennis heard and saw them on the back deck. He tried once to help, but R.J. told him to go away.”
She claims Dennis told her Robert knew Natalie was in the water and would not let him turn on the searchlight, saying “leave her there, teach her a lesson”.
“I don’t think this is anything R.J. planned,” Lana says, her voice rising. “As angry as I get, the fact is I have known Wagner since I was nine, he was my family. It’s difficult to point the finger.”
Thirty years on, Lana’s hurt hasn’t faded. If anything, understandably, it’s intensified. “My mum, as dear as she was, was rather flighty and involved with Natalie’s career, so Natalie was my sister, my mother and best friend,” she says of their bond.
“When I was born, Natalie [eight years older] was already a child star, so I never knew her as anything other than a well-loved actress. She was a kind, wonderful person. She loved being a mother and her relationship with R.J. was passionate. It was — I can’t live with or without you.”
Would Lana like to see someone charged if the captain’s story can be verified? “I don’t care whether anyone is punished,” she says. “I think living with [the knowledge of] something like this is punishment enough. I just want Natalie to have a voice.”
Read more of this story in the January issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Teen mother Leesa Laporte and her daughter Salinah. Photographing by Alana Landsberry.
These teenage mums were once the girls that society shunned. Now, they are taking control of their lives and forging a new future, writes Michael Sheather.
Bethany Zasi was just 15 when she found out she was pregnant. She was just a day older when her boyfriend denied the child was his and said goodbye. She didn’t plan to be a mother so young. And she didn’t plan to lose touch with her future.
“Falling pregnant changed everything,” says Bethany, now 18 and mother to a beautiful 20-month-old toddler, Tiarna. “I was always the one my family thought would one day head off to university. But having a baby meant I couldn’t stay at school. It was just too hard.
“People would call out when I walked past, they whispered behind my back and sometimes they’d call me names, nasty names. They made me feel like such a disappointment. But the worst thing was that people thought it was okay to judge me.
“They didn’t know me or anything about me, but they were happy to judge me for the fact I was pregnant. But that’s okay. I’m going to prove them wrong. I still want to go to university and I’ll get there in the end.”
Bethany is one of a small band of 12 teenage mums from Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs who are taking responsibility for their futures in Aim’n High, a groundbreaking program designed to bring teenage mums back to school, finish their education and avoid the crushing cycle of welfare dependency.
The program, developed by Mission Australia and run in conjunction with a local secondary college, is a unique combination of classroom and childcare, with the young mums splitting their time between a home room at Mission Australia’s early learning centre in Doveton and formal lessons at nearby Hallam Senior Secondary College.
While the mothers are in class or doing their homework, their children are cared for in the centre. “The program gives the girls time to focus and concentrate on their lessons while their children get quality childcare,” says Mission Australia’s Stuart McGougan, who began the project three years ago after hearing about a similar successful program at Plumpton High School in Sydney.
“We’re creating a place where the girls can do their work and not also have to deal with the stress of being a mother with a young child. They have the support of others who know what they are going through as well.”
The program was set up in response to the large numbers of teenage girls leaving school after becoming pregnant — last year, 107 teenage mums left school in this area of Melbourne and 12,000 teenage girls become mothers annually Australia-wide.
“The evidence is that a teenage mum who leaves school at 15 to have a baby is unlikely to finish her education because it’s simply too hard being a mum and a student at that age,” says Stuart.
“And without an education, it’s likely that those young mums will become welfare dependent. We believe that getting the girls back to school will give them a better life, both for themselves and their children.”
Read more of this story in the January issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Do you think more schools should start programs to help teen mothers continue their educations?
An estimated one in 100 men is a psychopath — remorseless, heartless and destructive. They can be our bosses, husbands or neighbours and often we don’t realise until the damage has been done.
When Walter Marsh applied for a nursing job in Sydney, his résumé was so impressive — a career in the US Marines, experience at hospitals across the US — that nursing manager Michelle Beets offered him a year-long contract and a visa that would allow him to stay in Australia.
Yet Marsh didn’t live up to his first impressions. Michelle was unhappy not only with the quality of his work, but also with his threatening behaviour.
He had told a colleague, “I know how to kill people, I know how to cut people’s throats”, and said to other staff that Michelle was a “bitch”, who “couldn’t run an emergency department if she tried”.
Worried, Michelle asked a colleague to be there when she told Marsh his contract would not be renewed. He appeared to take the news well, but inside he was seething.
Marsh had mistakenly believed his contract was for four years, not one, and losing his job also meant losing his visa and facing a $50,000 child support bill if he returned to the US.
He also suspected Michelle was giving him bad references, further hindering his plans to stay in Australia.
He could see only one way to fix the problem. He started watching Michelle’s house, noting her movements.
