September 20, 2025 • 53 mins
Kate DeAraugo shot to fame when she won Australian Idol in 2005. Within months, she was chasing the high of drugs. Very quickly, addiction took over her life. It wasn’t until Kate met a man with an ice pipe, that was the beginning of the end.
Listen to Kate's podcast Why Do I Feel This Way? here.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average persons never
exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:47):
I spoke to Kate Derouge. Kate has experienced the highs
and lows of life. In two thousand and five, she
was the winner of the hit reality series Australian Idol
and then went on to be a member of the
Young Divers musical group. We spoke about that period of
her life, but we also delved into a dark place.
Kate told me about her seven year addiction to ice,
(01:08):
living in a drug den with ten other people, being
attacked by a partner with a machete in a drug
fueled rage, and her numerous arrests. In fact, there was
not a lot we didn't talk about. Kate was very open.
Kate also spoke about being body shamed on National TV
by Kyle Sandlan's and the impact that that had on her.
(01:29):
She also spoke about her road to recovery and what
she now finds important in life. Kate's story shows that
life can go off the rails even if you are
surrounded by good people. It also shows there is a
way back. Have her listened to her story, Kate Derouge,
thank you for coming on I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No worries Garth, thanks for having me. It's a bit
of a random one for me, but I like it.
I'm excited for what we're going to chat about.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I should have thought about the name of the
podcast before we started rolling with I Catch Killers, because
everyone looks a little bit suspicious. They ye get an
invite onto that. Okay, tell me, have you ever killed anyone?
Did you say?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
But recently? Not recently?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So we're good, all right, Okay. I tried to get
that one that would make a great viewing if I
could get a confession Confession Life. Hey, it is a
true crime podcast, but we've had so many people on
the podcast that their life has gone off track because
of drugs and just in prepping for the podcast Heroes
having a look at the figures and they're a couple
(02:29):
of years old. But I think it would pretty much
be the same that in New South Wales I'm talking here.
I think it's fifty six percent of male prisoners have
been involved with heavy drugs, you know, the cocaine and
the ice a heroin before they did their term in jail.
And in femals, I think it was up to seventy
six percent that drugs have steered people away. So true
(02:52):
crime podcasts, but drugs do play a big part in
that world, I think so.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And you know, I actually interviewed myself recently the ex
governor of the prison system here in Victoria, and I
asked her that question. I was like, how many people
that come into the prison system do you think are
driven by drugs and mental health or crime?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
First?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Like what comes first? The chicken or the egg?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
And I can't remember the exact percentages that she gave me,
but like she said, majority of them are driven by
some kind of drug related offense or mental health that's
landed them there, and.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Quite often a combination of the two, which is a
terrible cocktail. I've found with people that have got into
drugs where it's impacted on their life, invariably it starts.
I've had a lot of people say, well, that's for
the other guys to get addicted. I can just put
my toe in the water and I'll be fine. I
can pull out whenever I want to, and before they
(03:47):
realize that they've got an addiction problem. The others seem
to be ones that are running away from something that's
happened in their childhood, and the drugs are the escape
from that. Would you you've got a sense of the world,
Do you think that that's where people find themselves in.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I've never met a true addict. And I say true
addict because I think there's people that get addicted to
drugs that are situational and I've met and that can
put the drugs down after a little bit of help
or a couple of weeks away, you know, or whatever
it might be, and get on and live a relatively
normal life that might be able to have a drink
or whatever. And then there's what I call true addicts.
And I believe I've been an addict since birth. I
(04:23):
believe that my brain's wired a little bit differently, and
I almost would say somewhat of an allergic reaction when
substance has hit my system. But I've never met a
true addict that wasn't running from something, that wasn't driven
by trauma, you know, or had some kind of traumatic
event that they you know, drugs became their solution and
the way that they learned to manage their lives.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, it's interesting how people find their way down that path.
There was a quote in one of the many interviews
that you've done, and I'll just read it out. It
was back in two thousand and twenty three where you said,
in the back of my mind, it was a story
I told myself, I'm not an addict. I don't end
up in those places. I come from a good home.
(05:06):
But this shit doesn't give a fuck who you are.
It doesn't care where you came from, who your mummies
or daddies are, or what school you went to.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, true true words.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It doesn't care like if it can get, you know,
and I say this and I share this, and because
you know, I think so many people have this incredible
preconceived ideas that addicts come from broken homes and you know,
all of these really dramatic, awful backgrounds.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
You know, but that wasn't that wasn't my case.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Like, you know, I came from a home that on
paper looked like I should have grown up to be
really normal, happy, healthy, balanced person girl in the world.
And that just didn't you know, addiction didn't care about
any of that stuff, but just it just didn't. And
you know, I've seen over the years people come from
all kinds of professions.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
One of the biggest eye openers I remember, I was
in rehabit I obviously won't use his name, but I
was in reh had with this doctor and he was
the most incredibly looking, smart human and on paper had
absolutely everything that a person you think could want a
need to be okay in this world. And he was
the most traumatized, insecure, you know, addicted person that I'd
(06:15):
ever met.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
And it was such an eye opener for me. Addiction
it doesn't it just doesn't care.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, it doesn't discriminate. Also, The fact is that people
can function with it for a while before it catches
them out, and by the time it's caught them out,
their life's invariably fallen aparto.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Gone to ship.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
By the time most people realize they're in strife, it's
too late, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
People always say to me, why did you touch Ice?
Why did you pick up eyes? You knew what would happen.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It's like, yeah, maybe, but like by the time I'd
got to that point, it was too late. Like I
was well and truly on my path of addiction, and
I would have picked up anything that would have soothed
and taken away that pain that I was feeling at
that time.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
It wouldn't have mattered what it was. But you know,
Ice was just the one that brought me to my knees.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So by the time I got to that, like logic
thinking and all of that sane processing that people that
aren't on drugs do, was well and truly gone.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Out the door gone. You talk about your childhood, where
did you grow up?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So I grew up in Bendigo, you know, in a
house with a mom and dad, brother, sister, a beautiful
extended family. You know, grandparents, all of that really beautiful stuff,
you know, just it was filled with love. There was
you know, my parents were still you know, up together
until my mum left us. And you know, so I
came from that kind of home. You know, we weren't
(07:38):
rich or anything crazy like that, but my parents were
incredible humans that worked really hard to make sure that
you know, we as kids never went without and that
we had everything that we needed. But yeah, I just
I share this a lot. I just always remember having
this sense of being a square peg in a round hole.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Just something was always not right for me.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And break that down, what's that look like you're looking
for something that other people seemed satisfied or you were
looking for something that.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I just always and up until I guess I got
recovery nearly eight years ago, I don't remember a time
where I just didn't have this sense of I guess
the best way to like impending doom, like something terrible
was going to happen. Like I just lived in this
state of fear and anxiety and that me Kate, little
(08:25):
Kate as a five year old just wasn't right in
her body and she needed to be somebody else to
be okay.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And to be loved and to be accepted.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And I couldn't tell you where that came from, or
where or the reasoning for that thinking that was just
my reality and my addictive behavior. And this surprises a
lot of people showed up way before drugs, way before drugs.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
It just didn't.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
It's just not as big and as scary and as
dangerous as the words drugs. But like I used to
use food in a really unhealthy, unmanageable way from like
five year old. I used to steal it and lie
and hide it needed in secret, in a shameful kind
of way. And I guess as I grew up, those
behaviors changed and shifted, you know, and that you know,
(09:07):
as I got a bit older, it moved into latter
real lot. But I've never done anything in that's not
full on, you know. I've always done it to extremes,
whether that be relationships. You know, I'll meet a guy
or used to and you've calmed down now. But I'd
meet somebody and you know, I'd be mad within the
first week, you know, would be amazingly in love and
he'd be the most toxic human.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That ever lived in the world. But we were moving
in and.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
You know, it's just everything was always so intense for me,
and eventually, I guess when I ran into drugs after idol,
that was the perfect storm.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Okay, So it's sort of you have that personality trade
that was in your DNA that you were going to commit.
You just weren't sure.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
If I was on yeah, I was on yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And look, that way of living life is an interesting
way of living life. And some people navigate their way
through life with that type of drive that yeah, they
chase it and they commit one hundred you know, one
hundred percent. A lot of those people are very successful.
But it's just a cautionary tail, isn't it If that
if that drive is pointed in the wrong direction? All
(10:11):
help and break list.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
My dad always used to say to me, if you say, Katy,
if you could put ten percent of the effort that
you put into using drugs into your life, you would
be an incredibly successful human. And he was right, you
know what I mean, He's all right, Like if just
once I committed to something and I was lost in it,
there was really no stopping me.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Okay, music, when did that become your become your passion?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Always? I grew up around music.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
My granddad was an incredible singer, incredible tenor you know,
he was offered to travel the world with the Pavrotti's
and those kinds of singers, but he had he had
he had five babies at home and he chose to
stay home.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
He was that kind of guy. And yeah, my house
was just always filled with music.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
You know, all my uncles and my dad played guitar
and singing and it was just something that was always
just a part of my world.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right. You went on Australian Idol at eighteen, and this
is a man sitting here saying I would get terrified
if I had to do karaoke at two am and
a drunken bar. What where did you get the confidence
to at eighteen? Because I've watched the show and when
you won it in two thousand and five, it was big.
(11:20):
It was before all the PATV and everything else subscribers
and that Australian Idol was watched by everyone was talking
about it the next day. What made you think, who
encouraged you or what drove you to even have a
shot at something like that.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I guess it was just it was something that I
was good at and it's taken me a lot of
years to be able to say that, and I still
stumble over those words. But it was something that I
was good at, and it just felt like the natural,
Like my family encouraged me, my singing teacher encouraged me,
like everybody sort of encouraged me to just go and
give this show ago and I auditioned two years before that,
(11:59):
both years before or I won. Yeah, and didn't get
through the front door. But yeah, I just was something
that everybody sort of said that I should do. I
was petrified, yeah the whole time. But yeah, I just
kept I just kept turning up and doing it. But yeah,
it was I guess it just felt like I didn't
I wasn't very good at anything else, Like I wasn't
(12:21):
good at school. I was never gonna, you know, graduate
with honors or anything like.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
That.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Was the only thing that I was really good at
and that I felt comfortable to a degree doing and
that people took me serious for was music.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So I just kind of felt like the thing to do.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Right. You had that confidence from the people around you,
and you knew that you had had a skill set there. Okay,
you were knocked back for the first two auditions. I
would imagine that attacks your self esteem to a degree too.
You roll up there, you think everyone around you has
been telling you you're great, you could win this, and
you rock up and they got.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Hyeah, no no deal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And I was sixteen the first time I auditioned, so
you know, pretty vulnerable. But yeah, you know what, to
be totally honest, I don't remember those times a lot.
I as I said to you earlier, like I spent
so much on my childhood and so much of those
teenage years just so disgustingly uncomfortable in my skin and
(13:17):
just riddled with so much anxiety that I almost felt
like I lived in a disassociated state from myself. I
would just go through the motions and do things and
turn up obviously I was there, but I don't have
many core memories of that stuff. Like I can tell
you that I was on Australian Idol, and I can
tell you that I won, and I can tell you
that I've done lots of incredible things, but I don't
(13:38):
necessarily remember it. And that's a really it saddens me
to say that, but yeah, I just they're not memories
that I that I have, Right.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Is that because of what you've been through and that
I suppose you shuffle your memories along and you've seen
a lot more extreme since then. Is it? Where have
you lost those memories? Because I I think, like you
look back at they were formative years as a teenager
and yeah, stepping into adulthood and you know what that
journey you went on when you won Australian idol at eighteen,
(14:11):
that was an incredible journey.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Absolutely, And you know, I've done all kinds of wonderful
things since then, Like I you know, I got to
travel through Europe with my family and we talk about
it all the time and they go, do you remember this?
