In sad news, TV presenter Fiona MacDonald has passed away, aged 67.
It looks like Fiona penned her own death announcement, which was posted on Instagram on October 3, 2024.
“Farewell my friends. My sister Kylie is posting this because I have left the building – Hopefully I’m looking down from a cloud. Last night brought an end to a very tough few months,” the post read.
“Was very peaceful, the boys and Kylie stayed with me to say goodbye. While I’ve never wanted to die, the thought of leaving my tortured body was a relief.”
Fiona was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) in November 2021.
In honour of Fiona, The Weekly is revisiting an interview we did with her for our August 2022 issue.
The first signs were stealthy and almost imperceptible.
Fiona MacDonald gradually noticed her speech was changing, slurring a little. She was having difficulty pronouncing certain sounds, a worrying development for the warm, articulate businesswoman, wine publicist, writer and former television presenter.
Although family and friends tried to reassure her, Fiona couldn’t escape the gnawing certainty that something was very wrong.
“As I wasn’t sure what was happening, I thought I would practise denial for a while,” she grins courageously. “But I knew something was going on. And in the end my younger sister told me I really needed to look into it, in case it was something serious.”
The diagnosis, towards the end of last year, delivered a shattering double blow. The sometime It’s a Knockout host not only had bowel cancer – a chance discovery from a battery of medical tests – she was also in the early stages of the deadly degenerative disorder, Motor Neurone Disease (MND).
“Sitting in the specialist’s office was the first time I was grateful for the COVID mask hiding my face,” quips the witty mother-of-two. “I was still absorbing the pending cancer surgery when the neurologist said he strongly suspected my problem was MND. It was a bit of a double whammy.
“He hadn’t told me it might be a good idea to have someone with me, he just rolled out the diagnosis, asked if I knew anything about MND and then advised me not to Google it.
“So, of course, five seconds after I left his office I was on my phone, asking, ‘Oh my God, what is this terrible thing?’ Once I began to scratch the surface, the bowel cancer became almost a helpful distraction.”
In the beginning, Fiona wasn’t well informed about MND. She had seen renowned physicist Stephen Hawking in his wheelchair, heard his metallic synthesised voice, and realised that the illness was incurable. Like most of us, she believed MND was incredibly uncommon and she had simply drawn the shortest of straws in life’s lottery.
“It is generally considered to be a rare disease, but it isn’t,” reveals Macquarie University neurologist and researcher Professor Dominic Rowe.
“MND kills about 800 Australians every year, with a lifetime risk of about one in 300. The average time from diagnosis to death is 27 months in this country. There’s a big range and variation in that survival, but that’s the average.
“We don’t know what causes it. We suspect it may be an issue in the environment, because over the past 30 years it has increased as a cause of death in Australia by more than 250 per cent. One of the things we’re trying to do is to make MND a notifiable disease. Currently, the Department of Health doesn’t know who has it or where they are. We need those statistics.
“Of course, we’re all going to die some time. Life is a sexually transmitted terminal condition,” adds Professor Rowe, who shares a jet-black sense of humour with his popular patient.
“Unfortunately, with MND, it’s a lot sooner than people would like.”
The numbers are scary, the outlook bleak, but there’s no self-pity from Fiona. She doesn’t wonder ‘why me?’ On the plus side, she made a speedy recovery from bowel cancer surgery last November.
Always upbeat, she is facing her premature death sentence with courage, fine food, even better wine, great jokes, close family and a cabal of devoted friends.
“I debated whether to go quietly or to find some way I could help. I wasn’t sure about doing this interview,” the vivacious 65-year-old admits, chuckling. “But telling my story is worthwhile if it raises awareness of this dreadful disease and more people contribute to help fund the search for a cure.
“I think if your time on this earth is shortened, you might as well enjoy it and get on with it, not waste time thinking about things you can’t change,” says Fiona, speaking exclusively to The Weekly.
“I’d rather spend my time feeling happy, hanging out with people I love and relishing life.”
Surely, there must have been tears?
“I didn’t cry for a long time,” she admits. “I was trying to … I think I’ve been saying ‘keep my s**t together’, although that’s not the most elegant of expressions. It was difficult to tell people initially because MND exacerbates your feelings and that makes it even harder to get the words out.”
First she spoke to her sisters, Jacki MacDonald of Hey Hey It’s Saturday fame and Kylie.
Breaking the awful news to her sons – builder Harry, 25, and Rafe, 23, who works in hospitality – was even more heartbreaking.
Somehow Fiona managed to hide her emotions. But finally the floodgates opened at Macquarie University’s MND Research Centre and clinic, where she recently spent 10 days participating in trials of a potential new treatment.
“I hadn’t cried until then. I get this weird face when I cry,” she grimaces, demonstrating the exact expression. “But I went down one morning to get a cappuccino at the little cafe in the foyer, and the security guard wouldn’t let me back upstairs because I hadn’t brought ID with me. I got really upset, didn’t think to show him my hospital wristband with all my details. Then, two other guys came marching over and I completely lost it – five months of complete angst coming out. I cried like a puppy would cry in the mouth of a Doberman. I absolutely howled.”
Funny, bright Fiona has a brilliant way with words.
“Those poor fellows didn’t know what to do,” she adds. “They couldn’t push the lift button fast enough to get rid of me! I went back to my room and thought, ‘I’ll man up again. Where’s my concrete so I can harden up?’ But I was still in floods of tears. The professor came to ask what was wrong and I couldn’t speak – my jaw locked up. That incident was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It wasn’t about the security guard at all, really. It was just that whole grief moment.”
