Why model Erin McNaught quit London for Brisbane
After spending several years in London and starting a family with her rapper husband, former Miss Universe Australia Erin McNaught has returned to Brisbane to raise her two sons
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Watching her two little boys ride their bikes around inner Brisbane, Erin McNaught knows moving home was the right decision.
After spending seven years in London, the Queensland-raised model and actress has settled into a multimillion-dollar house in inner-west Paddington with her British musician husband Example, 36 (real name Elliot Gleave, aka E.G.), and their sons Evander, 4, and 19-month-old Ennio.
While the couple, who met in Sydney in 2011, had talked about returning to Queensland to raise their children, the final decision was an impulsive one. “We were on a flight over here for our annual Christmas holiday [last December] and Elliott just turned to me and said, ‘What are we doing? Why are we even going back?’ ’’
And that was that. After touching down on home soil, McNaught, who turns 37 next month, never returned to London. Gleave’s mother Elaine, who moved to the Gold Coast with his father Michael Gleave a decade ago, flew to the UK to help her son pack up the family home in Wandsworth, South London, in January, while McNaught remained in Australia at her parents’ house with the children.
“[Elliot] had a week to pack up our entire house,” she says. “It was a really stressful time for both of us.” But now the family is settled in an award-winning, five-bedroom, four-bathroom luxury home, which they bought for a reported $2.8 million in March, McNaught says it was all worth the stress.
“When we first started living in London it was very much for selfish reasons. We didn’t have children and it was about Elliot’s career … but we always knew we would be moving back at some point because we wanted Van [Evander] to go to school here,” she says.
“In London it’s just so difficult because you’re in a concrete jungle. There are indoor play centres but it’s no substitute for riding your bike outside and running around.”
AN IDYLLIC CHILDHOOD
McNaught was born in Canberra but spent most of her young years in Brisbane with parents Andy, a technical manager, and Lin, who works for stockbroking firm Morgans, and her two older brothers.
She recalls a carefree childhood in the western suburb of Kenmore, where she attended Kenmore South State School and Kenmore High.
She would rush out the door when she got home for the day and not come back until dinner time. The close-knit family was also into mountain-bike racing and competed in events everywhere from Ipswich and Maleny to Bundaberg and Rockhampton.
“I started racing mountain bikes when I was 11 because my brothers and dad used to,” she says. “So, me and Mum thought we’ll do it as well. We drove all around Queensland. I raced till I was about 21 and then it just wasn’t conducive to the whole modelling thing because I kept coming in with massive bruises and cuts.”
Being back in Brisbane has been a trip down memory lane for the model.
“I remember working at a Mexican restaurant [Dos Amigos at westside Taringa] for my very first job when I was maybe 14 or 15 and I spilled five large soft drinks down the back of a customer, so I only lasted a month,” she says.
“And then I was a Macca’s chick [at Kenmore] for years before working for General Pants [in Brisbane’s Queen Street Mall] when I was 17. That was the coolest job ever, and everyone was so envious because I got discounts.”
ERIN MCNAUGHT WELCOMES SECOND SON
After school, McNaught began a business management degree at Queensland University of Technology, later switching to science. But she soon found success with her modelling, winning the 2005 Miss University crown and an all-expenses-paid trip to New York.
The following year, McNaught, then 24, was crowned Miss Universe Australia, hoping to follow in the footsteps of Jennifer Hawkins – but didn’t progress to the top 20 in the international competition and nearly missed competing at all after controversy following a topless spread in a men’s magazine.
McNaught deferred her university studies and took acting lessons in 2007 and in 2008 landed a role as Sienna Cammeniti on Neighbours.
In 2010, she was recruited as co-host of the Australian pay-TV show MTV Hits Weekly Hot 30 Countdown, which was simulcast on the Today radio network, including B105 in Brisbane.
It was here that she met rapper Example in 2011.
“I was interviewing him and he came without anyone, no PR people or team, and I thought, who is this guy?” she says of their first meeting. “After the interview I direct messaged him on Twitter, and he replied and gave me his number … and that was it.” She moved to London to be with him the following year.
Despite regular modelling work, the gig with MTV and acting work, McNaught felt something was missing.
“I wanted to take some time to re-evaluate where I was in life. Was I happy with what I was doing? Was I a good person? Was I contributing to the world in any shape or form?
“Meeting Elliot was the catalyst for all that. Falling in love with him made me realise: this is what I want to be doing right now so I’m going to focus on that. And I realised I needed a break.”
McNaught admits she struggled with the pressures of keeping up with her rising star in Sydney. The increasing presence of the paparazzi outside her Bondi home at the time made her hyper-aware and more self-conscious.
“You have to be a self-assured and confident person to enjoy modelling and that’s why I enjoy modelling now because I am those things,” she says. “Whereas when I started, I was definitely not. I was constantly second-guessing myself. That was just my nature, I think.
“My whole career up until the move to London had been relatively accidental in a way. I kept stumbling upon opportunities, and I was really lucky. I got to a point where I said to myself, ‘Am I really doing what I want to be doing?’ ”
THE JOURNEY HOME
The move to London was a time for McNaught to find her own happiness; to find herself, her passions and reassess her life.