And I say that I have no recollection of that,
and I do put it down to maybe partially the
abuse to my brain over the years, partially that and
also just as you know, that fight or flight instinct
(14:36):
as a young person, that I just was so like
this all the time, that I was just existing as
opposed to being present right in the world.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And you said you weren't comfortable with yourself at the time.
What was that about? Where was that coming from? Look?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You know, I guess I grew up in those early
two thousands where women's bodies were really judged, and it
was okay to say what was reminiscing actually just yesterday
about the Biggest Loser and the way it was okay
to treat those people like the people and contestants on
those shows, and it was just so disgusting. And you know,
we were taught to believe that that heroin chic tiny
(15:13):
little bodies was what perceived to be beautiful, and if
you weren't that, you were no one. And I wasn't that,
especially within the industry that I was trying to step into.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You know, it was so.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Important, and it was every bit, if not more important
that you would look a certain way that you could sing.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
You know, it was it was such a big deal.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
And I grabbed onto that messaging and that storyline and
it just became my core belief, you know what I mean.
I just really truly believed if I didn't look a
certain way, then I was I wasn't enough. And you know,
I guess that got confirmed for me in the industry.
And look, I don't blame anybody for that. It's just
the way it was.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
And it happened to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
other people you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But there were certain situations that happened in that time
that just continued to confirm that belief system for me.
So yeah, but you know, even from a little girl
in school, I remember there was that popular group of
girls that.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Were at school and I just always looked at them.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I was like, Oh, if I could just look like
them and be like them and exist with them, then
I'd be okay in the world.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
So it's just alert behavior.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And it can be cruel, can't it. Those childhoods and
one of being in with the cool gang, and yeah,
it can be cruel. Okay. So when take you back
two thousand and five, you auditioned for Australian Idol and
you got all the way through. Take us back to
those times, because your life changed dramatically from that moment
(16:36):
you became a well i'd say an over night celebrity.
But I know you've done a lot of work up
to it. But what was the process of applying and
then what did you have to do? Well?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I guess the first step was you had to turn
up an audition with the thousands and there's no judges there,
there's just producers behind the scenes.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
You go in.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
You sing a song, there's yes or no, pretty easy,
as simple as that. You go through that process, and
then if you get past that first big day, they
take you on to the next stage, which is singing
in front of the judges, which was the stage in
the previous years that I'd never got past. When I
got in front of the judges, the judges said get
(17:16):
out okay. But this third year, yeah, it was a
different It was a different setup.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
It was the judges had changed.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It went from Dicko to Kyle Yep and yeah, then
I got through, and then I just kept getting through.
I just kept going to the next stage, turning up,
thinking oh this will be like, this will shortly be
the end.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I'll be going home now. And I just just kept
getting through.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
So when the show, whatever night that was played on
and you're performing, then the next day people would have
been interested in you. Did you realize your life was
changing the further you went up in the competition?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
I mean, yes, life had definitely changed. You know what,
once I got into that top twelve, you really locked well,
I was really locked up in a bubble. And again,
it wasn't social media wasn't a thing there wasn't TikTok
and Instagram and followers and any of that stuff. So
I guess I had no concept of what was happening
outside of this little bubble that I lived in, which
(18:13):
was basically a house with twelve people, from the house
to the studio to the house to the studio until
I went a bit further down and we would go
into like shopping centers and back when shopping center performances
and appearances were really a big thing, and then all
of a sudden there were.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
These groups of like lots of people turning up. But yeah,
like I guess it was.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I didn't realize the magnitude of what was going on
out there until it was over and you get you know,
when the winner is k de Rouge and then his
manager comes out and sort of takes you off, and
you go through this whirlwind of interviews and then you
sort of out on the street in the real world,
and you know, and I feel a bit of saying this,
but like everybody knew my name, and it was very bizarre,
(18:56):
and not everybody knew my name in a good way.
It was a really divided like some people on the
street like yeah, ok, D hooray.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
And then other people like screw you shouldn't have won
your shit. So it was it's as lot as an
eighteen year old kid to I guess walk into.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I was going to say, that is so much to take,
like any profile or public profile if you appear in media,
and I spent years in the in the police, fronting
up to media conferences, and it's intimidating in for someone
that's you know, a lot older than eighteen, as an
eighteen year old and then rocking up to do interviews
and all that. I would imagine and maybe maybe you didn't,
(19:33):
but you'd feel like a bit of an imposter syndrome
too in that environment and what's all this attention about me?
Do they actually know who I am?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
And I would get this feeling, and again that feeling
of you know, carried through with me all the time.
I'd be like imposter syndrome, Like one day someone I'm
going to wake up here and someone's going to come
in and be like, sorry, we've made a terrible mistake.
You could just pop off back to Bendigo where you
you know, just and obviously that never happened, but that
was the feeling all the time. And there wasn't years
(20:03):
of practice or years of knowledge. And I was just
a country kid from Bendigo.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I liked wearing tracksuit pants and baggy clothes and really
didn't know anything about that. And I would I'd turn
up to radio stations looking like I just rolled out
of bed because I didn't know that there was anything.
I didn't know I was meant to do it any
other I was a terrible famous person.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Gap the tracksuit nug boots didn't cover it.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I was just terrible. No, I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Nobody mentioned to me, I've got to get up at
four thirty and go to this radio station where no
one can see you, but I need you to look
a million dollars Like nobody mentioned that stuff to me. Hindsight,
it's probably common sense, but you know, I was just
continued to be the cake that I'd always been.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And so yeah, the truth was I probably wasn't. I
wasn't very good at being famous.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
It weren't ready for at the time. Did you have
people around you advising you and all that, like people
that all? Was it that you just caught up in
this cocktail of people go out and want you hear
want you there, and did you have anyone actually looking
out for your interests that was giving you some sage
advice time?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
No, no, not back then it was just these you know,
there was a management, a record label and an agent
and they just you just think.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I think it was very much sincos. We didn't work
it out and do it or you know, get out
of here.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
You you didn't even get through the show about controversy
because you know, you talked about body image and that
and Kyle Sandlan's managed to put his big foot in
it and that. Yeah, that's not the type of publicity
you want to be caught up in that age as well.
Tell us what happened there and how do you handled that? Well?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean by that point I'd already pretty much
cemented for myself that you know, I was not attractive
and that kind of stuff, and that I should have
felt shame about my body. But you know, I went
exactly the way you would imagine it to an eighteen
year old girl standing on national television and some do
telling you to cover up your body.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Like it didn't It didn't feel good.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
But also yeah, for some reason, it just was water
off a ducks back by that point because it was like, oh, yeah,
I know that you tell me something I don't know,
you know what I mean. So it was probably a
lot more horrific in the moment for everybody else than
it was for me. But I guess if I could
go back and talk to Kate of eighteen year eighteen
years old, I'd probably give her a bit of a
(22:19):
hug there.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
She probably needed one. But you know, and this is
the bit that's shocking.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's TVCV, right, So you know, I got off stage
and went the show finished that night and Kyle came up.
He said, oh, sorry about that comment, but you're saying
a bit like shit. So I just needed I just
wanted to get you the sympathy.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Vote, you know what I mean. So it didn't mean
what it didn't mean for him what it meant to
the rest to everyone else.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, okay, but it was just another layer of controversy.
You're finding stardom and you don't want to say it,
but I'll say it, like that brought your stardom for
that age that time. Winning a show like that, you're
going to be recognized on the street. People are going
to be taking pictures of you. People will come up
and asked it if they could get a picture of
you type of thing. How did your process that? Did
(23:02):
you enjoy it? Yeah? I did?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Look I enjoyed it when I did, you know what,
I did enjoy it. And it was nice to feel important,
you know what I mean. I'd wanted that feeling my
whole life. I always, you know, thought if I was
popular and cool that I'd be okay. And I guess
being thrown out into that world kind.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Of gave me that in a way.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
So yeah, of course, when people are coming up to
you on the street asking for pictures and signatures, it's
like I'd be lying if I didn't say it felt good.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Right, So tell us the good times from there. So
what happens after you when a show like that? How
did your life change for you?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I changed in the you know, change in every single way.
You know, I became a household name, you know. I
everything looked different, you know. I was traveling all over
Australia doing all kinds of things. I was doing stuff
that little girls still dream about, you know, looking in
the marrassing and into their hairbrush.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I was doing it.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I was living it, and you know, I.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Was singing at AFL Grand Finals and all of these,
you know, tens of thousands of people and in front
of you know, people often ask me, especially after where
life went from there when it wasn't so good, they
always go, oh, do you regret it?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And would you take it back if you could? And
it's absolutely not. Like it was the stuff that dreams
are made of. I got to live.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
I got to live the dream and make film clips
and release songs and have number ones and win arias
and rub shoulders with all the big important I call
them real famous people, like people that took ages to
get famous, you know, like those.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Kinds of people that I grew up watching or that
I grew up listening to. I got to be a
part of all that, and I wouldn't give that back
for the world.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Did the highs that you get performing I would imagine
in front of a crowd and hanging on watching your performance,
coming to see you, and that you walk off stage,
what do you have? Hang on to the high for
a bit, and then you hit hit loads. You're trying
to chase that the whole time.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, yes, I.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Guess, you know, if I'm to be totally honest, I
guess I got introduced to drugs pretty quickly after that.
That was when that all sort of those two worlds collided.
So I was chasing highs, yes, from the performances, and
I did enjoy them. I and I you know, would
come off stage and be present, I guess with the
(25:27):
band or whoever was around at the time, But you know,
I started chasing other things pretty quickly because there's an energy.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I would imagine you come off stage with an energy,
and I never like I look at the world renowned
rock stars and think, how do they come down from
performing in front of one hundred thousand people when the
whole energy is hinging all everything they say, do move
and that? How do they come down? And when yeah,
drugs permeate into that world, I saw the go I
(25:54):
get it, they're looking looking for a high after that,
How do you match that high or even to come
down one or the other?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, one hundred percent, And that was the next That
was the only thing that felt better than drugs during
that time was being on stage.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah, And that was the only thing that matched that feeling.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, when did you when did your first partake in
illegal drugs? At what stage? Ah? What did I?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I one idol in the November, probably within six months,
maybe three months.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Right, and drugs wasn't a part of your life up
to that point.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
I think I'd done ecstasy once, but I was scared
of drugs. And I always knew to be scared of drugs,
you know. I always had that, and you know, different
to what it is now. There's drugs absolutely everywhere and
it's terrifying. I'm terrified for my own kids. But there
weren't drugs at school or any of that stuff in
Bendigo when I was there. You might have the occasional
about smoke and a joint, but that was a big deal. Yeah,
(26:54):
And look, I drank a few times and always did
it to excess every time. You know, the first time
I drank, I drank a bottle of bourbon and vomited
on myself and cheated on my boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Like that's just who I am. As I said, I
just do it all extreme, But I didn't mean I
didn't meet drugs, I guess until after idle and the
first thing I was introduced was cocaine.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And cocaine is I think, and I'm pretty sure it's
not changed. Is no different in many industries and worlds,
especially that corporate world as being handed to beer.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
It's not shocking the corporate world, so many worlds that
cocaine is just you're not judged that. Yeah, it's what
happens at the dinner party, what happens at the function,
what happens in the bathroom. Yeah, there's no social stigma
to it. You would have had the usual warnings growing
up from your parents and the narrative just don't touch drugs.
