This week Nicola and Di chat with the inspiring trailblazer Brook Boney. Brook is a proud Gamilaroi woman. She’s a political reporter and much loved broadcaster who took the big leap of leaving her job as the entertainment reporter for The Today Show, to follow her dream to study at Oxford. Brook has written a new book All Of It, which tells her story in a beautiful and moving way and we absolutely love it. 

In this conversation we hear about the brave decision Brook made to leave one of the most coveted jobs in Australian TV to pursue a Masters in Public Policy at Oxford University. She shares why even though it was difficult to leave behind a job like that, and even harder still to move so far away from her family, she has no regrets. Nicola and Di also share their own life-changing decisions and how they look back proudly at those decisions now. 

Brook tells us what life is like at Oxford and how she’s having so much fun. She’s even landed herself in the college that recruits for spies (although Brook admits she’d be a terrible spy after a champagne of two). 

Brook opens up about her personal story, growing up poor in housing commission in Muswellbrook, and how she’s been the first in her family for so many of the things she’s achieved. She speaks beautifully about how proud she is to be Aboriginal, and what it means to her to feel completely connected as one link in the chain of a 60,000 year history, and the sense of duty she feels not only to those that have come before her, but also to the next generation of her family. 

Brook also shares about the grief she felt when her 2 dogs passed away, and the future dreams she has to be a mother one day. This is a deeply personal chat and one that we feel so lucky we were able to have with Brook. It’s also a lot of fun - we laugh all the way through this with Brook and we felt like we all were having a glass of wine together over the back fence. We hope you love Brook’s energy and her story as much as we did. 

If you love our Over The Back Fence chats, come and hang out with us and some amazing guests at our in person event on the 19th of June at the Woolly Bay Hotel in Sydney. You can buy your tickets here - https://events.humanitix.com/over-the-back-fence-podcast-9r2scfqj/tickets 

This episode is proudly supported by Montgomery Investment Management, trusted experts helping you build and protect your financial future. 

Follow Brook on IG here - https://www.instagram.com/boneybrooke/

Buy Brook’s book All of It here - https://www.amazon.com.au/All-public-private-everything-between/dp/1761068008

Follow Nicola and Di on IG here - https://www.instagram.com/overthebackfencepodcast/

Watch Over The Back Fence on YouTube here - https://www.youtube.com/@Overthebackfencepodcast/podcasts

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