His wife later told the court that he practised his “throat-slitting technique” on her with a wooden spoon. On his bicycle, he wrote “the ends justifies the means”.
In April 2010, as Michelle arrived home with shopping bags, Walter killed her. A few hours later, he told his wife, “I did it. Let’s go home… that bitch is gone. From now on, I will not have any more bad references.”
For people like Walter Marsh, nothing, not even another person’s life, is more important than getting what they want. These people are known as psychopaths.
A psychopath, by definition, is someone who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. They do not feel compassion or empathy; they have no conscience.
Signs include compulsive lying, an overblown sense of self-worth, refusal to take responsibility, inability to feel remorse, impulsiveness, cunning and self-obsession.
Experts estimate between one and 5 in 100 men is a psychopath or sociopath (the terms are often used interchangeably). The condition is less likely to affect women and many psychiatrists believe that it is untreatable.
Many psychopaths end up in jail, for crimes ranging from assault to mass murder (Ivan Milat, for example).
Forensic psychologist Tim Watson-Munro deals regularly with men who shrug off horrific crimes as if they were meaningless. “They’re very thick-skinned, they couldn’t care less,” he says.
“It’s almost a badge of honour. They may express remorse, but their remorse doesn’t correlate with other things they are saying. They express no anxiety. They don’t have insights into the gravity of what they’ve done.”
Yet not all psychopaths are law-breakers. When they have been brought up by nurturing parents in stable homes, they’ll get a job, marry and raise a family, just like anyone else.
Often, they prosper, using their charm and confidence to climb ladders and seek power. They cultivate loyal, powerful friends, but quietly, they’re wreaking havoc, targeting people they think they can bully, manipulate, and cheat — their wife, their children, or their employees. Their actions are not necessarily criminal, just amoral.
Working for a psychopath is a realistic prospect for most people, at some point in their working lives. One recent study found that one in 25 managers and corporate chiefs displayed psychopathic tendencies. So is your boss a psychopath?
Psychopath checklist
Glib: superficial charm Smooth, engaging, slick. No shyness, never tongue-tied.
Inflated view of his abilities and self-worth: Psychopaths think they are better than others.
Need for stimulation: Takes risks, gets bored easily.
Pathological lying: Ranges from moderate — sly, crafty — to extreme deception, involving complex webs.
Manipulation: Exploitative and callously ruthless, without concern for others.
Remorseless: Unconcerned about losses, pain and suffering they inflict on others.
Shallow: Limited range and depth of genuine feelings.
Lack of empathy: Cold, inconsiderate, contemptuous, but can act by imitation.
Parasitic lifestyle: Intentional, manipulative and exploitative financial dependence on others.
Poor control of behaviour: Generally acts hastily, little control over their irritation, anger.
Promiscuous sexual behaviour: Affairs, simultaneous relationships, bragging, a history of attempts to coerce people into sex.
Early behaviour problems: Problem behaviour under 13 — lying, cheating, vandalism, bullying.
Read more of this story in the January issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: Do you think someone you know could be a psychopath?
It was certainly a Merry Christmas for Matthew McConaughey, 42, who chose the day to propose to his long-time girlfriend, model Camila Alves.
McConaughey, who recently shaved off his blonde locks, announced the news via his WhoSay and Twitter accounts.
“Just asked camila to marry me,” he wrote in a post. “Merry Christmas.”
The pair have two children together Levi, 3, and Vida, who turns 2 in January. McConaughey has always let it be known that he always planned to be with Alves, telling People Magazine in 2008 that she was the one for him.
“I always wanted to be a father,” he said. “It just took the right woman and the right time to make it happen.”
“[Alves] is the love of my life. Everything is right.”
Flick through our favourite pictures of the couple here.
McConaughey posted this image to his WhoSay account.
The pair at the Art Mere/Art Pere Night in West Hollywood.
The pair on the red carpet at the premiere of IRIS.
On the red carpet at the 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival opening night.
The couple at the 39th AFI Life Achievement Award honoring Morgan Freeman.
The pair walking their children through Disney Land.
Nutritionist and exercise physiologist Caitlin Reid reveals the tasks you should add to your to-do list today.
With long working days, job-related stress, traffic delays and school drop-offs, it’s hard for many of us to spare even a thought for our health. Sure if we could exercise whenever we pleased and had a personal chef to prepare our meals, finding time for health wouldn’t be a problem. Unfortunately for most of us, this just isn’t an option. The good news is by making small changes to your day-to-day life you can easily fit health into your lifestyle.
1. Start your day the active way
Bound out of bed each morning straight into a work-out. Starting your day with exercise is a great way to make sure you get your daily quota. Leaving it until the evening makes it easier for it to be overlooked by other “more important” things. Put your sneakers and work-out gear next to your bed and just do it.