(27:47):
Of course, you're eighteen, you've reached a high point in
your career, short career at that stage, but you've reached
some dizzy heights, and was anyone trying to walk you
of the cautionary tale of just be careful, you know,
if you dabble in this, it might lead to that.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Look, my parents, of course, had always given me those warnings,
and you know, I knew drugs are bad and all
of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But I guess they were naive too in many ways.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
They wouldn't have had an idea that there would have
been the amount of cocaine floating around at most events
or most situations.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I would find myself into the degree that it was,
And I guess probably and.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
One of my big one of my big regrets of
that time is that I'm really lucky with the family
that I have and I we're all very close and
was still very close, and for whatever reason, I pushed
them away through that time.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
You know, I leant towards all of these people that
I've known for thirty seconds and put my life and
my trust in them rather than the people that I
knew that I could trust. So yeah, I was just
living life.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I was just like I am I am something here
and I'm hanging out with all of these people. And
you know, the first time that I tried cocaine, you know,
I didn't just have one line, you know, I had
it and I was like, what is this stuff? And
where do we get more?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
And this is what this is what I talk about
with that addiction stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's like there were one hundred other people there that day,
and however, many of those people took drugs, but not
everybody had the same reaction to them that I did,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
And that was instant obsession with what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
And I knew where that bag was until it was gone,
and when it was gone, my anxiety was instantly through
the roof of like, well, where are we getting more?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
You've got the taste and you want the instant Yeah, yeah,
How long did were you living the high life with that,
dabbling in the in the cocaine, hanging out with the
music industry types and touring? How long tell us through
that period of your life.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Look, I've got to continue having a pretty incredible career
for a while, and I didn't necessarily use drugs every
day from that day, but I certainly thought about them,
and you know, I knew when they were going to.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Be around me next.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
But you know, from there, I joined a girl group
called the Young Divers, which were, you know, incredibly successful,
and a whole other chapter of my career that was
unbelievable and unforgettable. But as if I was to put
it on a scale, for a really long time, I
was able to be this keep face for a long
time and do these drugs behind closed doors and keep
(30:24):
it under wraps and be manageable. But slowly, as it
always does, those scales started to tip and I started
to become worse at being this person in the public eye,
and I guess, you know, the holes started to show
with the behaviors that I was doing, and that took
probably three years.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
To be honest, tell us about the time with the
young divas and the crew that you were touring with. There,
that would have been a fun, fun, wild time, I
would imagine.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Look it was, and it was unexpected, you know, nobody
expected it to do. It was only ever meant to
be a single and some shows, I think from memory
it was just meant to be really quick money making thing.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
And this time I know, it's for real, came out and.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Everyone went wild and it just blew up and all
the people that make all the money were wet their
pants and they're like, oh my god, we've found.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
We're on with hit gold.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And it went from what it was meant to be
to two albums and however many shows we did, and
you know, nobody ever wanted it to end, but obviously
it did. But yeah, it was and again it was
incredible that we were touring, We were selling out shows,
we were so busy, we were learning songs on aeroplanes
on the way to gigs. Yeah, it was an unbelievable
(31:37):
time and another time in my life I wouldn't give
back for the world.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It was challenging.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, I would imagine who was in the who was
in the band?
Speaker 2 (31:45):
First lineup was myself, Emily Williams, Paulini, and Ricky Lee,
and then Ricky left after the first album, and then
we got Jess Melboy came in. She'd just come off
the next season of Vital Yeah, she was season four,
I think little she was just a baby, and she
stepped in for Ricky and we did another album and
(32:06):
another tour and then it all sort of went from there.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Did the money flow in from that? Did you make
money from it?
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I should have made a lot of money from it, right.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I've never really spoken about this in depth, and I
have no reason not to, I guess these days, no
one's ever asked me the question. But you know, we
were not taking care of through that time. You know,
we were getting paid a lot of money, but not
seeing a lot of money. And I was doing gigs
that now looking back, knowing that we're worth, you know,
corporate gigs were worth one hundred thousand dollars at those times,
(32:39):
and I think we were getting fifteen hundred bucks each
And that's just the way it was.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
But we were so young and so inexperienced.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I think that, you know, and I remember trying to
confront management once or twice or however many times. You know,
I grew up around a really smart businessman. My dad's
an incredible businessman and done really well for himself, so
I knew enough to know that things weren't right. And
whenever I approached the subject of like, oh, can you
just explain to me where this has gone or where
that's gone, you know, it was always met with how
(33:10):
ungrateful or or shut down in a major way.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
So it was, you know, yeah, and I'm not I'm
not saying this is a case. Maybe it is, maybe
it isn't. But you're very exploitable in that position, aren't you.
Here you are, look the dangling you can perform here,
perform there, forget the money, I'll do this for nothing.
And then you and then you you look back and
go where did all that money go?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah? Well, hang on a minute, wait a minue, where's
all my money? And yeah, and look there was also
that thing of and I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
If it's still the same with the shows these days,
but they owned my ass for a long time, you know,
like between my management there, record label, they were they
owned me, They owned all.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Of us and this is all contracts you're locked into and.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
That you know they there was it was do this,
do it that way, or we'll put you, you know,
forget about it. We can find other people.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We can find another one. Did you think your life
was set? Did you think, now you made it to
that run, this is your future? Did you did you
see your future as being a performer in the music industry?
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I guess after that happened, I just I kept just
rolling with what was happening. I never expected, well, I mean,
I never expected it or all to fall apart the
way that it did anyway, you know, that's not how
I saw it happening. And I just kept I just
thought there would just always be more work and always
be more gigs, and I'd always be able to find more.
(34:38):
But I guess as that other part of my life,
that other beast took hold, my interest in it and
my care for it also disappeared.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Was there anyone that you came across in the industry
that you saw the negative effects of drugs that had
been taken down by dabbling in drugs? Something that you Yeah,
there was a red flag for me. There's a warning
sign and that person was at the top of the
game and the drugs got hold of them. Did you
see any of that in the time that you were touring.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
No, I never saw it. I never saw it firsthand.
I guess I was probably the example at the time.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
No, Like you hear stories of you know, big rock
stars and all those people from you know, back in
the day that lost their way, But no, I'd never
seen anybody really the way.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
As far as I could see, it was just what
everybody did.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, yeah, I have become good friends with him. Rick
Grossman from the Vinyls and Hodoo Gurus, the bass player,
and he got in the Heroin when he was in
the the Vinyls, lost his position in the band there
because it just became Yeah, he thought he was hiding it,
but he wasn't actually hiding it and left the band
and then got a second shot at it with the
(35:49):
Hodoo Gurus and gone on from success to success there.
But he was saying in conversations with him, how it
creeps up on you. You think you've still got your
shit together, it's all going well, no one knows, but yeah,
I'm dabbling in this, but that grabs hold of you.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I think I did, and I thought for a really,
really long time that I would.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I could stop if I wanted to, And what you
said before, I really thought nobody knew had a really
humbling moment. Recently, I posted a video on TikTok got
a bit of attention, and it was me talking about
my experience with idol and drugs and blah blah blah
blah blah, and I had at least ten people come
back and say, yeah, I came across you during that time.
(36:31):
You were awful with different choice language, and I was
I was really taken back. I was like, oh my god,
like I've always tried to be or thought I was
trying to be really kind and approachable and all of
these things, and I just thought during that time, I
was that person, like I was the cake that I
am today, which is pretty down to earth.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And easy going.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
And it was interesting that at least ten people came back, yeah,
I came across you in this situation and you were
terrible or you were really rude, and that was you know,
you think that you've got yourself under control.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
But look, it would be hard night. You know where
these young footballers go off track, you know, and we're
talking eight nine erinen year olds that you know, all
of a sudden become famous overnight because of their skills
of on the football field, and we judge them hard
if they misbehavior or whatever. But I reckon it takes
an exceptional person not to get caught up in your
(37:20):
own own ego. I spose I suppose the worth is
where everyone and I would imagine that that period of
your time when you're touring, everyone would have been saying, yes, Kate,
you're great. Get out there and perform, and the audience
are there cheering, clapping, and you come off stage and
they're cheering. It would be hard to keep that in check,
like keep you keep your balance, I would imagine, keep
(37:42):
your feet firmly planted on the ground.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Well, the thing that they do.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
And I just wish back those I wish there'd just
been one person that would have told me the truth,
one that would have said, you've lost your shit, Kate,
or pull your shit together, or you know, everybody knows
or whatever, but you're right. Everyone's just like, yeah, OK,
off you go, You're amazing, we love you. And I
could have walked off stage and saying out of tune
for the whole show, and everybody would have still told
(38:06):
me that I was great. And so you walk You're right,
you're walking around on this false sense of amazingness and
and and just run by ego and it's not Ego
never ends well for anybody. But yeah, one hundred percent,
I just needed one person to be able to be
straight up with me.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah, you said you pushed. Whether it was deliberately or
it might have just been in life style you're living
at the time that you sort of stepped away from
your family and your old friends because they're they're they're
a great source of bringing you back to reality if
you've you've lost lost your way. Was that done deliberately
because you didn't want anyone to rain you in or
it was just circumstances.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Probably to Probably as time went on, it was because
I didn't want them to see what I was doing.
But initially it was because I got blindsided by the lights.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I guess, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Initially it was that I remember, I can't remember, might
have been management at the time. I think I went
in and said, oh, I spoke to my dad, which
I do every day and still do. I spoke to
my dad and he suggested this, and I remember one
of them saying to me, yeah, but your dad's not
in this.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Industry, what would he know? And I was like, yeah,
or actually, what would he know? And it was just
stuff like that. I think they wanted to be able
to sort of puppet.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
I suppose, and I'm putting the accusations that people I've
never met, but I'm just theorizing here. I suppose it's
in their interest to cut your way from people that
might pull you away from them, because it's in their
interests just to have you and point you in the
direction and keep pushing you if the money's coming in.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Of course, and we were just money makers at that time.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And again, look, I've shared a lot of things in
this in the last twenty minutes that I haven't really
talked about before, again because no one's asked me. But
I'm not bitter or angry about any of this stuff anymore.
And I appreciate that it's just the way the industry
was then. You know, It's not I wasn't the only
one that had happened to and I'm not poor me
and you know, all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Pity.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
It's just the way that it's just the way that
it works, and it was happening to everybody, but yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Had an outcome and they had a vision and they
did what they had to do to make it work
that way.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
And there's a trade off for you, like the benefits
for you as well as benefits for them. So it's
not you know, it's not a one way street or
take take like you're getting benefits and living the dream
as you said in the Pop Star traveling around the
country and yeah, enjoying yourself. Okay, drugs. Talk us through
the build up of it, like the start off at
(40:28):
cocaine Okay, after party, after the concert, you do a
couple of lines of cocaine. When did it become well,
I can't enjoy myself if I haven't got cocaine. When
did it get to that point.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Instantly for me? Yep, it didn't. It was not a
slow burn for me.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
It was I'd met this thing and it was might
became my everything and I didn't know how to or
I very rarely would go to any kind of social
anything without drugs on me with cocaine, and it wasn't
ever one or two lines. It was one or two bags,
and it was as much as I could. It was
until I couldn't find anymore.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Always And were you paying for it in these days
or was this just that the industry? There was always
stuff floating around.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
I mean, you'd get a little bit like I'll call
them the normal people that use cocaine. I shouldn't say that,
but yes, there's normal people that can go out and
have two lines of coke and go home and get
back to their lives the next day.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Those people exist, and good on them, not me, But
you know, I.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Wanted to take it further always, so there was there
might be a you know, I might get a line
or two here, but there would I would always have
my own supply that I would bring and pay for it.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeap. When did you ever have a moment to where
and you don't have to go into all the gory details,
but have a moment when you're gone, oh shit, like
look what I've done because yeah, I've been on the
bendor for for the eight hours. Did you ever have
that moment where you're thinking, maybe this is not the
best thing to be doing.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, yep, definitely. There would be a lot of There
would be times when I'd have to get to work
and I hadn't been to bed, and I, you know,
I was feeling it's you know, be up for two
days and then have to try and gather myself and
get my head in the game and turn up to
an important gig or an important whatever, or get to
an airport.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah. I never felt good in those moments, but it
was never enough to stop me.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Sadly, any of the people you're performing, we've give you
a nudge and say, hey, you know, we've got to perform.