Kicking back at her spacious unit in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Fiona has little outward sign of the illness.
“My left leg is a bit limpy,” she concedes, snuggled up beside family dog Isla, who is munching contentedly and unchecked on a cushion. Right now, soft furnishing tassels are the least of anyone’s worries.
“I used to be able to take Isla for longer walks, but I can’t do that anymore,” continues Fiona. “My leg gets a bit sore. I tend to take her up to the dog park where she can run around like the Energiser bunny with all the other dogs up there. She’s Harry’s pet, but I love having her around because she makes me laugh. Look at that face, she’s hilarious. I find it hard to say ‘Ss’ and ‘Ls’ and she’s a Hungarian Vizsla.” More guffaws.
“I might have to get a T-shirt telling people what breed she is, to excuse my speech, or lack thereof.”
MND comes in several guises and affects different people in different ways. Overall, it causes the selective death of motor neurons in the brain and spinal cord, leading to the gradual paralysis of voluntary muscles used to move, speak, swallow and breathe.
Sadly, there is no known cause and no cure – not even an effective therapy to slow the inevitable outcome. Fiona is afflicted by “bulbar onset” MND, which mainly impacts the tongue, throat and face. Nowadays, she sometimes sounds as if she’s had a few too many drinks – a situation she finds mortifying given she pivoted in midlife after television to build up a career as a respected publicist and marketer of fine wine.
“I married a guy whose family owned a vineyard in the Hunter, and they asked if I would represent them in the market in Sydney,” she remembers. “I’d just had Harry and was a wine newbie, but I’d roll up with my pram and show sommeliers the latest vintage of shiraz. It was a very steep learning curve, but great fun.
“So, after about nine years, when Will and I split up, I started to think about my work future. I did a marketing course and decided to sell wine via email, which wasn’t that common at the time. It did incredibly well. And then I was offered the chance to interview for a brand PR role with Stephen and Prue Henschke.
“And that was how I came to work with the most fabulous wine people in Australia,” says Fiona, who has just revised her stunning coffee table book, Hill of Grace: 150 Years of Henschke Under Southern Skies, for reprint. “Pretty arse-y wasn’t it?”
Good humoured, have-a-go practicality seems to be Fiona’s stock in trade, bred into her on the family’s sheep station at Blackall in central western Queensland. Although the MacDonalds later moved to Brisbane’s outer suburbs, none of them ever lost that down-to-earth country outlook.
Ironically, considering drama and journalism student Fiona followed big sister Jacki into the television industry – another “arse-y” stroke of luck – they never actually owned a ‘goggle box’ growing up.
First, Fiona took over as host of Jacki’s cartoon program, then moved to be a presenter on top-rating kids’ show Wombat alongside puppet co-host Agro, alias Jamie Dunn.
“Ooh, that was fun,” she chortles. “We went out and did stories in the field, anything we thought was interesting … For me it was everything I had ever wanted to do – hot air ballooning, swimming with sharks, flying in every sort of light aircraft, camping in the Grand Canyon. Amazing adventures.”
Next, the bright lights of Sydney beckoned with an even bigger gig, co-hosting the no-expense-spared silliness of It’s a Knockout, which was filmed in a purpose-built, 1200-seat stadium at Dural from 1985 to ’87.
“We had the biggest above-ground pool in the southern hemisphere. It cost around $150,000 to produce each episode, so come hell or high water, it went on. Once it rained so heavily we were in galoshes under umbrellas, getting electric shocks from the camera equipment, and still filming.
“I fell in the pool during one episode and had to drain the water from my boots and continue,” she recalls. “The whole thing was epic! We would rehearse all day, then start shooting about 5.30pm for two hours. It was so exciting. I could never sleep afterwards, I was so full of adrenaline.”
Looking back, Fiona has no regrets.
“I’ve slept under the stars and watched the Milky Way wheel overhead – lots of adventures. Then, in 2019, just before the whole COVID thing, I had an amazing trip to Greece, Croatia, Spain and Istanbul.
“Since the MND diagnosis, I’ve been to South Australia with my sister Kylie, and at Christmas, I went away up the coast for a week with the boys and their girlfriends. I’ve been racing around the country like a crazy woman, while I still can. I’m really grateful for this time to make happy memories.”
Fiona never remarried – “like the cartoon, I guess I forgot to think about that” – but enjoyed her freedom and focused happily on her sons. Then, as now, they were central to her life.
“Having my children is the best thing I’ve ever done,” she reflects. “I’m so sad that I won’t be there in their futures.”
Aware that her remaining time is limited, she intends to make the most of it. “I’m kind of absorbing this in stages. I’m not really dealing with the … ” Her voice trails off. “Overall, the prognosis is incredibly variable. Maybe I have a couple of years, maybe a bit longer. They can’t really tell me.
“I’m trying to prepare. It’s confronting looking at the practical supports I’ll need like wheelchairs, but building the mental strength to face the fears and emotions around this may be the harder challenge.
“For now, I’m concentrating on beautiful things like having a swim in the sea pools at Coogee every morning. I jump in, float around, look up at the sky, hear the seagulls and feel pretty zen. I do love the ocean. If I could swim every day for the rest of my life, I would be happy, but I guess that won’t be feasible.”
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