Why the biggest story of Peter Overton’s life is happening right now

Like many fathers around the country, Peter Overton will wake up this morning to hugs and heartfelt cards, in his case from the two daughters – Allegra, 14, and Giselle, 12 – he shares with wife and fellow journalist Jessica Rowe. But for this dad, there’s another cause for celebration. This week marked a 30-year career milestone.

Peter remembers September 1, 1991 as if it was yesterday. In his mind’s eye, he can trace through every step of the morning of that auspicious day. “I can remember walking up to the gatehouse at Channel Nine Willoughby and saying to the security guard, ‘Hello, my name is Peter Overton, I’m starting work today,’ ” he recalls via phone from his family home in Sydney’s eastern suburbs.

“I can still see myself walking through to the main reception and taking the stairs to the newsroom. I remember meeting [legendary newsreader] Brian Henderson and saying, ‘Hello Mr Henderson, I’m Peter.’ And he said, ‘I’m Brian, welcome.’ ”

For the then-25-year-old Peter, it was a moment he’d longed for since he was a boy. He’d been learning the ropes at 2UE radio and later at Sky Racing, which he describes as “doing regional TV in the suburbs of Sydney”. But a major television newsroom is where he’d always dreamed of working.

In the three decades since, Peter has covered huge local stories, from the 1997 Thredbo landslide disaster to the mid-1990s Super League war, and haunting global events, such as 2001’s September 11 attack and the 2002 Bali bombings.

“COVID will be the biggest story in all our careers. It’s relentless and it’s exhausting. Every night I’m very conscious that we are rarely delivering good news.”

But the most significant he’s ever covered is the one we’re living right now. “COVID will be the biggest story in all our careers,” he says. “It’s relentless and it’s exhausting. Every night I’m very conscious that we are rarely delivering good news.”

He sounds genuinely despondent that he can’t offer his audience a better outlook. It’s Peter’s friendly yet authoritative manner as chief presenter at 9News Sydney that viewers have turned to for the last 12 years, and he desperately wants to give them hope.

“I interviewed an epidemiologist the other night and I said to her, at the end of the interview, ‘Is there anything that we can take the slightest comfort in?’ And she said, ‘It’s pretty bleak at the moment. I’m sorry.’ You’re always searching for something.”

On a personal level, the pandemic has shifted how Peter works. He can no longer revel in the hustle and bustle of the newsroom, but is quickly ushered straight through to the studio to record his evening bulletins. But he recognises what a privileged position he is in.

“I remind myself every day – and I remind the children, as well – that we’re lucky we’re not in a hot zone and we’re lucky that Dad goes to work. It’s hard but you just have to get on with it.”

The Overton/Rowe family have indeed “got on with it”, and even managed to pull off this Father’s Day photo shoot for Sunday Life, undertaken in a delightfully complicated COVID-safe way involving iPhones, FaceTime, laptops, cameras and remote instructions. Even hair and make-up became a family affair. “Jess had me having a crack at painting the back of her hair,” Peter says, referring to his wife’s signature pink cropped ’do.

These good times aside, Peter admits there have been challenges to the family dynamic under lockdown. “In the mornings I’m the ringmaster getting everyone cracking,” he says. “When you don’t have the discipline of the bus arriving at the end of the street at 7.15am, they push it to the absolute limit because they’re only moving to the lounge room. I find that the hardest part of the day – just trying to get everyone engaged in what they’re doing.

“We’d love to have normality back. I know Allegra loves the structure of school, her friendship groups, and she loves her teachers. She talks very openly about missing that structure in her life. I keenly feel that for her.”

The arrival of now-teenage Allegra was a significant marker in Peter’s and Jessica’s life after they married in 2004, and not just because she is their first child. Both have spoken openly about the stress caused by the numerous IVF cycles it took to conceive her, and the added pressure the couple were under at the time.