I read one article about you that someone that with
you said we didn't realize how bad it was because
she always turned up and always was on time. Is
that just part of your masking? Or people anyone close
(42:46):
to you that you're touring with or living the lifestyle,
we'd give you a tap on the shoulder.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
I think I'm from memory and I couldn't tell you
what she said, but I'm fairly sure Emily, who I
did my season of Idol with, and I you know her,
and I have a lot of love for her and
always will.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
I'm pretty sure she pulled me aside. She did.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I don't think she necessarily knew exactly what was going on,
but she knew something wasn't right, and she pulled me
up and said, you know, something's not right.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Get your shit together like it was, you know, but no,
not really.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Okay, how long was the cocaine dream going for before
you started other drugs? And what were those drugs?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I guess the other ones just started to sprinkle their
way in along the way, you know, you start taking
a bit of ecstasy and different party drugs. But the
one that got me, that I that really made me unwell,
which is one that people don't talk about a lot,
but I think it's a really dangerous one and one
that needs to be spoken about, especially in younger kids,
is nitrous oxide.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Okay, talk us through that.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
So nitros oxide is it's a gas, obviously, and it's
the gas that you get at the dentist or when
you're having a baby, or you know, it's a medical gas.
But it can be purchased pretty easily. I won't go
into the details of how because no, you know, I won't,
But you know, it was something that I could accept
and I didn't have to rely on anybody else to
get it, and it was basically felt like an anesthetic,
(44:07):
and it was something that I could have all day,
every day with me, and it was something that became
an extension of who I was. I had it all
the time, and I breathed it like and I inhaled
it like oxygen. And that's when the that's when the
wheels really started to fall off, because I it was
affecting my health, depleted my body of B twelve maybe
(44:29):
really sick and you know, I'm fairly sure, which basically
cuts off the oxygen to your brain for a short
period of time. So I guess it's not dissimilar to
maybe chroming maybe what the kids do now. But yeah,
it really did some damage to my life in all ways.
That's when I started to lose things. I started to
(44:51):
lose friends, I started to lose relationships. I started to
lose jobs because I couldn't. I stopped being able to
turn up.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah, when those things were happening, did you just well,
I don't care, like I'm living my life. Don't try
and ram me in. What was the attitude that you
had that kept you not fully appreciating what you were doing?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Oh, look, it's a bit of jecky. There's two parts
of me in this, and you know, I there's the
addict part of me, and that is a part of me,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
But you know, there's also Kate and and I was
both of these people, and I was at war with myself.
But I guess the addict part of me was getting
bigger and bigger and bigger. And of course when things
went wrong, I would be devastated and I'd cry, and
I'd get hysterical and I'd play up.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
But I just wasn't able to stop.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, And I think unless I truly believe, unless you've
ever felt that feeling or been in that situation, or
truly been addicted to something, it's insanity. There's no two
ways about it. Like from an outside of looking in,
you go, fuck excuse my lone, but just fucking stop it,
Like what.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Are you doing?
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Look at your life crumbling to the ground, And I'm
sitting there going I know, but I can't, can't stop.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
So it was it can't it was it wasn't I
don't want to stop. Part of you in the good case,
part of the brains going you need to stop. I
want to stop. I want to stop this. But the
addiction is you couldn't stop it.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
I couldn't. I just couldn't. I didn't know how to
do life without it. I just didn't and it. Yeah,
and like the.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Relationships that I lost, you know, I lost a really
long term relationship with a beautiful human, you know, and
I didn't want to lose that. And of course I
cared when I lost it, like it broke my heart
and it still breaks my heart today, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
But did that relationship end because of the ship way
you were acting? Was that the part of it?
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Essentially? Essentially?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Essentially my parents came and got me out of that
house with him and said, you need to let her go. Yeah,
you know, they broke up with my boyfriend for me essentially.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
But that's it. That's interesting, isn't it. So the breakicking
up on behalf of your boyfriend saving your boyfriend rather
than you like you say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Okay, let it go mate. I remember they came and
got me and they said, just.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Let it go. Yeah. Heavy stuff, Okay, the drug ice?
When did you? And how and why? And I say this,
and I say this to all people because there's different
levels of drugs and there's even like a pecking order
of Okay, well someone does cocaine, and that's socially acceptable
(47:30):
heroin in its day, just a junkie heroin. Why would
you touch ice? How did that happen? Because you would
have had the warnings and I'm sure when you were
going through the cake stage, I just do the lines
of cake. I wouldn't touch ice. You'd have to be
mad to touch ice. How do you get to that point?
Speaker 3 (47:49):
You just do? You know, that's just the progression of it.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
And as I said to you, by the time I
met the time I tried ice, I was so far
down the rabbit I wouldn't have cared what it was.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I was so I was lost and just so.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Filled with pain and just hatred for myself and for everything.
I would have done anything to make the pain stop,
you know what I mean. And I had no skills
as to how to do life without drugs, and the
drugs that I was doing weren't working anymore, and I
couldn't afford the drugs that I was using.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
All that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
It was just and so of course, I'm sure, I'm
sure I knew on a subconscious level that ice probably
wasn't going.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
To end well for me. But when I and I
was and I was really you know, strung out and
not well, and I didn't feel good and I was tired,
and then I and then I had tried ICE for
the first time. And I'm not going to lie to you, Like,
initially Ice, I thought it made me a better person.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
That's a delusion, I know, initially, and I'm sure you've
seen it yourself, and you know Ice, the people on
Ice are so deluded and remove from reality. But I
really thought in the beginning that I was better. Like
I was able to function, I was able to get
stuff done. I didn't look a mess, you know what
(49:09):
I mean. Like it changed the way I appeared for
a little while, obviously, until it didn't. But by the
time I met that drug, there was no consequential thinking
left in me. I was just doing whatever I needed
to do to get the outcome that I was chasing.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, so it's interesting hearing your story and appreciate you
being so open with it that you've got into the coke.
You're starting to hate yourself and so okay, well, what's
the matter If I dabbling nice at this stage, you've
hit low, I'll go lower. Who cares? Like, Look, yeah,
(49:47):
were you still performing at that stage? No?
Speaker 3 (49:51):
I lost the lot by then? Oh god, it's all
such a mess.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
But in my mind.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
But look, I was hanging onto a career with the
grim you know what I mean. Like I had also gone.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Into a deep depression after the Divas finished, and I'd
put on about sixty kilos, you know, that food addiction.
My parents had come and got me from Sydney and
taken me out of my life and brought me back
home to Bendigo to try and fix me up. So
I guess the drugs and everything that I was doing
weren't available anymore.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
So I really got.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Into drinking heavily. I just would move to whatever was next,
you know what I mean. Drinking and food really played
back up in my life. Food was what I just
buried myself in overeating. But you know, I had a
manager along the way, a different manager that i'd found
that really always still believed in me. And I wrote
some music and recorded some music and went I got
(50:44):
a gastric sleeve, so I lost all this weight and
I got offered this radio job in Marucci Door, filling
in for this breakfast show. And everybody said, Kate, this
is the worst idea ever. Do not go to Marucci
Door on your own for three months.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
And I was like, no, no, no, I've got it.
I'm a grown up, I'm a grown ass woman. I'll
do what i want to do. This is exactly what
I need for my career.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
And that was I just become a full blown alcoholic
and lost that job and then met this guy one
night who had an ice pipe.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yep, and that was it. That was I'm used And
that was the beginning of the end.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Really it must have been like soul destroying for yourself,
but you didn't have the proper perspective on that. But
your family bringing you back to the farm, trying to
really working hard to get the old Kate back all
those steps and then it's blowing again.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah, and they were desperate, and you know, I look
back on those times and the desperation in their their
eyes have just like just shut up, Kate and just listen,
like just trust. But you know, as I said, I
was just so far gone and I just was so
unable to live without I was just mad.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Was it harder having seen the bright lights of the
stardom phase of your life and then stepping away from
that at that point in time because you lost all
that was that? Yeah, if you hadn't seen that side
of life. You didn't even know it existed. You dream
about it. That's a life that other people live having
seen that life? Was it hard when you lost that life?
Speaker 3 (52:19):
Of course, and incredibly embarrassing and shameful. And I was
probably a bit delusional around that for a long time,
held onto something that was gone.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
You know, I'd really burn a lot of bridges through
that time. You know, my name had mud all over it.
You know, I'd really done some damage in the within
the industry. And it sounds like a big place to be,
but it's not. You know, it's a small it's a
small world.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
So yeah, of course it was. And I had to
grieve it, and it took me years to do that.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
It took me took me until I got clean this
last time to be able to actually grieve the career
that I had and lost and and the way that
I thought my life life was going to play out.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Okay, well, I can imagine that it would be hard
coming to terms with it when those phone calls aren't
returned and the messages aren't returned, and you're thinking, what
have I done something wrong?
Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yeah, and not knowing why? Yeah, but yes, Kate, you
did heats wrong.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yeah, let us tell you we might. We might take
a break now at part one and we'll come back
to part two. I'd like to say it's all all
the way up from here, but we do go to
lower grounds. When you're addicted to ice for seven years?
Is it seven years?
Speaker 3 (53:33):
About that?
Speaker 1 (53:33):
Hell of a long time? You're looking good now, someone
that's come through that. So I think there's there's a
happy ending at the end of this story.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
But I promise it gets good. I promise it gets good.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
We're going to get a little bit lower than we're
going to come up for. Okay, we'll take a break
and we'll be back for part two shortly
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective see a side of life the average persons never
exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:47):
I spoke to Kate Derouge. Kate has experienced the highs
and lows of life. In two thousand and five, she
was the winner of the hit reality series Australian Idol
and then went on to be a member of the
Young Divers musical group. We spoke about that period of
her life, but we also delved into a dark place.
Kate told me about her seven year addiction to ice,
(01:08):
living in a drug den with ten other people, being
attacked by a partner with a machete in a drug
fueled rage, and her numerous arrests. In fact, there was
not a lot we didn't talk about. Kate was very open.
Kate also spoke about being body shamed on National TV
by Kyle Sandlan's and the impact that that had on her.
(01:29):
She also spoke about her road to recovery and what
she now finds important in life. Kate's story shows that
life can go off the rails even if you are
surrounded by good people. It also shows there is a
way back. Have her listened to her story, Kate Derouge,
thank you for coming on I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
No worries Garth, thanks for having me. It's a bit
of a random one for me, but I like it.
I'm excited for what we're going to chat about.
Speaker 1 (01:53):
Well, I should have thought about the name of the
podcast before we started rolling with I Catch Killers, because
everyone looks a little bit suspicious. They ye get an
invite onto that. Okay, tell me, have you ever killed anyone?
Did you say?
Speaker 3 (02:06):
But recently? Not recently?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So we're good, all right, Okay. I tried to get
that one that would make a great viewing if I
could get a confession Confession Life. Hey, it is a
true crime podcast, but we've had so many people on
the podcast that their life has gone off track because
of drugs and just in prepping for the podcast Heroes
having a look at the figures and they're a couple
(02:29):
of years old. But I think it would pretty much
be the same that in New South Wales I'm talking here.
