Annette Sharp: Symonds fatal car crash followed sad family breakdown

Andrew Symonds and his second wife Laura Vidmar had been separated for more than a year at the time of the cricketer’s tragic death, writes Annette Sharp.

Andrew Symonds and his second wife Laura Vidmar had been separated for more than a year at the time of the cricketer’s tragic death.

Vidmar flew to Townsville last Sunday after Symonds, 46, was killed when the ute he
was driving rolled on an embankment near Hervey Range, some 50km outside Townsville, about 10.30pm last Saturday.

Vidmar and the couple’s two primary school-aged children, Chloe and Billy, had quit Townsville for Sydney more than a year prior, after the couple decided to separate around Christmas 2020.

Symonds remained on the family farm near Townsville, his sanctuary where he ran cattle, while Vidmar resettled the children on Sydney’s lower north shore where they have been attending local schools.

Sources last week suggested Vidmar may have moved to the area to be close to Symonds’ great cricket friend, Matthew Hayden and his wife Kellie, who live nearby.

Andrew Symonds at home in Townsville in 2016 with wife Laura and children Chloe, 4 and Billy, 2. Picture: Mark Cranitch

On Friday, it emerged Symonds had been seeing a fair bit of Melbourne TV publicist Stefanie Rezzara in recent months. Rezzara oversees publicity on Fox Sports’ Big Bash League coverage.

Media reports claim Rezzara has been flying back and forth to Queensland in recent months, and two days after Symonds’ death had posted a shot to social media of the pair on a boat in Townsville. The image was accompanied by a one-word caption: “F***”

Fox Sports publicist Stefanie Rezzara with Symonds. Picture: Instagram

Vidmar started a new job working for the NSW Department of Planning, Industry and Environment as a principal policy officer in March of last year.

Prior to this Vidmar, who holds three degrees, worked as an executive officer for North Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils. From 2010 to 2017 she served as a sport and recreation co-ordinator with Townsville City Council.

The couple met in 2004, the same year Symonds married his childhood sweetheart Brooke Marshall, who he’d met in Year 11 at the Gold Coast’s All Saints Anglican School.

By 2005 Symonds’ first marriage was over, the union ending — Symonds later admitted — as his drinking spiralled out of control while he was away on tour.

Vidmar would end a relationship with Symonds’ Queensland teammate James Hopes before she and Symonds officially became a couple in 2009.

By 2014 the couple had welcomed two children and were living a quiet life, with reports suggesting they wed in 2014.

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