2. Break the fast
Breakfast boosts concentration levels and reduces the likelihood of binge eating later in the day. Whether you eat breakfast at home, on the run or in the office, make sure it contains low-GI carbohydrates and some protein. Muesli with low-fat yoghurt or milk or poached eggs on multigrain bread are perfect breakfast options.
3. Limit the lattes
Gone are the days of the Nescafe with a dash of milk — today’s coffees are more like a meal. With loads more milk (not to mention sugar), the extra kilojoules can easily sabotage any weight-loss attempt. Enjoy your morning coffee but limit your daily intake to one or two regular skinny espresso coffees without sugar. If you’re currently slurping down more than this slowly wean yourself off by reducing the size and then the number of coffees you drink each day.
4. Take a break
When lunch hits, take a break! Stopping for lunch gives you time to de-stress and refocus. Use your lunch hour wisely and get outside for some vitamin D. You may want to exercise with work colleagues or even enjoy your lunch in a park. Just don’t work through thinking that you’ll get more done — even a 15-minute break will make you more productive.
5. Decide on dinner early
Instead of deciding on dinner as you walk through the door each night, be organised and plan your evening meals before the week even starts. For nights when you have more time to enjoy more complicated dishes, but for those busier nights, quick and easy meals will do the trick. On weekends you could cook a meal in advance for those nights when you know you won’t be home until late.
6. Sleep well
Before you jump into bed clear your mind by jotting down all the things that you need to get done tomorrow. Turn off your mobile phone, tablet device and laptop and make sure your sleeping environment is comfortable. Then lights out.
For more ideas on making positive changes to your health in 2012, visit www.myspecialk.com.au
At 50 years old, Deborah Hutton decided to pose naked for the cover of Australia’s most popular magazine. Here, she explains why she decided to strip off.
I can’t escape the fact I’m getting older, but it doesn’t make me sad, not at all. It’s a gradual process of gravity taking over, there’s nothing you can do about it.
When your life and career have been based around your face, and it starts heading south, there has to be a sense of loss. But as I stand here now, I think I’m doing okay for 50.
The reason I agreed to pose nude for The Weekly is to celebrate that I’m 50 and my body is the best it can be.
I didn’t take the challenge of shooting this cover lightly. I really had to think through why I would want to expose myself in such a public way.
For me, it’s much more than just being naked on a cover. I fear there is too much emphasis on how thin women ought to be and not enough on health and the acceptance of who we are, with all our imperfections. So I sit here baring it all for public comment.
Some will be offended and I say to those who criticise my actions, why? Why does this make you feel uncomfortable?
It’s a tasteful photograph, of someone who is comfortable in her skin. It’s a celebration for me of not shying away from the fact I’m 50, a time most women fear, as society dictates the best years are behind them.
So, on behalf of those leaving their 40s, I say embrace a positive future, celebrate the fact we are still here, that our bodies are healthy and still working, and make the most of every precious moment.
And if I still haven’t won you over, then you’ve quite possibly lost all sense of humour and, believe me, as you get older, you’ll need that more and more!
These days, I live by the beach. I stand there in my swimmers letting it all hang out, without a second thought. People may judge me, but I feel better about myself than ever before.
I’ve never been mad about my body from my waist down and to my knees up. I’ve always had a bigger silhouette, but I didn’t want to have that shape. We’re rarely accepting of ourselves, which is a great shame.
If we had a different attitude when we were younger, it would lead to having a healthier perspective. My anxiety about my body impacted on my life for many years.
If I had my time again, I’d give myself a break, stop being so critical and appreciate what I was given.
The beautiful thing about getting older is you just care less. It’s a complete turnaround. It’s been that way for the past 10 years or so, since turning 40.
When you are young, you don’t know who you are — you are trying to be so many things to so many people.
As you develop, you know it’s not just your body and looks that matter and you learn to accept yourself; I am more imperfect now than I was then, but I am so much more accepting.
UPDATE: Deborah responds to photoshopping criticism
Very interesting being away and watching the public and media debate around why I agreed to do the cover.
As the photoshopping has sadly become an issue I’d like to clarify exactly what was done and why.
To begin with David Gubert’s lighting was so brilliant we agreed on the day that if we could get away without photoshopping at all, that would be our goal.
But I have spent many years in the sun and now suffer a large amount of sun damage, so what we removed was pigmentation and sun spots from my skin to even out the skin tone. That’s all.
The lines and wrinkles I have earned over the years remain as they are, I was adamant the shape of my body was left alone.
The retoucher initially went too far but I wanted it to be as close as possible to the original shot, so we took it back to what you see on the printed cover.
Yes I had the spray tan from hell and an amazing make-up artist but it’s a testament to David’s work that there is such criticism and disbelief that we changed so little.