I think it's fifty six percent of male prisoners have
been involved with heavy drugs, you know, the cocaine and
the ice a heroin before they did their term in jail.
And in femals, I think it was up to seventy
six percent that drugs have steered people away. So true
(02:52):
crime podcasts, but drugs do play a big part in
that world, I think so.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And you know, I actually interviewed myself recently the ex
governor of the prison system here in Victoria, and I
asked her that question. I was like, how many people
that come into the prison system do you think are
driven by drugs and mental health or crime?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
First?
Speaker 3 (03:11):
Like what comes first? The chicken or the egg?
Speaker 2 (03:13):
And I can't remember the exact percentages that she gave me,
but like she said, majority of them are driven by
some kind of drug related offense or mental health that's
landed them there, and.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Quite often a combination of the two, which is a
terrible cocktail. I've found with people that have got into
drugs where it's impacted on their life, invariably it starts.
I've had a lot of people say, well, that's for
the other guys to get addicted. I can just put
my toe in the water and I'll be fine. I
can pull out whenever I want to, and before they
(03:47):
realize that they've got an addiction problem. The others seem
to be ones that are running away from something that's
happened in their childhood, and the drugs are the escape
from that. Would you you've got a sense of the world,
Do you think that that's where people find themselves in.
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I've never met a true addict. And I say true
addict because I think there's people that get addicted to
drugs that are situational and I've met and that can
put the drugs down after a little bit of help
or a couple of weeks away, you know, or whatever
it might be, and get on and live a relatively
normal life that might be able to have a drink
or whatever. And then there's what I call true addicts.
And I believe I've been an addict since birth. I
(04:23):
believe that my brain's wired a little bit differently, and
I almost would say somewhat of an allergic reaction when
substance has hit my system. But I've never met a
true addict that wasn't running from something, that wasn't driven
by trauma, you know, or had some kind of traumatic
event that they you know, drugs became their solution and
the way that they learned to manage their lives.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, it's interesting how people find their way down that path.
There was a quote in one of the many interviews
that you've done, and I'll just read it out. It
was back in two thousand and twenty three where you said,
in the back of my mind, it was a story
I told myself, I'm not an addict. I don't end
up in those places. I come from a good home.
(05:06):
But this shit doesn't give a fuck who you are.
It doesn't care where you came from, who your mummies
or daddies are, or what school you went to.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
It doesn't.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
Yeah, true true words.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
It doesn't.
Speaker 2 (05:18):
It doesn't care like if it can get, you know,
and I say this and I share this, and because
you know, I think so many people have this incredible
preconceived ideas that addicts come from broken homes and you know,
all of these really dramatic, awful backgrounds.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
You know, but that wasn't that wasn't my case.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
Like, you know, I came from a home that on
paper looked like I should have grown up to be
really normal, happy, healthy, balanced person girl in the world.
And that just didn't you know, addiction didn't care about
any of that stuff, but just it just didn't. And
you know, I've seen over the years people come from
all kinds of professions.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
You know.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
One of the biggest eye openers I remember, I was
in rehabit I obviously won't use his name, but I
was in reh had with this doctor and he was
the most incredibly looking, smart human and on paper had
absolutely everything that a person you think could want a
need to be okay in this world. And he was
the most traumatized, insecure, you know, addicted person that I'd
(06:15):
ever met.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
And it was such an eye opener for me. Addiction
it doesn't it just doesn't care.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, it doesn't discriminate. Also, The fact is that people
can function with it for a while before it catches
them out, and by the time it's caught them out,
their life's invariably fallen aparto.
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Gone to ship.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
By the time most people realize they're in strife, it's
too late, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
People always say to me, why did you touch Ice?
Why did you pick up eyes? You knew what would happen.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
It's like, yeah, maybe, but like by the time I'd
got to that point, it was too late. Like I
was well and truly on my path of addiction, and
I would have picked up anything that would have soothed
and taken away that pain that I was feeling at
that time.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
It wouldn't have mattered what it was. But you know,
Ice was just the one that brought me to my knees.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
So by the time I got to that, like logic
thinking and all of that sane processing that people that
aren't on drugs do, was well and truly gone.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Out the door gone. You talk about your childhood, where
did you grow up?
Speaker 2 (07:15):
So I grew up in Bendigo, you know, in a
house with a mom and dad, brother, sister, a beautiful
extended family. You know, grandparents, all of that really beautiful stuff,
you know, just it was filled with love. There was
you know, my parents were still you know, up together
until my mum left us. And you know, so I
came from that kind of home. You know, we weren't
(07:38):
rich or anything crazy like that, but my parents were
incredible humans that worked really hard to make sure that
you know, we as kids never went without and that
we had everything that we needed. But yeah, I just
I share this a lot. I just always remember having
this sense of being a square peg in a round hole.
Speaker 3 (07:53):
Just something was always not right for me.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
And break that down, what's that look like you're looking
for something that other people seemed satisfied or you were
looking for something that.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I just always and up until I guess I got
recovery nearly eight years ago, I don't remember a time
where I just didn't have this sense of I guess
the best way to like impending doom, like something terrible
was going to happen. Like I just lived in this
state of fear and anxiety and that me Kate, little
(08:25):
Kate as a five year old just wasn't right in
her body and she needed to be somebody else to
be okay.
Speaker 3 (08:30):
And to be loved and to be accepted.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
And I couldn't tell you where that came from, or
where or the reasoning for that thinking that was just
my reality and my addictive behavior. And this surprises a
lot of people showed up way before drugs, way before drugs.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
It just didn't.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
It's just not as big and as scary and as
dangerous as the words drugs. But like I used to
use food in a really unhealthy, unmanageable way from like
five year old. I used to steal it and lie
and hide it needed in secret, in a shameful kind
of way. And I guess as I grew up, those
behaviors changed and shifted, you know, and that you know,
(09:07):
as I got a bit older, it moved into latter
real lot. But I've never done anything in that's not
full on, you know. I've always done it to extremes,
whether that be relationships. You know, I'll meet a guy
or used to and you've calmed down now. But I'd
meet somebody and you know, I'd be mad within the
first week, you know, would be amazingly in love and
he'd be the most toxic human.
Speaker 3 (09:27):
That ever lived in the world. But we were moving
in and.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
You know, it's just everything was always so intense for me,
and eventually, I guess when I ran into drugs after idol,
that was the perfect storm.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Okay, So it's sort of you have that personality trade
that was in your DNA that you were going to commit.
You just weren't sure.
Speaker 3 (09:47):
If I was on yeah, I was on yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And look, that way of living life is an interesting
way of living life. And some people navigate their way
through life with that type of drive that yeah, they
chase it and they commit one hundred you know, one
hundred percent. A lot of those people are very successful.
But it's just a cautionary tail, isn't it If that
if that drive is pointed in the wrong direction? All
(10:11):
help and break list.
Speaker 2 (10:13):
My dad always used to say to me, if you say, Katy,
if you could put ten percent of the effort that
you put into using drugs into your life, you would
be an incredibly successful human. And he was right, you
know what I mean, He's all right, Like if just
once I committed to something and I was lost in it,
there was really no stopping me.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
Okay, music, when did that become your become your passion?
Speaker 3 (10:33):
Always? I grew up around music.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
My granddad was an incredible singer, incredible tenor you know,
he was offered to travel the world with the Pavrotti's
and those kinds of singers, but he had he had
he had five babies at home and he chose to
stay home.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
He was that kind of guy. And yeah, my house
was just always filled with music.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
You know, all my uncles and my dad played guitar
and singing and it was just something that was always
just a part of my world.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right. You went on Australian Idol at eighteen, and this
is a man sitting here saying I would get terrified
if I had to do karaoke at two am and
a drunken bar. What where did you get the confidence
to at eighteen? Because I've watched the show and when
you won it in two thousand and five, it was big.
(11:20):
It was before all the PATV and everything else subscribers
and that Australian Idol was watched by everyone was talking
about it the next day. What made you think, who
encouraged you or what drove you to even have a
shot at something like that.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I guess it was just it was something that I
was good at and it's taken me a lot of
years to be able to say that, and I still
stumble over those words. But it was something that I
was good at, and it just felt like the natural,
Like my family encouraged me, my singing teacher encouraged me,
like everybody sort of encouraged me to just go and
give this show ago and I auditioned two years before that,
(11:59):
both years before or I won. Yeah, and didn't get
through the front door. But yeah, I just was something
that everybody sort of said that I should do. I
was petrified, yeah the whole time. But yeah, I just
kept I just kept turning up and doing it. But yeah,
it was I guess it just felt like I didn't
I wasn't very good at anything else, Like I wasn't
(12:21):
good at school. I was never gonna, you know, graduate
with honors or anything like.
Speaker 1 (12:25):
That.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Was the only thing that I was really good at
and that I felt comfortable to a degree doing and
that people took me serious for was music.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
So I just kind of felt like the thing to do.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Right. You had that confidence from the people around you,
and you knew that you had had a skill set there. Okay,
you were knocked back for the first two auditions. I
would imagine that attacks your self esteem to a degree too.
You roll up there, you think everyone around you has
been telling you you're great, you could win this, and
you rock up and they got.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Hyeah, no no deal. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
And I was sixteen the first time I auditioned, so
you know, pretty vulnerable. But yeah, you know what, to
be totally honest, I don't remember those times a lot.
I as I said to you earlier, like I spent
so much on my childhood and so much of those
teenage years just so disgustingly uncomfortable in my skin and
(13:17):
just riddled with so much anxiety that I almost felt
like I lived in a disassociated state from myself. I
would just go through the motions and do things and
turn up obviously I was there, but I don't have
many core memories of that stuff. Like I can tell
you that I was on Australian Idol, and I can
tell you that I won, and I can tell you
that I've done lots of incredible things, but I don't
(13:38):
necessarily remember it. And that's a really it saddens me
to say that, but yeah, I just they're not memories
that I that I have, Right.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
Is that because of what you've been through and that
I suppose you shuffle your memories along and you've seen
a lot more extreme since then. Is it? Where have
you lost those memories? Because I I think, like you
look back at they were formative years as a teenager
and yeah, stepping into adulthood and you know what that
journey you went on when you won Australian idol at eighteen,
(14:11):
that was an incredible journey.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
Absolutely, And you know, I've done all kinds of wonderful
things since then, Like I you know, I got to
travel through Europe with my family and we talk about
it all the time and they go, do you remember this?
And I say that I have no recollection of that,
and I do put it down to maybe partially the
abuse to my brain over the years, partially that and
also just as you know, that fight or flight instinct
(14:36):
as a young person, that I just was so like
this all the time, that I was just existing as
opposed to being present right in the world.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
And you said you weren't comfortable with yourself at the time.
What was that about? Where was that coming from? Look?
Speaker 2 (14:50):
You know, I guess I grew up in those early
two thousands where women's bodies were really judged, and it
was okay to say what was reminiscing actually just yesterday
about the Biggest Loser and the way it was okay
to treat those people like the people and contestants on
those shows, and it was just so disgusting. And you know,
we were taught to believe that that heroin chic tiny
(15:13):
little bodies was what perceived to be beautiful, and if
you weren't that, you were no one. And I wasn't that,
especially within the industry that I was trying to step into.
Speaker 3 (15:21):
You know, it was so.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Important, and it was every bit, if not more important
that you would look a certain way that you could sing.
Speaker 3 (15:28):
You know, it was it was such a big deal.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
And I grabbed onto that messaging and that storyline and
it just became my core belief, you know what I mean.
I just really truly believed if I didn't look a
certain way, then I was I wasn't enough. And you know,
I guess that got confirmed for me in the industry.
And look, I don't blame anybody for that. It's just
the way it was.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
And it happened to hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
other people you know what I mean.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
But there were certain situations that happened in that time
that just continued to confirm that belief system for me.
