Tara Brown has been a TV journalist at Channel 9 for almost twenty years, and since 2001 has been a reporter on 60 Minutes, where she has proved a skilful and sensitive interviewer. The first person she ever interviewed for the show was actor Mel Gibson.
For twelve years she has been married to John McAvoy, the head of factual programming at Channel 9, and in October 2008, she and John welcomed their first child, Jack Cooper. Tara was unsure at the time whether she would return to work, but she must have decided that motherhood and journalism weren’t incompatible, because she was soon back on our television screens.
As she was already in her forties when she had her first baby, Tara and John did not expect to have any more children, but they always hoped.
In April last year, Tara was on the road covering a tour of rock band Powderfinger. Already fatigued from covering a flood in Queensland, the usually calm Tara began feeling uncharacteristically irritable and tired. Then she began suffering from constant nausea. Was she exhausted? Was she stressed? Did she have a virus? Was she just sick of being around Powderfinger?
When she got home, she took a pregnancy test and discovered that she was expecting another baby. She was shocked but also delighted, feeling very lucky.
Her second son, Tom Oliver, was born in December last year at Sydney’s North Shore Private Hospital. He was 53 cm long and weighed 3.35 kg. Days overdue, he was induced, and labour was so quick that Tara says there was literally no time to administer any pain relief.
Tara stresses that although Tom wasn’t planned, he was very, very much wanted; just as much wanted as Jack, who she describes herself as being “madly in love” with.
This is the second celebrity sibset I’ve featured, and it’s another one where the oldest child is called Jack! I do find the combination of Jack and Tom rather cute – it’s a nicknamey sibset straight out of a child’s storybook.
(Story and picture from nine.msn, June 29 2011; full story in the July issue of Women’s Weekly).
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I know some brothers called Jack and Tom. Jack Peter is 5, Tom (Thomas) Andrew is 2, and they have an older brother, Harry Timothy, and Tom has a twin sister, Ruby Louise. Jack and Tom are a bit too common for my liking but they are nice names.
Jack is my Small Child’s favourite name — but it used to be Tom!
I did actually find a children’s book with main characters called Jack and Tom who are brothers:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spook%27s_Curse
It is a book about magic, but it seems a bit dark for very small kids, and paints witches and warlocks in an ambivalent way at best.