“I was at 60 Minutes and travelling eight months of the year, but what was even more challenging was the Today show environment for Jess,” Peter reflects, referring to the unfairly harsh criticism his wife received in her role co-hosting the breakfast TV program in 2006.

“No one would give her a break. It was relentless. But the secret we had, and the secret that sustained us, was that we would toddle off together to the IVF clinic and know we were trying our hardest to have a child.”

The couple were blessed with their first baby girl at the beginning of 2007. But it would be the start of another difficult journey. “We got the beautiful Allegra and then, about a month in, Nine sacked Jess on maternity leave,” says Peter, adding candidly: “I still find that unforgivable.”

Jessica slid into postnatal depression, though Peter was initially unaware of his wife’s internal struggle. “One night I got home after a long day of shooting a local 60 Minutes story. I sat on the couch in the living room and Jess was sitting on a couch opposite.

“I was asking her about her day, thinking everything would be perfect, and she said, ‘I’m not coping.’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and she just absolutely broke down.

“I went over and I hugged her very tightly. I said two things to her. I said, ‘Everything is going to be all right.’ ” Peter pauses before revealing his next words. “Then I said, ‘Do you have any thoughts about wanting to do anything to Allegra?’ She assured me she didn’t.

“The next day the obstetrician rang, and she was a wonderful woman – very soft, caring, a beautiful bedside manner. But she made it very clear to me in no uncertain terms that I had a very, very unwell wife and I was not to be travelling. I had to be at home and our priority was to get her better.”

With professional and personal support, the family pulled through this difficult period, but Jessica worried whether the couple could go down this path with another child. “We were very prepared the second time,” says Peter, referring to the arrival of Giselle. “It was a little bit rocky, but fine.”

When speaking about fatherhood, Peter’s tone shifts from professional newsreader to doting dad. “I’ve never loved like how I love Allegra and Giselle – it’s the most pure thing,” he says. “I just want to come home to them at the end of the news. I tell them, ‘You know I think about you every second of the day. Both of you.’ And they say, ‘You do not’ and I say, ‘I really do.’ I’m very close to both of them.”

Overton with Jessica Rowe and his daughters Allegra and Giselle.Credit: Hugh Stewart

How would his daughters describe him as a father? Peter shouts, “How would you describe me as a dad?” In the distance, a faint voice can be heard yelling back, “You’re a great dad!”

Suddenly the voice is louder and clearer, and a first-hand appraisal of Peter the Dad is being delivered by Allegra with typical teenage honesty and tenderness: “Sometimes I think it’s so unfair that Dad won’t let me do things, but then I realise that I’m lucky, because not everyone’s parents are like my parents who really care for me and try to help me make good choices.”

A rather glowing endorsement, indeed. It’s matched when Peter speaks about his 83-year-old father, Dr John Overton, a former professor of paediatric anaesthesia at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead.

“My father is the most magnificent man,” says Peter, with genuine pride
in his voice. “I still talk to him every single day on the way home from
work. I’ve already spoken to him about four times today.”

“My father is the most magnificent man. I still talk to him every single day on the way home from work. I’ve already spoken to him about four times today.”

Why so many phone calls in one day? The answer goes back to that life-changing morning 30 years ago and Peter’s first encounter in the Channel Nine newsroom.

“I sent him the eulogy I wrote for Brian Henderson,” he says. Peter’s friend and mentor lost his battle with cancer in early August this year at the age of 89 and had personally asked Peter to speak at his memorial service during their last conversation together.

“Hendo” famously presented the news for 45 years, and while it’s an inspiring milestone, Peter’s just looking forward to returning to a bustling newsroom:

“I would love to be back there,” he says. Reflecting the feelings of many families who are currently spending more time together than usual, the self-confessed “ringmaster” adds with a laugh, “I think [Jessica and the girls] would love it, too.”

This article appears in Sunday Life magazine within the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age on sale September 5. To read more from Sunday Life, visit The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.