So yeah, but you know, even from a little girl
in school, I remember there was that popular group of
girls that.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Were at school and I just always looked at them.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
I was like, Oh, if I could just look like
them and be like them and exist with them, then
I'd be okay in the world.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
So it's just alert behavior.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
And it can be cruel, can't it. Those childhoods and
one of being in with the cool gang, and yeah,
it can be cruel. Okay. So when take you back
two thousand and five, you auditioned for Australian Idol and
you got all the way through. Take us back to
those times, because your life changed dramatically from that moment
(16:36):
you became a well i'd say an over night celebrity.
But I know you've done a lot of work up
to it. But what was the process of applying and
then what did you have to do? Well?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
I guess the first step was you had to turn
up an audition with the thousands and there's no judges there,
there's just producers behind the scenes.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
You go in.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
You sing a song, there's yes or no, pretty easy,
as simple as that. You go through that process, and
then if you get past that first big day, they
take you on to the next stage, which is singing
in front of the judges, which was the stage in
the previous years that I'd never got past. When I
got in front of the judges, the judges said get
(17:16):
out okay. But this third year, yeah, it was a
different It was a different setup.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
It was the judges had changed.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
It went from Dicko to Kyle Yep and yeah, then
I got through, and then I just kept getting through.
I just kept going to the next stage, turning up,
thinking oh this will be like, this will shortly be
the end.
Speaker 3 (17:34):
I'll be going home now. And I just just kept
getting through.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
So when the show, whatever night that was played on
and you're performing, then the next day people would have
been interested in you. Did you realize your life was
changing the further you went up in the competition?
Speaker 2 (17:51):
I mean, yes, life had definitely changed. You know what,
once I got into that top twelve, you really locked well,
I was really locked up in a bubble. And again,
it wasn't social media wasn't a thing there wasn't TikTok
and Instagram and followers and any of that stuff. So
I guess I had no concept of what was happening
outside of this little bubble that I lived in, which
(18:13):
was basically a house with twelve people, from the house
to the studio to the house to the studio until
I went a bit further down and we would go
into like shopping centers and back when shopping center performances
and appearances were really a big thing, and then all
of a sudden there were.
Speaker 3 (18:29):
These groups of like lots of people turning up. But yeah,
like I guess it was.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
I didn't realize the magnitude of what was going on
out there until it was over and you get you know,
when the winner is k de Rouge and then his
manager comes out and sort of takes you off, and
you go through this whirlwind of interviews and then you
sort of out on the street in the real world,
and you know, and I feel a bit of saying this,
but like everybody knew my name, and it was very bizarre,
(18:56):
and not everybody knew my name in a good way.
It was a really divided like some people on the
street like yeah, ok, D hooray.
Speaker 3 (19:03):
And then other people like screw you shouldn't have won
your shit. So it was it's as lot as an
eighteen year old kid to I guess walk into.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
I was going to say, that is so much to take,
like any profile or public profile if you appear in media,
and I spent years in the in the police, fronting
up to media conferences, and it's intimidating in for someone
that's you know, a lot older than eighteen, as an
eighteen year old and then rocking up to do interviews
and all that. I would imagine and maybe maybe you didn't,
(19:33):
but you'd feel like a bit of an imposter syndrome
too in that environment and what's all this attention about me?
Do they actually know who I am?
Speaker 2 (19:42):
And I would get this feeling, and again that feeling
of you know, carried through with me all the time.
I'd be like imposter syndrome, Like one day someone I'm
going to wake up here and someone's going to come
in and be like, sorry, we've made a terrible mistake.
You could just pop off back to Bendigo where you
you know, just and obviously that never happened, but that
was the feeling all the time. And there wasn't years
(20:03):
of practice or years of knowledge. And I was just
a country kid from Bendigo.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
You know.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
I liked wearing tracksuit pants and baggy clothes and really
didn't know anything about that. And I would I'd turn
up to radio stations looking like I just rolled out
of bed because I didn't know that there was anything.
I didn't know I was meant to do it any
other I was a terrible famous person.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
Gap the tracksuit nug boots didn't cover it.
Speaker 3 (20:23):
I was just terrible. No, I didn't know.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
Nobody mentioned to me, I've got to get up at
four thirty and go to this radio station where no
one can see you, but I need you to look
a million dollars Like nobody mentioned that stuff to me. Hindsight,
it's probably common sense, but you know, I was just
continued to be the cake that I'd always been.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
And so yeah, the truth was I probably wasn't. I
wasn't very good at being famous.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
It weren't ready for at the time. Did you have
people around you advising you and all that, like people
that all? Was it that you just caught up in
this cocktail of people go out and want you hear
want you there, and did you have anyone actually looking
out for your interests that was giving you some sage
advice time?
Speaker 2 (21:01):
No, no, not back then it was just these you know,
there was a management, a record label and an agent
and they just you just think.
Speaker 3 (21:10):
I think it was very much sincos. We didn't work
it out and do it or you know, get out
of here.
Speaker 1 (21:17):
You you didn't even get through the show about controversy
because you know, you talked about body image and that
and Kyle Sandlan's managed to put his big foot in
it and that. Yeah, that's not the type of publicity
you want to be caught up in that age as well.
Tell us what happened there and how do you handled that? Well?
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yeah, I mean by that point I'd already pretty much
cemented for myself that you know, I was not attractive
and that kind of stuff, and that I should have
felt shame about my body. But you know, I went
exactly the way you would imagine it to an eighteen
year old girl standing on national television and some do
telling you to cover up your body.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
Like it didn't It didn't feel good.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
But also yeah, for some reason, it just was water
off a ducks back by that point because it was like, oh, yeah,
I know that you tell me something I don't know,
you know what I mean. So it was probably a
lot more horrific in the moment for everybody else than
it was for me. But I guess if I could
go back and talk to Kate of eighteen year eighteen
years old, I'd probably give her a bit of a
(22:19):
hug there.
Speaker 3 (22:20):
She probably needed one. But you know, and this is
the bit that's shocking.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
It's TVCV, right, So you know, I got off stage
and went the show finished that night and Kyle came up.
He said, oh, sorry about that comment, but you're saying
a bit like shit. So I just needed I just
wanted to get you the sympathy.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
Vote, you know what I mean. So it didn't mean
what it didn't mean for him what it meant to
the rest to everyone else.
Speaker 1 (22:40):
Yeah, okay, but it was just another layer of controversy.
You're finding stardom and you don't want to say it,
but I'll say it, like that brought your stardom for
that age that time. Winning a show like that, you're
going to be recognized on the street. People are going
to be taking pictures of you. People will come up
and asked it if they could get a picture of
you type of thing. How did your process that? Did
(23:02):
you enjoy it? Yeah? I did?
Speaker 2 (23:04):
Look I enjoyed it when I did, you know what,
I did enjoy it. And it was nice to feel important,
you know what I mean. I'd wanted that feeling my
whole life. I always, you know, thought if I was
popular and cool that I'd be okay. And I guess
being thrown out into that world kind.
Speaker 3 (23:19):
Of gave me that in a way.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
So yeah, of course, when people are coming up to
you on the street asking for pictures and signatures, it's
like I'd be lying if I didn't say it felt good.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Right, So tell us the good times from there. So
what happens after you when a show like that? How
did your life change for you?
Speaker 2 (23:38):
I changed in the you know, change in every single way.
You know, I became a household name, you know. I
everything looked different, you know. I was traveling all over
Australia doing all kinds of things. I was doing stuff
that little girls still dream about, you know, looking in
the marrassing and into their hairbrush.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
I was doing it.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
I was living it, and you know, I.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Was singing at AFL Grand Finals and all of these,
you know, tens of thousands of people and in front
of you know, people often ask me, especially after where
life went from there when it wasn't so good, they
always go, oh, do you regret it?
Speaker 3 (24:14):
And would you take it back if you could? And
it's absolutely not. Like it was the stuff that dreams
are made of. I got to live.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
I got to live the dream and make film clips
and release songs and have number ones and win arias
and rub shoulders with all the big important I call
them real famous people, like people that took ages to
get famous, you know, like those.
Speaker 3 (24:35):
Kinds of people that I grew up watching or that
I grew up listening to. I got to be a
part of all that, and I wouldn't give that back
for the world.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Did the highs that you get performing I would imagine
in front of a crowd and hanging on watching your performance,
coming to see you, and that you walk off stage,
what do you have? Hang on to the high for
a bit, and then you hit hit loads. You're trying
to chase that the whole time.
Speaker 3 (25:03):
Yeah, yes, I.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Guess, you know, if I'm to be totally honest, I
guess I got introduced to drugs pretty quickly after that.
That was when that all sort of those two worlds collided.
So I was chasing highs, yes, from the performances, and
I did enjoy them. I and I you know, would
come off stage and be present, I guess with the
(25:27):
band or whoever was around at the time, But you know,
I started chasing other things pretty quickly because there's an energy.
Speaker 1 (25:33):
I would imagine you come off stage with an energy,
and I never like I look at the world renowned
rock stars and think, how do they come down from
performing in front of one hundred thousand people when the
whole energy is hinging all everything they say, do move
and that? How do they come down? And when yeah,
drugs permeate into that world, I saw the go I
(25:54):
get it, they're looking looking for a high after that,
How do you match that high or even to come
down one or the other?
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Yeah, one hundred percent, And that was the next That
was the only thing that felt better than drugs during
that time was being on stage.
Speaker 3 (26:09):
Yeah, And that was the only thing that matched that feeling.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah, when did you when did your first partake in
illegal drugs? At what stage? Ah? What did I?
Speaker 3 (26:22):
I one idol in the November, probably within six months,
maybe three months.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Right, and drugs wasn't a part of your life up
to that point.
Speaker 2 (26:31):
I think I'd done ecstasy once, but I was scared
of drugs. And I always knew to be scared of drugs,
you know. I always had that, and you know, different
to what it is now. There's drugs absolutely everywhere and
it's terrifying. I'm terrified for my own kids. But there
weren't drugs at school or any of that stuff in
Bendigo when I was there. You might have the occasional
about smoke and a joint, but that was a big deal. Yeah,
(26:54):
And look, I drank a few times and always did
it to excess every time. You know, the first time
I drank, I drank a bottle of bourbon and vomited
on myself and cheated on my boyfriend.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Like that's just who I am. As I said, I
just do it all extreme, But I didn't mean I
didn't meet drugs, I guess until after idle and the
first thing I was introduced was cocaine.
Speaker 2 (27:14):
And cocaine is I think, and I'm pretty sure it's
not changed. Is no different in many industries and worlds,
especially that corporate world as being handed to beer.
Speaker 1 (27:24):
It's not shocking the corporate world, so many worlds that
cocaine is just you're not judged that. Yeah, it's what
happens at the dinner party, what happens at the function,
what happens in the bathroom. Yeah, there's no social stigma
to it. You would have had the usual warnings growing
up from your parents and the narrative just don't touch drugs.
(27:47):
Of course, you're eighteen, you've reached a high point in
your career, short career at that stage, but you've reached
some dizzy heights, and was anyone trying to walk you
of the cautionary tale of just be careful, you know,
if you dabble in this, it might lead to that.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Look, my parents, of course, had always given me those warnings,
and you know, I knew drugs are bad and all
of that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3 (28:14):
But I guess they were naive too in many ways.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
They wouldn't have had an idea that there would have
been the amount of cocaine floating around at most events
or most situations.