“I was very self-aware for years after I was on Miss Universe. I’ve always had a self-conscious predisposition, but it made be hyper-aware of my image. Moving to London completely got rid of all that,” she explains.
“No one knew who I was and no one cared. I got to focus on my own happiness. It felt like no one was watching me.”
But there was culture shock too in the densely packed English capital. “The first time I went grocery shopping in London on a Tuesday evening I remember asking the shop assistant, ‘Where are all the fruit and vegetables? Where is all the food?’ And he was just like, ‘We’ve run out’. It really scared me,” she recalls with a laugh.
“I just thought, oh my God, if World War III happens, London is going to be the first city to go down … there are like 12 million people and everyone is fighting for space.”
The couple got engaged on Halloween 2012 and were married in May 2013 at Deux Belettes guesthouse in the hinterland south of Ballina, in northern NSW. Their first son was born in December the following year and McNaught had a miscarriage in 2016 before their second son was born in September the following year.
Motherhood has changed the model’s perspective and her move back to Brisbane is driven entirely by her boys and their happiness.
“I had such a happy, relaxed, carefree childhood and I wanted a bit more of that for my boys … Elliot was born in the UK but his family moved to Australia 10 years ago,” she says.
The couple’s new home is still lacking in furniture but McNaught says her boys have already opened their arms to Brisbane, even though Evander retains a persistent British accent.
“Our stuff from London hasn’t arrived yet so my four-year-old just calls it camping because he has a mattress on the floor of his room. But he’s taken to it like a duck to water,” she says.
“When he first got here in December, we couldn’t get him to leave the house without shoes and socks on … He’d say, ‘No, I need my shoes and socks’, and now you can’t get clothes on him.”
But the move hasn’t been without its bumps and hurdles, and McNaught admits the sudden shift meant she did not get a chance to say a proper goodbye to many close friends.
“My kids probably won’t go back [to London] until they are half grown-up, as they have no real reason to,” she says. “My friends who are over there never got to say goodbye to the boys. They were there when my kids were born, so it was sad for them. But there’s always FaceTime and things like that, so it’s OK.”
For McNaught, the city where she found herself still holds a special place, and it’s hard to compare the bustling social calendar of London to lower-key Brisbane. “I miss being able to walk out and see a drum-and-bass rave on a Monday night. I do miss the liveliness of it all,” she says. “Living in London was so much fun, but I do think it’s a place for singles and couples to be, not so much a family.”
To combat the occasional pangs of missing London, the foursome has spent plenty of time exploring local coffee shops and haunts, with McNaught introducing her brood to the streets she wandered as a child.
“We’ve got a few parks nearby and South Bank is amazing. People who visit us from the UK see South Bank and they don’t even believe it’s real. They say, ‘How can you have a beach with lifeguards and sand in the middle of the city overlooking the river?’ ” she says.
“My parents have lived [near where we are] for about eight years, so we’ve got all our local coffee shop hangs.”
And it seems the boys have taken after their mum when it comes to a hunger for adventure.
“Van [Evander] is already an absolute shredder on the bike. He loves it. And I think Ennio will be even crazier,” she says. “[Ennio] bumped into a hill on his trike the other day and just splattered and cut his chin up. He cried for about five minutes, and then ran away and did it all over again.
“I hope bike-riding will be a big part of our family life … I still love mountain biking and I try to get out as much as I can,” she says, adding that her favourite riding spots are Mt Coot-tha in the inner west and Daisy Hill to the south.
A HEALTHY OUTLOOK
McNaught is using her passion for health and fitness and the shift to Australia to start a new venture in the industry.
“It’s still in quite early stages – it’s going to be quite a niche fitness program,” she says.
“I love exercise and I realised when I was pregnant with Van that there was a lot of conflicting information out there on what you can and can’t do.
In the UK, I think there are two out of every three obstetricians who will recommend their pregnant clients reduce the exercise they do. Yet only 50 per cent of women are doing the amount of exercise they should be doing.”
Helping pregnant women to exercise will be the aim of the project but she reiterates it’s still a work-in-progress.
Aside from her career, McNaught plans on dedicating time to her children’s education and admits that a lot has changed since her own school days.
“The boys are enrolled in state schools. We’ve got them enrolled just down the road,” she says. “I don’t really know what the schooling is like in Brisbane any more so I do want to do a lot more research before we start on a high school.
“I don’t see why they wouldn’t go to state schools. Government schools over here are fantastic.”
The doting mum says she is basking in the glory of the family’s new home, even if it lacks furniture for the time being. “Van occasionally says some things about London, like he misses his friends from nursery there, but he loves it here,” she says.
“He gets all his toys and puts them on the bed and pulls the covers over and says we are going on a holiday, and I ask him where are we going and he says, ‘We’re going back to London and then we’re going to Dublin and then we are coming back to Brisbane.’
“I ask him if he’s happy to be in Brisbane and he always says ‘Yeah’.” ■
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