From pregnant bong smoker to engagement to a new man: Struggle Street’s Billie Jo Wilkie’s new life

BILLIE Jo Wilkie outraged Australia when she smoked a bong while pregnant. Two years on she has a new life and a new man.

STRUGGLE Street’s famous pregnant bong smoker Billie Jo Wilkie is engaged to be married and has a new life, two years on from the controversial TV show.

As documentary film makers limber up for a new Sydney season of Struggle Street, news.com.au takes an exclusive look at where the lives of the western Sydney battlers are now.

Billie Jo Wilkie, who made world news smoking a bong while sitting on the toilet in late pregnancy, has a new romance.

In the TV show’s first season, Wilkie was in a relationship with fellow welfare recipient Bob Quinn, several decades her senior.

As news.com.au revealed last September, Wilkie had a rampant ice addiction and spent a year in prison, some of it with fellow former ice addict Harriet Wran.

But Wilkie has moved on from her romance with Quinn, and is now with bike riding plasterer George Sallit.

Heavily pregnant Billie Jo Wilkie smokes a bong on the SBS show Struggle Street in images that went around the world.

Billie Jo Wilkie pictured smoking a bong on Struggle Street’s first Sydney TV season.

Billie Jo Wilkie and her new man and fiancee, Sydney plasterer George Sallit.

Struggle Street’s Billie Jo Wilkie flashes her new engagement ring after announcing she and Sydney plasterer George Sallit were getting married.

On Facebook posts, Wilkie denigrated Quinn, saying she had a “real man” in Sallit and announced her engagement to him with pictures of her ring.

It appears that Wilkie has herself had a baby earlier this year.

News.com.au has also learned that Corey Kennedy, portrayed as a troubled ice addict in Struggle Street’s first season, has also become a parent.

Members of the Kennedy family, whose house in the western Sydney suburb of Wilmott was the focus of the TV show’s first episode, said Kennedy had fathered a baby girl early this month.

“Corey has moved out, but he’s still having troubles with ice,” Corey Kennedy’s sister Chloe Kennedy told news.com.au.

“We don’t think he’ll ever be over it unfortunately.”

Struggle Street’s Billie Jo Wilkie with a baby in a photo posted on Facebook earlier this year.

Struggle Street’s Billie Jo Wilkie and Bob Quinn (above) have split and she is now engaged to a new man.

Chloe Kennedy, seated right with child, revealed that people still drive by their house (above) and pelt it with eggs.

On the TV show Corey Kennedy (above) was in a struggle with his ice addition, but has now had a baby girl.

Corey Kennedy was released from prison earlier this year and has now had a baby girl with his partner.

Chloe Kennedy did reveal, however, that she has a job working at a fast food outlet a short drive from where the 21-year-old lives with her family.

The Kennedys are in the same house they were filmed in for Struggle Street, although the front railings have been netted with chicken wire.

“Yeah, people throw things at our house still. Just the other day they threw eggs. When we go out and they recognise us they yell out ‘Hey, Struggle Street’.

“Anyone who gets involved in the next version of Struggle Street would have to be mad.”

Since the first season, Wilkie had arguments with her mother Carleen, with whom she is filmed in some of the most controversial scenes.

Wilkie then moved into Quinn’s house at Lethbridge Park near Mt Druitt in western Sydney.

When news.com.au spoke with them there last year, both said they regretted appearing in the TV show and had fallen into heavy drug use before recovering.

Recently, Wilkie mourned the drug overdose of a young women who, like her, had spent time in jail.

Billie Jo clean in September last year.

Billie Jo in the throes of ice addiction.

Bike riding new man: Billie Jo’s fiance George Sallit.

Both admitted they were high on ice during filming of the show and had bought methamphetamines with welfare money freed up when SBS paid for their food and phones.

“Ice is bad s**t man,” Quinn told news.com.au, “that time [filmed on Struggle Street] when I wouldn’t come to the door, I was pretty out of it that day.”

“You were smashed,” Wilkie interjected. “SBS gave us a card to put Macca’s on and our phones and that so, yeah, we were buying ice.

“It was disgusting. We were given money and taken out to do drug deals. They [SBS] took us out to get on.

“It was s**t.”

“Yeah,” Quinn agreed, “I fell into oblivion with drugs.”

The pair broke up under the pressure of having the spotlight shined upon their lives, got back together but then broke up again earlier this year.

The split, in Facebook posts at least, did not appear amicable, with Wilkie and Quinn appearing to exchange insults.

Desperate to escape the Mt Druitt area, and the squalor and social problems which SBS’s Struggle Street focused upon, the pair had nevertheless achieved a huge milestone.

Billie Jo is happy with life with her new man.

Billie Jo‘s new fiance George.

Corey Kennedy and his father Ashley on the original SBS program Struggle Street.

Both have given up drugs, with Wilkie admitting that she “probably would have died” otherwise.

“It’s a terrible life being on ice,” Quinn said. “It’s just misery. I still have a daily struggle and we have these c***s who still come around and say can we get some and we’ll spot you some for free, the mother f***ers.”

Quinn gave up taking ice last Christmas and encouraged Wilkie to do the same.

She had received a jail sentence for driving offences, after she was caught driving while disqualified four times, and twice in one day.

She was sent to prison for 13 months. The term was just 11 months less than the minimum former NSW premier Neville Wran’s daughter Harriet received for her role in the murder of ice dealer Daniel McNulty.

Wilkie did her time in Kempsey prison on the Mid North Coast, Dillwynia Women’s Correctional Centre in western Sydney and at Silverwater.

She was sentenced just a month after SBS screened the Struggle Street promo which showed her sitting on a toilet while she was pregnant and smoking drugs with her mother, Carlene.

Her TV fame preceded her in the yard with the other women prisoners.

“I copped it in jail. They’d yell out ‘hey Struggle Street, there goes Struggle Street’,” Wilkie said.

For the first half of her sentence she took drugs in prison including ice and “bupe”, or Buprenorphine a drug like methadone distributed to heroin addicts in prison.

“Every couple of months I was doing drugs in there,” she said.

“I thought if I am in here and I get out of here and I’m still using it will have all been for nothing, so six months before I was due out I stopped.

“I’ve seen [other female inmates] collect debts in there and I thought if I get out and I’m using I’m going to kill myself.”

Wilkie said she spent time in Silverwater Prison with an inmate called Harriet, but she didn’t realise until she got out that it was Wran, who she said had been a model inmate inside.

Released from prison in June last year, Wilkie moved back in with Quinn at Lethbridge Park, but both have since moved on from the house.

Asked about allegations of drug-taking being encouraged during the show, SBS told news.com.au that “any claims that SBS was involved in alleged criminal activity are absolutely untrue”.

An SBS spokesman said: “Struggle Street was made with rigorous documentary production protocols and standards, and we continue to stand by the integrity of the series.

“Struggle Street is a challenging but important observational documentary series which allows individuals and communities the opportunity to share their stories.

“The first series was broadly acknowledged as having a significant impact on the national conversation about social disadvantage, and the support needed to address the complex issues of poverty and hardship in Australia today.”