Speaker 3 (28:24):
I would find myself into the degree that it was,
And I guess probably and.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
One of my big one of my big regrets of
that time is that I'm really lucky with the family
that I have and I we're all very close and
was still very close, and for whatever reason, I pushed
them away through that time.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
You know, I leant towards all of these people that
I've known for thirty seconds and put my life and
my trust in them rather than the people that I
knew that I could trust. So yeah, I was just
living life.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
You know.
Speaker 2 (28:53):
I was just like I am I am something here
and I'm hanging out with all of these people. And
you know, the first time that I tried cocaine, you know,
I didn't just have one line, you know, I had
it and I was like, what is this stuff? And
where do we get more?
Speaker 3 (29:08):
And this is what this is what I talk about
with that addiction stuff.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
It's like there were one hundred other people there that day,
and however, many of those people took drugs, but not
everybody had the same reaction to them that I did,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (29:19):
And that was instant obsession with what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
And I knew where that bag was until it was gone,
and when it was gone, my anxiety was instantly through
the roof of like, well, where are we getting more?
Speaker 1 (29:31):
You've got the taste and you want the instant Yeah, yeah,
How long did were you living the high life with that,
dabbling in the in the cocaine, hanging out with the
music industry types and touring? How long tell us through
that period of your life.
Speaker 2 (29:48):
Look, I've got to continue having a pretty incredible career
for a while, and I didn't necessarily use drugs every
day from that day, but I certainly thought about them,
and you know, I knew when they were going to.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
Be around me next.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
But you know, from there, I joined a girl group
called the Young Divers, which were, you know, incredibly successful,
and a whole other chapter of my career that was
unbelievable and unforgettable. But as if I was to put
it on a scale, for a really long time, I
was able to be this keep face for a long
time and do these drugs behind closed doors and keep
(30:24):
it under wraps and be manageable. But slowly, as it
always does, those scales started to tip and I started
to become worse at being this person in the public eye,
and I guess, you know, the holes started to show
with the behaviors that I was doing, and that took
probably three years.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
To be honest, tell us about the time with the
young divas and the crew that you were touring with. There,
that would have been a fun, fun, wild time, I
would imagine.
Speaker 2 (30:50):
Look it was, and it was unexpected, you know, nobody
expected it to do. It was only ever meant to
be a single and some shows, I think from memory
it was just meant to be really quick money making thing.
Speaker 3 (31:02):
And this time I know, it's for real, came out and.
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Everyone went wild and it just blew up and all
the people that make all the money were wet their
pants and they're like, oh my god, we've found.
Speaker 3 (31:12):
We're on with hit gold.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
And it went from what it was meant to be
to two albums and however many shows we did, and
you know, nobody ever wanted it to end, but obviously
it did. But yeah, it was and again it was
incredible that we were touring, We were selling out shows,
we were so busy, we were learning songs on aeroplanes
on the way to gigs. Yeah, it was an unbelievable
(31:37):
time and another time in my life I wouldn't give
back for the world.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
It was challenging.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
Yeah, I would imagine who was in the who was
in the band?
Speaker 2 (31:45):
First lineup was myself, Emily Williams, Paulini, and Ricky Lee,
and then Ricky left after the first album, and then
we got Jess Melboy came in. She'd just come off
the next season of Vital Yeah, she was season four,
I think little she was just a baby, and she
stepped in for Ricky and we did another album and
(32:06):
another tour and then it all sort of went from there.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Did the money flow in from that? Did you make
money from it?
Speaker 3 (32:15):
I should have made a lot of money from it, right.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I've never really spoken about this in depth, and I
have no reason not to, I guess these days, no
one's ever asked me the question. But you know, we
were not taking care of through that time. You know,
we were getting paid a lot of money, but not
seeing a lot of money. And I was doing gigs
that now looking back, knowing that we're worth, you know,
corporate gigs were worth one hundred thousand dollars at those times,
(32:39):
and I think we were getting fifteen hundred bucks each
And that's just the way it was.
Speaker 3 (32:44):
But we were so young and so inexperienced.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
I think that, you know, and I remember trying to
confront management once or twice or however many times. You know,
I grew up around a really smart businessman. My dad's
an incredible businessman and done really well for himself, so
I knew enough to know that things weren't right. And
whenever I approached the subject of like, oh, can you
just explain to me where this has gone or where
that's gone, you know, it was always met with how
(33:10):
ungrateful or or shut down in a major way.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
So it was, you know, yeah, and I'm not I'm
not saying this is a case. Maybe it is, maybe
it isn't. But you're very exploitable in that position, aren't you.
Here you are, look the dangling you can perform here,
perform there, forget the money, I'll do this for nothing.
And then you and then you you look back and
go where did all that money go?
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah? Well, hang on a minute, wait a minue, where's
all my money? And yeah, and look there was also
that thing of and I don't know.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
If it's still the same with the shows these days,
but they owned my ass for a long time, you know,
like between my management there, record label, they were they
owned me, They owned all.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
Of us and this is all contracts you're locked into and.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
That you know they there was it was do this,
do it that way, or we'll put you, you know,
forget about it. We can find other people.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
We can find another one. Did you think your life
was set? Did you think, now you made it to
that run, this is your future? Did you did you
see your future as being a performer in the music industry?
Speaker 3 (34:17):
I think so.
Speaker 1 (34:18):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:18):
I guess after that happened, I just I kept just
rolling with what was happening. I never expected, well, I mean,
I never expected it or all to fall apart the
way that it did anyway, you know, that's not how
I saw it happening. And I just kept I just
thought there would just always be more work and always
be more gigs, and I'd always be able to find more.
(34:38):
But I guess as that other part of my life,
that other beast took hold, my interest in it and
my care for it also disappeared.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
Was there anyone that you came across in the industry
that you saw the negative effects of drugs that had
been taken down by dabbling in drugs? Something that you Yeah,
there was a red flag for me. There's a warning
sign and that person was at the top of the
game and the drugs got hold of them. Did you
see any of that in the time that you were touring.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
No, I never saw it. I never saw it firsthand.
I guess I was probably the example at the time.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
No, Like you hear stories of you know, big rock
stars and all those people from you know, back in
the day that lost their way, But no, I'd never
seen anybody really the way.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
As far as I could see, it was just what
everybody did.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
Yeah, yeah, I have become good friends with him. Rick
Grossman from the Vinyls and Hodoo Gurus, the bass player,
and he got in the Heroin when he was in
the the Vinyls, lost his position in the band there
because it just became Yeah, he thought he was hiding it,
but he wasn't actually hiding it and left the band
and then got a second shot at it with the
(35:49):
Hodoo Gurus and gone on from success to success there.
But he was saying in conversations with him, how it
creeps up on you. You think you've still got your
shit together, it's all going well, no one knows, but yeah,
I'm dabbling in this, but that grabs hold of you.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
I think I did, and I thought for a really,
really long time that I would.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
I could stop if I wanted to, And what you
said before, I really thought nobody knew had a really
humbling moment. Recently, I posted a video on TikTok got
a bit of attention, and it was me talking about
my experience with idol and drugs and blah blah blah
blah blah, and I had at least ten people come
back and say, yeah, I came across you during that time.
(36:31):
You were awful with different choice language, and I was
I was really taken back. I was like, oh my god,
like I've always tried to be or thought I was
trying to be really kind and approachable and all of
these things, and I just thought during that time, I
was that person, like I was the cake that I
am today, which is pretty down to earth.
Speaker 3 (36:47):
And easy going.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
And it was interesting that at least ten people came back, yeah,
I came across you in this situation and you were
terrible or you were really rude, and that was you know,
you think that you've got yourself under control.
Speaker 1 (36:59):
But look, it would be hard night. You know where
these young footballers go off track, you know, and we're
talking eight nine erinen year olds that you know, all
of a sudden become famous overnight because of their skills
of on the football field, and we judge them hard
if they misbehavior or whatever. But I reckon it takes
an exceptional person not to get caught up in your
(37:20):
own own ego. I spose I suppose the worth is
where everyone and I would imagine that that period of
your time when you're touring, everyone would have been saying, yes, Kate,
you're great. Get out there and perform, and the audience
are there cheering, clapping, and you come off stage and
they're cheering. It would be hard to keep that in check,
like keep you keep your balance, I would imagine, keep
(37:42):
your feet firmly planted on the ground.
Speaker 3 (37:44):
Well, the thing that they do.
Speaker 2 (37:45):
And I just wish back those I wish there'd just
been one person that would have told me the truth,
one that would have said, you've lost your shit, Kate,
or pull your shit together, or you know, everybody knows
or whatever, but you're right. Everyone's just like, yeah, OK,
off you go, You're amazing, we love you. And I
could have walked off stage and saying out of tune
for the whole show, and everybody would have still told
(38:06):
me that I was great. And so you walk You're right,
you're walking around on this false sense of amazingness and
and and just run by ego and it's not Ego
never ends well for anybody. But yeah, one hundred percent,
I just needed one person to be able to be
straight up with me.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
Yeah, you said you pushed. Whether it was deliberately or
it might have just been in life style you're living
at the time that you sort of stepped away from
your family and your old friends because they're they're they're
a great source of bringing you back to reality if
you've you've lost lost your way. Was that done deliberately
because you didn't want anyone to rain you in or
it was just circumstances.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
Probably to Probably as time went on, it was because
I didn't want them to see what I was doing.
But initially it was because I got blindsided by the lights.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I guess, you know.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Initially it was that I remember, I can't remember, might
have been management at the time. I think I went
in and said, oh, I spoke to my dad, which
I do every day and still do. I spoke to
my dad and he suggested this, and I remember one
of them saying to me, yeah, but your dad's not
in this.
Speaker 3 (39:08):
Industry, what would he know? And I was like, yeah,
or actually, what would he know? And it was just
stuff like that. I think they wanted to be able
to sort of puppet.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
I suppose, and I'm putting the accusations that people I've
never met, but I'm just theorizing here. I suppose it's
in their interest to cut your way from people that
might pull you away from them, because it's in their
interests just to have you and point you in the
direction and keep pushing you if the money's coming in.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
Of course, and we were just money makers at that time.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And again, look, I've shared a lot of things in
this in the last twenty minutes that I haven't really
talked about before, again because no one's asked me. But
I'm not bitter or angry about any of this stuff anymore.
And I appreciate that it's just the way the industry
was then. You know, It's not I wasn't the only
one that had happened to and I'm not poor me
and you know, all that stuff.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
Pity.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
It's just the way that it's just the way that
it works, and it was happening to everybody, but yeah, they.
Speaker 3 (40:03):
Had an outcome and they had a vision and they
did what they had to do to make it work
that way.
Speaker 1 (40:07):
And there's a trade off for you, like the benefits
for you as well as benefits for them. So it's
not you know, it's not a one way street or
take take like you're getting benefits and living the dream
as you said in the Pop Star traveling around the
country and yeah, enjoying yourself. Okay, drugs. Talk us through
the build up of it, like the start off at
(40:28):
cocaine Okay, after party, after the concert, you do a
couple of lines of cocaine. When did it become well,
I can't enjoy myself if I haven't got cocaine. When
did it get to that point.
Speaker 3 (40:40):
Instantly for me? Yep, it didn't. It was not a
slow burn for me.
Speaker 2 (40:47):
It was I'd met this thing and it was might
became my everything and I didn't know how to or
I very rarely would go to any kind of social
anything without drugs on me with cocaine, and it wasn't
ever one or two lines. It was one or two bags,
and it was as much as I could. It was
until I couldn't find anymore.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
Always And were you paying for it in these days
or was this just that the industry? There was always
stuff floating around.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
I mean, you'd get a little bit like I'll call
them the normal people that use cocaine. I shouldn't say that,
but yes, there's normal people that can go out and
have two lines of coke and go home and get
back to their lives the next day.
Speaker 3 (41:25):
Those people exist, and good on them, not me, But
you know, I.