I’m sorry that some women feel upset by the shot as it was not intentioned to make anyone feel bad…but isn’t that the point.
Why are we so critical of ourselves and of other women? Isn’t the issue here about why we feel the need to beat ourselves up and feel poorly about ourselves.
I am also a strong supporter of keeping it real and showing it like it is in photography and in media advertising.
Retouching has gone way too far and in most instances looks ridiculous, especially with beauty advertising.
A few years ago I shot a commercial for Olay Regenerist and was appalled by the retouching they did to my face, especially around the eyes and refused to sign off on it until it looked like I did in reality.
I told the art directors that the public will never believe it and that it had “bull@&$t” written all over it and what kind of message were we trying to sell here. It’s an anti-aging cream not a miracle worker!
What I find sad is that most negative comments seem to come from people who have only seen the cover but not read the story. They are so critical and disbelieving about the shot they are clearly missing the entire point.
This body issue and the story that we cover inside, with other women also nude, is all about accepting who we are for what we are and taking the good with the bad.
I simply try to explain that after years of hating my body I have finally accepted it with all its imperfections.
Yes I have cellulite and wobbly arms like anyone my age, but in this instance, I found a position that allowed me to sit and cover everything so it was tasteful and worthy enough of a Women’s Weekly cover.
Why the focus on retouching of sun spots, when we have kids at school with the highest ever percentage of concerns over their body image and weight? Shouldn’t we be trying to accept who we are with all our differences and on keeping ourselves in good health?
I have wasted too much time, energy and opportunities in life on hating my body…I simply say to others who I’m sure are in the same boat, it’s a waste of good energy, the focus needs to be on trying to be as healthy as possible, being thankful we are still here living each day freely.
Deborah
Read more of this story and see photos of naked real women in the January issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
They survived wars, hardship and personal tragedies, and after lives of struggle, expected to spend their final years in peace, surrounded by their loving families. Instead, their lives were stolen in terrifying circumstances.
At 5am on November 18, fire broke out at the Quakers Hill Nursing Home in Sydney. Three people lost their lives at the scene, while many more died afterwards in hospital, their frail bodies unable to withstand the trauma.
A nurse at the home has been accused of lighting the fire deliberately and has been charged with multiple counts of murder. Here are the remarkable life stories of the fire’s victims.
The war heroine
It was 1944 in Friesland, Holland. Neeltje Valkay and her father were hiding not only Jews, but also Neeltje’s Hungarian fiance, Bela, who fled a forced work camp when he was ordered to fight for the German army. Dutch citizens who hid fugitives put their own lives at risk, but young Neeltje did not hesitate.
On at least one occasion, her quick thinking saved them all. At the stamp of German boots outside, Bela and the others scrambled to hiding places in the walls and floor, but Neeltje had a plan; she wrapped her father in blankets and helped him into a bed in the front room.
“When the soldiers came in to search everything, he started coughing,” Elly, Neeltje’s daughter, tells The Weekly. “The Germans hated disease, so when Mum said her father was very sick and very contagious, they never searched the house. She worried about them and never thought about herself, she was a very selfless woman.”
She thought of others again 67 years later, when a fire started in her bedroom at the Quakers Hill Nursing Home.
Neeltje, 90, was rushed outside suffering from severe smoke inhalation and as the officer went to return to the fire, she whispered to him through her burned throat, “Be careful”.
Often, in the aftermath of tragedies, we focus on the loss of lives that are yet to be lived. After the Quakers Hill fire, we are mourning the deaths of men and women such as Neeltje Valkay, who lived through extraordinary times and overcame struggles few of us can imagine.
They deserved to live out their lives in peace, but instead they suffered indescribable terror and pain.
A lifetime of love
Like Neeltje and Bela, Cesare Galea and his wife, Valentina, were immigrants, fleeing Egypt after World War II. They too settled in Sydney, where they had two daughters, Trish and Rosana. Theirs was also a love story.
When the nursing home fire claimed Cesare’s life, the couple was approaching their 63rd wedding anniversary. Of Cesare’s 82 years on earth, he spent only 20 of them without Valentina.
“She’s just devastated,” says daughter Trish Rynne. “She’s not taking it very well. Mum can still look after herself and my sister and I would take her to see Dad five times a week. Dad’s mind was okay, it was just that he couldn’t walk or look after himself.
“He would have lived for a while. What he had left was stolen from him. The grandkids have taken it badly, too, because Dad was the one who picked them up from school for us — he spoilt his grandkids.
“He should have slipped away peacefully in his sleep. He shouldn’t have to suffer and struggle like he did. He fought a good fight, he didn’t want to leave us, but in the end, it was too much for him.”
Read more tributes to the victims of the Quakers Hill Nursing Home fire in the January issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
.png?resize=380%2C285)
