Struggle Street’s Billie Jo Wilkie reveals her ice addiction and her year in prison with Harriet Wran

EXCLUSIVE: Struggle Street’s Billie Jo Wilkie reveals her ice addiction and her year in prison with Harriet Wran when she beat drugs.

EXCLUSIVE

STRUGGLE Street’s most notorious star Billie Jo Wilkie has revealed that she has just spent more than a year in prison and that she had a serious ice addiction.

Speaking exclusively with news.com.au, Billie Jo — who made world news when she smoked a marijuana bong on camera while eight months pregnant - says she was “smashed on ice” while filming the SBS reality show.

The series, which aired last year, focused on the lives of people living in the western Sydney suburb of Mt Druitt.

Wilkie and her partner Bob Quinn admitted they were both 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,” Bob 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,” Billie Jo interjected. “SBS gave us a card to put Maccas 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.”

Billie Jo Wilkie said she was tricked into being filmed smoking a bong while heavily pregnant with her mother Carleen and has copped flack ever since. Picture: SBS

Billie Jo and Bob, pictured after Struggle Street aired, say they cannot go anywhere without being recognised for their notorious participation in the show. Picture: Nine Network

Addicted to ice, Billie Jo Wilkie was pictured in May last year outside her mother’s trashed house, but she has now given up the drug while serving time in prison. Picture: Candace Sutton

“Yeah,” Bob agreed, “I fell into oblivion with drugs.”
The pair, who broke up under the pressure of having the spotlight shined upon their lives, are back together and struggling with their notoriety and lives since the show finished.

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

Both have given up drugs, with Billie Jo admitting that if she hadn’t she “probably would have died”.

“It’s a terrible life being on ice,” Bob 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.”

Bob gave up taking ice last Christmas and encouraged Billie Jo 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.

Billie Jo Wilkie has no energy after giving up ice, but her eyes, skin and hair are glowing. Picture: Candace Sutton

Wilkie served a stiff sentence for driving offences at Silverwater Women’s Prison.

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.

Billie Jo 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’,” Billie Jo 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.

Billie Jo, pictured with her mother Carlene, says her notoriety made it hard in prison where female inmates called her ‘Struggle Street’. Picture: SBS

The couple still cop abuse more than a year after the reality TV show aired, and Billie Jo has had a skit about ‘bogan dating’ made using her image from the show. Picture: Nine Network

Bob, pictured with Billie Jo breaking into a flatmate’s room to get a bong part, says he was high on ice while filming. Picture: SBS

“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.”

Billie Jo 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 three months ago, Wilkie is back living with Bob at Lethbridge Park, a neighbouring suburb of Mt Druitt.

The couple cannot go anywhere without being recognised, which they say they “hate”.

“We were tricked into doing it by SBS because they told us it was a documentary and then we have been bullied and degraded on air,” she said.

“Now we’re attacked online and just walking down the street everyone knows us.

“It doesn’t matter where we go, everyone knows us. I hate the attention all the time.”

Bob, who has spent time in hospital and has suffered serious family issues with his children, said he just “wanted to get out of this sh**hole”.

Billie Jo 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 Harriet Wran (pictured leaving prison). Picture: Renee Nowytarger

“I want to get out of public housing and start working again and rent. While I was in hospital there were squatters living in this house and they trashed the joint,” Bob said.

“Housing blames me. They hate me because of the show.

“I just want to get somewhere quieter, maybe down the coast, where we don’t have people knocking on the door through the night.”
Bob and Billie Jo said with hindsight they should never have agreed to go on Struggle Street, and anybody participating in future versions of the SBS series to “stay the f*** away”.

“Never again,” Bob said. “We were vulnerable. We were on the ice bad and they gave us money. It’s affected my family.”
The couple say they both suffer extreme lethargy since giving up ice.

“That the worst thing about being off the drug, you can’t walk five steps. Got no energy,” Billie Jo said. However, she has gained weight and her eyes, skin and hair are glowing.

Life in the Mt Druitt-Lethbridge Park area is no picnic says Billie Jo Wilkie who wants to escape the squalor and the drug scene. Picture: Candace Sutton

Picture in May last year when she was taking ice, Billie Jo was unhealthy and her life was a mess. Picture: Candace Sutton

Billie Jo says taking ice sapped her energy but now she’s off the drug her eyes and skin are clear and her hair is shiny. Picture: Candace Sutton

Billie Jo, who comes from a troubled background, said the pressure of being degraded online made life difficult.

She has a horrific family history of neglect, death, abandonment and physical and mental illness.

She had a brother who died from drugs and a sister who died in 2014 from motor neurone disease.

“Mt Druitt is a s*** hole, it’s crap, don’t live here, but it’s got lovely people who’d do anything for you’” she said.

“But now, where do we go that no-one would know us?”
Billie Jo said among the online trolling she had received was a YouTube video entitled “If Bogans had a Dating Show” made by a man calling himself “The Bogan Bachelor”.
In the video he says “I’m looking for a sheila that likes the simple things in life”, and the screen cuts to the shot from Struggle Street of Billie Jo smoking the bong.

“I don’t even know him, but I’d like to find out and see if I can sue him,” she said.

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.

“As with all productions, duty of care to participants is paramount, and clear and informed consent obtained.

“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.”

Peta and Ashley Kennedy and family featured on the first series of Struggle Street. Picture: SBS