She’s an icon of Australian breakfast television and has reported across the world, but Nat Barr’s incredible career as a journalist and Sunrise presenter began in her parents’ living room in regional WA.
Nat, who was born and raised in Bunbury, spoke to The West Australian to commemorate the Seven Network’s 70th birthday on October 12.
“I grew up in regional WA, so everyone got the ABC and GWN, and then if you were really, really lucky and you hit the jackpot, you had an aerial (so) you got Channel Seven,” Barr recalled.
“Of course, we love GWN and the ABC, but we felt very lucky because we had an aerial and we got the Perth stations. We just felt we were Christmas.”
Nat eventually flew the nest, and after a stint at university in Perth she began working as a journalist at the Wanneroo Times, before eventually heading out to Kalgoorlie for a cadetship with GWN.
It was the beginning of a brilliant career, which included a stint in Los Angeles before eventually landing a job at Channel 7 in Sydney upon returning to Australia in 1994.
“My imagination didn’t stretch further than Perth, to be honest. I didn’t think of living over East . . . I just thought maybe one day I’d get to Perth.
“I kind of followed my nose. I think I had the work ethic that my dad had drummed into me, and he always said, ‘Put yourself in a position to get lucky. You’re not going to get lucky sitting on the couch’.”
For eight years, Nat worked as an on-the-road reporter, before she received a phone call from a TV producer about a “fledgling breakfast program” called Sunrise, which needed a news presenter.
“By then, I had worked my way up to be a semi-senior reporter in the newsroom and I thought I was on my way, and I didn’t know whether I should go to this program that wasn’t rating at all,” Nat said.
“The Today Show was winning. It had been the major show for breakfast for years and years in Australia, and I thought, ‘I don’t know whether I want to go to this show that no one’s watching’.
“(However), something made me take that job . . . that changed the course of my life, saying yes to that producer.”
Sunrise went on to become a ratings juggernaut — recognised as Australia’s leading and favourite breakfast television show across all networks — which Nat has been an integral part of since joining.
“Being a small part in a show that I really think shaped and changed breakfast television in Australia has been such a proud moment, and being part of an amazing, enormous, wonderful team has been something that I feel so grateful for,” Nat said.
The Sunrise stalwart has reported on and presented many of the most profound moments of the 21st century, including live coverage of Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009, and the death of Queen Elizabeth in 2022.
“Sitting there at Buckingham Palace for those two weeks and seeing her coffin lie in State, and you’re at the centre of a story the whole world is looking at . . . those moments you really do think, ‘I’m from Bunbury — I’m so proud and quite daunted to be doing this, and quite nervous in parts’.
“Then you have to pull yourself together and think, ‘I’ve got to step up here, get it together and do your research, put the work in, find every fact that you can and do your job. You’re here because you’ve been chosen to be here. Put in the work and and make sure you do it right.”
Since she first began at Channel 7 in 1994, Nat says she has felt “very valued” during her time at the network, which has seen her through several major life events including the birth of her two boys.
“I have a 21 and a 25-year-old, so their entire existence is their mum working at Channel Seven,” she said.
“If I’ve ever needed anything, Channel Seven has warmly accepted whatever I’ve needed, and I have been able to climb a ladder that I never thought possible. It’s something that I will always be grateful for.”
Nat is “really proud” to play a part in delivering Australians “a snapshot” of what’s going on, whether it’s news, politics, weather, sport, or entertainment.
“We put a lot of work into bringing Australia a really even-handed approach at the news. Every day there’s a newsroom full of people in at work, and a bunch of people dotted around the country in their houses too, working to bring you tomorrow’s show,” she said.
“We want people to walk away and feel like we have come into your lounge room, we’ve had a chat, we’ve told you what’s going on.”
Spotlight will be airing a special program to celebrate 70 years of Seven on Sunday evening, to recognise Australia’s most memorable television moments on the network since 1956.
Host Michael Usher will be joined by a brilliant line-up of Seven’s most enduring stars, including Bruce McAvaney, Johanna Griggs, Larry Emdur, Sonia Kruger, Georgie Parker, Effie, and Nat Barr herself.
The birthday special will revisit Australia’s most memorable moments of live television events over the past seven decades, from Olympic victories to royal weddings.
Television shows iconic to the network will also be highlighted, such as Home and Away, Cop Shop, Kingswood Country, A Country Practice, Gladiators, Popstars, Fast Forward, Acropolis now, and of course, Kath and Kim.
Usher has spent the past 10 years of his career at Seven as part of his decades-long career as a journalist. He is now the Chief Network Anchor and has his own memories of watching the network as a child in Perth.
A self-described “TV-generation kid”, Michael remembers demanding that his parents drive him to the old Seven studios in Tuart Hill so he could hand-deliver his drawings for Fat Cat’s colouring competitions.
“(The studios were) this big mysterious building, and you knew that great things happened in there. It was almost like going to the Holy Grail,” he said.
Michael’s family “watched a lot of news”, he told The West Australian, which he says informed his decision to become a journalist. He began in Bunbury and Kalgoorlie, but would eventually go on to report from locations across the world.
“I can remember watching the Australian correspondents who would travel the world — and to really remote parts of Australia. And I remember watching and thinking, ‘That’s actually a job. How amazing would that be?’,” he said.
“I never thought I’d get into it early to end up being one of those correspondents that gets to go around the world and tell Australians what the news is through Australian eyes.”
The importance of his job — delivering accurate accounts of Australia’s most profound and often tragic moments — is not lost on Michael.
“Sometimes you can cover a terrible event like the Bondi massacre, and you know it’s happening in the moment, you’re trying to report it calmly and accurately because it was terrible enough as it was. There’s a sense of dread sometimes when we report those big events,” he said.
“I guess it’s years of experience of saying, ‘This is bad, but what are we in for now?’ The world just shifted a bit. Now we’ve lost a bit more of our innocence and safety.”
It’s Seven’s “distinctly Australian” nature which Michael says makes him proud of working for the 70-year-old network.
“A lot of Australian society has been swallowed up by pretty generic corporate thinking, very anonymous boards, you know, people who don’t really invest in Australian storytelling, and I’m proud we still do that at Seven.
“We tell Australian stories. We’re an Australian company. We are distinctly Australian in every way, and I think that’s a really good thing and something to be proud of and to hold on to.”
Reflecting on his incredible career, Michael says he often pinches himself to think how far he has come from his time as a final-year cadet at the GWN newsroom in Bunbury, to leading Australia’s premier investigative and current affairs program in Spotlight.
“I think back from when Mum and Dad were teachers and we were posted to various parts of country WA — in areas that only had two TV stations if the aerial worked properly,” he said.
“What I’m grateful for is the can-do attitude when you grow up in WA. I was only led to believe that I could go out there and conquer Australia and conquer the world and give it all a go.
“I never thought I’d stay away. I just thought someone offered me a job in 1993, and I thought, ‘Wow, a big boss in Sydney wants to give me a job. How did that happen?’ And here we are, 36 years later. I’m grateful.”
7NEWS Spotlight Presents: 70 Years of Seven — Sunday 11 October at 8.00pm on Seven and 7Plus
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