Why Model Erin McNaught moved back to Australia with her family
After seven years in London, model Erin McNaught and her rapper husband Elliot Gleave made the life-changing decision to move back to Australia with their two young children.
When Erin McNaught was coming back home from her London base last year, on her annual Christmas visit to family in Brisbane, the former Miss Universe Australia says she had an epiphany mid-flight — she was never going back to London.
Then and there the Aussie beauty and her rapper husband Elliot Gleave made the life-changing decision to move Down Under with their two children.
Raising Evander, 4, and Ennio, 19 months, in a relaxed Aussie lifestyle was something they had thought about for years.
“When we first started living in London it was very much for selfish reasons,” McNaught tells BW Magazine.
“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.
“In London it’s just so difficult because you’re in a concrete jungle. There are indoor play centres but it’s no substitute to riding your bike outside and running around.”
McNaught speaks with a palpable British tone as she reflects on the life she and her 36-year-old husband built in Wandsworth.
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The pair met in 2011 when McNaught interviewed Gleave — or “Example” as his fans know him — during her stint as a radio host for MTV Hits Weekly Hot30 Countdown with Today FM.
Back then, neither knew the chart-topping musician, known for tracks Won’t Go Quietly and Kickstarts, would be the reason for her prolonged career break and move across the world.
“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 messaged him on Twitter, and he replied and gave me his number … and that was it.”
The couple got engaged in 2012 and wed a year later in Ballina.
Despite regular modelling work with brands such as LG, a stint on Dancing With The Stars, a successful radio gig and some acting work including a role in Neighbours, the 36-year-old 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?” she says.
“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 had been struggling with the pressures of keeping up with her rising star in Sydney.
“You have to be a self-assured, 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 on opportunities, and I was really lucky. But I got to a point where I said ‘Am I really doing what I want to be doing?’.
“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.
“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. McNaught had grown up in Brisbane with her older brothers, riding mountain bikes.
“I started racing mountain bikes when I was 11 … we drove all around Queensland. We went almost to Mount Isa for one bike race,” she says.
“I raced until 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.”
In densely packed London, there was less room to roam.
“I remember the first time I went grocery shopping in London on a Tuesday evening and 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 12 million people and everyone is fighting for space.”
McNaught says while she moved to London to find herself and her own passions, her move to Brisbane was 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.
And that was that. After landing on home soil, McNaught never went back.
“His Mum flew over and they packed up the house together and I stayed here with the kids. He had a week to pack up our entire house,” she says.
The couple’s lavish new home is still lacking furniture but McNaught says her boys have already opened their arms to Australia, even if her eldest still has a persistent British accent.
“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 … and now you can’t get clothes on him.”
Aside from helping the kids settle into their new home, McNaught has found her passion in health and fitness and is using the shift to Australia to start a new venture.
“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.
“In the UK I think there are two out of every three obstetricians who will recommend that 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 exercise will be the aim of the project but she reiterates it’s still a work-in-progress.
Logistical details aside, the doting mum says she is basking in the glory of the family’s new home.
“Van occasionally says things about London like he misses his friends there but he loves it here,” she says.
“I ask him if he’s happy … and he always says ‘Yeah’.”
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