Speaker 2 (41:32):
Wanted to take it further always, so there was there
might be a you know, I might get a line
or two here, but there would I would always have
my own supply that I would bring and pay for it.
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Yeap. When did you ever have a moment to where
and you don't have to go into all the gory details,
but have a moment when you're gone, oh shit, like
look what I've done because yeah, I've been on the
bendor for for the eight hours. Did you ever have
that moment where you're thinking, maybe this is not the
best thing to be doing.
Speaker 2 (42:00):
Yeah, yep, definitely. There would be a lot of There
would be times when I'd have to get to work
and I hadn't been to bed, and I, you know,
I was feeling it's you know, be up for two
days and then have to try and gather myself and
get my head in the game and turn up to
an important gig or an important whatever, or get to
an airport.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
Yeah. I never felt good in those moments, but it
was never enough to stop me.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Sadly, any of the people you're performing, we've give you
a nudge and say, hey, you know, we've got to perform.
I read one article about you that someone that with
you said we didn't realize how bad it was because
she always turned up and always was on time. Is
that just part of your masking? Or people anyone close
(42:46):
to you that you're touring with or living the lifestyle,
we'd give you a tap on the shoulder.
Speaker 2 (42:51):
I think I'm from memory and I couldn't tell you
what she said, but I'm fairly sure Emily, who I
did my season of Idol with, and I you know her,
and I have a lot of love for her and
always will.
Speaker 3 (43:01):
I'm pretty sure she pulled me aside. She did.
Speaker 2 (43:03):
I don't think she necessarily knew exactly what was going on,
but she knew something wasn't right, and she pulled me
up and said, you know, something's not right.
Speaker 3 (43:10):
Get your shit together like it was, you know, but no,
not really.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
Okay, how long was the cocaine dream going for before
you started other drugs? And what were those drugs?
Speaker 3 (43:22):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (43:22):
I guess the other ones just started to sprinkle their
way in along the way, you know, you start taking
a bit of ecstasy and different party drugs. But the
one that got me, that I that really made me unwell,
which is one that people don't talk about a lot,
but I think it's a really dangerous one and one
that needs to be spoken about, especially in younger kids,
is nitrous oxide.
Speaker 1 (43:42):
Okay, talk us through that.
Speaker 2 (43:44):
So nitros oxide is it's a gas, obviously, and it's
the gas that you get at the dentist or when
you're having a baby, or you know, it's a medical gas.
But it can be purchased pretty easily. I won't go
into the details of how because no, you know, I won't,
But you know, it was something that I could accept
and I didn't have to rely on anybody else to
get it, and it was basically felt like an anesthetic,
(44:07):
and it was something that I could have all day,
every day with me, and it was something that became
an extension of who I was. I had it all
the time, and I breathed it like and I inhaled
it like oxygen. And that's when the that's when the
wheels really started to fall off, because I it was
affecting my health, depleted my body of B twelve maybe
(44:29):
really sick and you know, I'm fairly sure, which basically
cuts off the oxygen to your brain for a short
period of time. So I guess it's not dissimilar to
maybe chroming maybe what the kids do now. But yeah,
it really did some damage to my life in all ways.
That's when I started to lose things. I started to
(44:51):
lose friends, I started to lose relationships. I started to
lose jobs because I couldn't. I stopped being able to
turn up.
Speaker 1 (44:58):
Yeah, when those things were happening, did you just well,
I don't care, like I'm living my life. Don't try
and ram me in. What was the attitude that you
had that kept you not fully appreciating what you were doing?
Speaker 3 (45:13):
Oh, look, it's a bit of jecky. There's two parts
of me in this, and you know, I there's the
addict part of me, and that is a part of me,
I guess.
Speaker 2 (45:22):
But you know, there's also Kate and and I was
both of these people, and I was at war with myself.
But I guess the addict part of me was getting
bigger and bigger and bigger. And of course when things
went wrong, I would be devastated and I'd cry, and
I'd get hysterical and I'd play up.
Speaker 3 (45:36):
But I just wasn't able to stop.
Speaker 2 (45:39):
Yeah, And I think unless I truly believe, unless you've
ever felt that feeling or been in that situation, or
truly been addicted to something, it's insanity. There's no two
ways about it. Like from an outside of looking in,
you go, fuck excuse my lone, but just fucking stop it,
Like what.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Are you doing?
Speaker 2 (45:57):
Look at your life crumbling to the ground, And I'm
sitting there going I know, but I can't, can't stop.
Speaker 1 (46:04):
So it was it can't it was it wasn't I
don't want to stop. Part of you in the good case,
part of the brains going you need to stop. I
want to stop. I want to stop this. But the
addiction is you couldn't stop it.
Speaker 3 (46:18):
I couldn't. I just couldn't. I didn't know how to
do life without it. I just didn't and it. Yeah,
and like the.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Relationships that I lost, you know, I lost a really
long term relationship with a beautiful human, you know, and
I didn't want to lose that. And of course I
cared when I lost it, like it broke my heart
and it still breaks my heart today, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:39):
But did that relationship end because of the ship way
you were acting? Was that the part of it?
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Essentially? Essentially?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Essentially my parents came and got me out of that
house with him and said, you need to let her go. Yeah,
you know, they broke up with my boyfriend for me essentially.
Speaker 1 (46:56):
But that's it. That's interesting, isn't it. So the breakicking
up on behalf of your boyfriend saving your boyfriend rather
than you like you say, yeah.
Speaker 3 (47:05):
Okay, let it go mate. I remember they came and
got me and they said, just.
Speaker 1 (47:09):
Let it go. Yeah. Heavy stuff, Okay, the drug ice?
When did you? And how and why? And I say this,
and I say this to all people because there's different
levels of drugs and there's even like a pecking order
of Okay, well someone does cocaine, and that's socially acceptable
(47:30):
heroin in its day, just a junkie heroin. Why would
you touch ice? How did that happen? Because you would
have had the warnings and I'm sure when you were
going through the cake stage, I just do the lines
of cake. I wouldn't touch ice. You'd have to be
mad to touch ice. How do you get to that point?
Speaker 3 (47:49):
You just do? You know, that's just the progression of it.
Speaker 2 (47:53):
And as I said to you, by the time I
met the time I tried ice, I was so far
down the rabbit I wouldn't have cared what it was.
Speaker 3 (48:02):
I was so I was lost and just so.
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Filled with pain and just hatred for myself and for everything.
I would have done anything to make the pain stop,
you know what I mean. And I had no skills
as to how to do life without drugs, and the
drugs that I was doing weren't working anymore, and I
couldn't afford the drugs that I was using.
Speaker 3 (48:25):
All that stuff.
Speaker 2 (48:25):
It was just and so of course, I'm sure, I'm
sure I knew on a subconscious level that ice probably
wasn't going.
Speaker 3 (48:32):
To end well for me. But when I and I
was and I was really you know, strung out and
not well, and I didn't feel good and I was tired,
and then I and then I had tried ICE for
the first time. And I'm not going to lie to you, Like,
initially Ice, I thought it made me a better person.
Speaker 2 (48:48):
That's a delusion, I know, initially, and I'm sure you've
seen it yourself, and you know Ice, the people on
Ice are so deluded and remove from reality. But I
really thought in the beginning that I was better. Like
I was able to function, I was able to get
stuff done. I didn't look a mess, you know what
(49:09):
I mean. Like it changed the way I appeared for
a little while, obviously, until it didn't. But by the
time I met that drug, there was no consequential thinking
left in me. I was just doing whatever I needed
to do to get the outcome that I was chasing.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah, so it's interesting hearing your story and appreciate you
being so open with it that you've got into the coke.
You're starting to hate yourself and so okay, well, what's
the matter If I dabbling nice at this stage, you've
hit low, I'll go lower. Who cares? Like, Look, yeah,
(49:47):
were you still performing at that stage? No?
Speaker 3 (49:51):
I lost the lot by then? Oh god, it's all
such a mess.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
But in my mind.
Speaker 3 (49:56):
But look, I was hanging onto a career with the
grim you know what I mean. Like I had also gone.
Speaker 2 (50:03):
Into a deep depression after the Divas finished, and I'd
put on about sixty kilos, you know, that food addiction.
My parents had come and got me from Sydney and
taken me out of my life and brought me back
home to Bendigo to try and fix me up. So
I guess the drugs and everything that I was doing
weren't available anymore.
Speaker 3 (50:22):
So I really got.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Into drinking heavily. I just would move to whatever was next,
you know what I mean. Drinking and food really played
back up in my life. Food was what I just
buried myself in overeating. But you know, I had a
manager along the way, a different manager that i'd found
that really always still believed in me. And I wrote
some music and recorded some music and went I got
(50:44):
a gastric sleeve, so I lost all this weight and
I got offered this radio job in Marucci Door, filling
in for this breakfast show. And everybody said, Kate, this
is the worst idea ever. Do not go to Marucci
Door on your own for three months.
Speaker 3 (51:02):
And I was like, no, no, no, I've got it.
I'm a grown up, I'm a grown ass woman. I'll
do what i want to do. This is exactly what
I need for my career.
Speaker 2 (51:08):
And that was I just become a full blown alcoholic
and lost that job and then met this guy one
night who had an ice pipe.
Speaker 3 (51:16):
Yep, and that was it. That was I'm used And
that was the beginning of the end.
Speaker 1 (51:23):
Really it must have been like soul destroying for yourself,
but you didn't have the proper perspective on that. But
your family bringing you back to the farm, trying to
really working hard to get the old Kate back all
those steps and then it's blowing again.
Speaker 2 (51:40):
Yeah, and they were desperate, and you know, I look
back on those times and the desperation in their their
eyes have just like just shut up, Kate and just listen,
like just trust. But you know, as I said, I
was just so far gone and I just was so
unable to live without I was just mad.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Was it harder having seen the bright lights of the
stardom phase of your life and then stepping away from
that at that point in time because you lost all
that was that? Yeah, if you hadn't seen that side
of life. You didn't even know it existed. You dream
about it. That's a life that other people live having
seen that life? Was it hard when you lost that life?
Speaker 3 (52:19):
Of course, and incredibly embarrassing and shameful. And I was
probably a bit delusional around that for a long time,
held onto something that was gone.
Speaker 2 (52:28):
You know, I'd really burn a lot of bridges through
that time. You know, my name had mud all over it.
You know, I'd really done some damage in the within
the industry. And it sounds like a big place to be,
but it's not. You know, it's a small it's a
small world.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
So yeah, of course it was. And I had to
grieve it, and it took me years to do that.
Speaker 2 (52:51):
It took me took me until I got clean this
last time to be able to actually grieve the career
that I had and lost and and the way that
I thought my life life was going to play out.
Speaker 1 (53:01):
Okay, well, I can imagine that it would be hard
coming to terms with it when those phone calls aren't
returned and the messages aren't returned, and you're thinking, what
have I done something wrong?
Speaker 3 (53:12):
Yeah, and not knowing why? Yeah, but yes, Kate, you
did heats wrong.
Speaker 1 (53:16):
Yeah, let us tell you we might. We might take
a break now at part one and we'll come back
to part two. I'd like to say it's all all
the way up from here, but we do go to
lower grounds. When you're addicted to ice for seven years?
Is it seven years?
Speaker 3 (53:33):
About that?
Speaker 1 (53:33):
Hell of a long time? You're looking good now, someone
that's come through that. So I think there's there's a
happy ending at the end of this story.
Speaker 3 (53:40):
But I promise it gets good. I promise it gets good.
Speaker 1 (53:43):
We're going to get a little bit lower than we're
going to come up for. Okay, we'll take a break
and we'll be back for part two shortly
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