Tziporah Malkah needs to leave Sydney before its parasites destroy her
Sin City’s parasites are feasting on Tziporah Malkah, each taking a piece of her and then another, until ultimately there will be nothing left, just the memory of a woman who, in an earlier life, had the world at her feet, writes Annette Sharp.
Opinion
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From the gutters of Woolloomooloo, Dover Heights, Double Bay and the clichéd Cross they come slithering, their every primitive sense pricked.
They’ve caught her scent again, that familiar whiff of despair, self-loathing and loneliness.
Another formerly dewy beauty is lying in a grim rented Sydney apartment, and the parasites know it will take only a little persuasion to talk their way through her door.
They come for a piece of her — a trophy, a taste of the rare delights once feasted upon exclusively by corporate kings and princes.
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Some will promise her redemption. Others promise escape. They come in the guise of promoters, actors, artists, nightclub managers, sportsmen, lawyers — the most brazen as “friends” — and all will take a piece, and then another, until ultimately there is nothing left, just the memory of a woman who, in an earlier life, had the world at her feet.
Sydney has brought other women, and men, to their knees.
It did so to model-turned-television presenter Charlotte Dawson, whose death in 2014 shocked only those who didn’t know how beaten down and fragile Dawson had become at 47 as the years, jobs and suitors slipped though her fingers like cocaine through a six-figure bank account.
There are those who swear blind it happened to model-turned-swimwear designer Annalise Braakensiek, who was found dead in her Potts Point apartment in 2019.
And the same people have now picked up the scent of another familiar dark-eyed wild child, who first turned heads in 1987 at age 13 as the youngest finalist entered in the 1987 Dolly magazine cover girl competition.
Like both Dawson and Braakensiek before her, Kate Fischer — who now goes by the name Tziporah Malkah — has taken to social media in recent times to record her distress and emotional fragility.
A post late last year was the most disturbing to date — and was, without question, a cry for help.
Malkah/Fischer’s issues can be traced to her 1998 break-up to then media scion and billionaire-to-be James Packer.
Back then, none would have imagined the challenges to come for the strong-minded Malkah/Fischer, to whom Packer gifted a $2.8 million home and cash as a parting gift when their engagement ended.
Yet on some level she must have known Sydney would turn its frosty back on her following her break-up from its society prince, prompting her to pack her bags and quit Australia for the US.
It was a smart call. She made an equally smart decision to make mannered Melbourne her home on her return.
And then a photographer found her, prompting Malkah/Fischer to pack up and quit the job that had been restoring her, her role as an aged care assistant, and throw away two decades of hard work, to return to Sydney and make other people a little richer.
There is a long line of women now quietly urging Malkah/Fischer to move away from Sin City again — and this time to make it permanent, before it is too late. This writer adds her voice to that small solid chorus.
Another who might have counselled Tziporah/Kate to do so, were she alive today, was Carol Lopes, the American model who became the mistress of Kerry Packer, James Packer’s father, in the 1970s and sometime after was installed as the boss of Kerry’s private brothels.
Variously described in terms that might prompt comparisons to Malkah/Fischer — gorgeous, vivacious, gregarious, smart and funny — Lopes was given her own Nine Network on-air role as a late-night movie hostess at the peak of her relationship with Kerry Packer before being discarded as a lover and left cut off and lonely.
She took her own life in 1991 leaving a suicide letter that said she had been “denied access” to Packer, her “only family”.
“He is not aware of how distressed I am … I have no alternative but to end my life,” she wrote.
The firebrand that was the old Kate would give a new transformation — a new address, a new name — a red-hot go.
Hopefully, Tziporah also can recognise the time has come to make a fresh start, to break away and start again.