Vikki Campion: On bended knees Barnaby asked me … I melted
A scandalous start. A gem dug up from his electorate. A proposal on bended knees. Vikki Campion writes openly about her engagement to Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce.
Opinion
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Down at the maternity ward, you leave blank spaces where the father details go.
Name: Blank.
Address: Blank.
Phone number: Blank.
You’re going it alone, you tell the worried nurse, as she inquires and asks again.
You don’t think he will be there to hold your hand as you birth his son. You share nothing, not common property, not an electricity bill, not so much as a wardrobe and you want to remain fiercely independent so that you never want to rely upon, or need, or marry him.
But you miss him all the same.
Even until the day he said in Parliament that I was his partner, I didn’t believe it to be accurate. He said he would be there in the labour ward and I didn’t believe that either.
You see love everywhere, all types — the conditional, the kind that looks good on paper, the kind that disintegrates at the first hardship, the one that says what you want to hear but doesn’t show up when you need them.
But great love — or the kind that I know now — was none of those.
It’s accepting all perceived flaws, scars, subjectively ugly, twisted mistakes, bad press, ill will, job loss, sickness and humiliation. Others believe you to be crazy and you believe them. You walk away from them before they can exile you.
It’s easier to throw it away, you know. Easier to wander alone or lonely. Easier to join the cynics and the sceptical, the gossips, the old nattering washerwomen tsk-tsking and those who know not their own minds, let alone yours.
And you swap your job for harsh stares, paparazzi and paranoia, schoolyard rumours cooking up in Ultimo newsrooms, many without a yolk of truth and you stop answering the door.
And you know that some of your nearest will never understand, won’t try. That’s not their job, their way, or the way of others who only have the mind for easy ridicule.
But you think of great loves throughout history and you know they will never build a statue of us but you do think: Could you have endured it all if it weren’t for the love that you can only have with your best mate?
You can have a great love without commitment and there are many whose names you wouldn’t utter who understand, because they sacrificed their own great love for a dull, safe, vanilla version of comfort.
We aren’t a perfect couple but, true to his word, he was holding my hand as I birthed our son and, beside “Father” on the form, there wasn’t a blank space.
But if great love is being wholly understood and accepted by another, no matter what you come up against, a proposal is based on the hope that will always be so.
He has asked me a thousand times: “Would you go through it all again?”
And my answer has always been yes.
On his knees he asked, opening a box with a 6.5 carat parti sapphire ring, a rare local gem that cannot be replicated in a lab, set beautifully in diamonds by Inverell jeweller Anna Thivakon and dug out of the ground by her partner in the New England.
Barnaby matched the setting to a black Australian sapphire I inherited from my grandmother when she passed, even secretly taking it from my jewellery box to size our Australian ring.
Unbeknown to me, our ring had travelled with us to Canberra, was set to go on-board a plane to North Queensland but Covid thwarted his romantic plans.
The weekend we should have been in the tropics, a trip I knew nothing of, he was locked down in a hotel room in Washington.
Week after week, town after town, from Queensland to NSW, Covid shut down his plans until eventually he settled on a seafood restaurant in Coffs Harbour.
He pretended to drop his phone on the floor, jumped down on both knees as if he was praying, not proposing, and said: “Vikki, will you marry me?” and I melted. Amid rising happy tears, the answer caught in my throat. I threw my arms around him and kissed him. Always, yes.
Days following were a blur of well-wishes and congratulations, from friends and strangers, questions about bucks nights, hens, engagement parties and a wedding we haven’t planned, as well as the usual ridicule, surprised remarks from more imaginative types who will never stop spreading “a recent break-up”.
I never thought we would end up engaged and I hope nothing changes because of it.
Great love doesn’t need a ring but I like how it feels.
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