‘A quick pash in the dark’: TV host opens up about the women in his life

Anthony Burke is an architect best known for being the host of Grand Designs Australia. Here, the 53-year-old talks about losing his father, his fierce and independent mother, and meeting his now-wife more than 30 years ago.

Anthony Burke recalls that his “first kiss was as awkward and thrilling as it could be”.Credit:

My maternal grandmother Edna would shell peas out the back of her small home in Padstow, NSW, always with a bowl in her lap. She had three children – my mum Jeanette is the eldest, her sister Helen who was 10 years younger, and they had a brother Ray in between them. Edna had a very quiet life. My grandfather was a house painter, and together they moved to The Entrance. She was a homebody and I suspect had a bit of depression in her life. She died when I was about 18.

I wasn’t that close to my paternal grandmother, Merle. My father’s parents split, and I saw my grandparents separately and not that often. Merle moved to Brisbane, and we’d see her once a year. She was an avid member of the Broadbeach Bowling Club, died in her mid-70s from probably having too much fun – she enjoyed a roll-up and a whisky. She was also a homemaker and raised my father Brent and uncle John, who is now a doctor based in Canada.

My mum raised two sons; I’m the eldest and my brother Matthew is three years younger. She worked as a bank teller, did some receptionist and secretarial work; it’s how she met my father, who was a stockbroker. Mum did part-time work on and off while raising her kids.

My father died suddenly from cancer when I was 27. He had three months between diagnosis and death. It was the saddest first Christmas without him.

Mum has always been there for us. She doesn’t have a big, loud personality and is not so big on giving hugs, either. She has strong opinions but keeps them to herself. When Dad died, she stepped right up. She has a fierce independence and that emerged after he died, and it’s still true to this day. She turns 80 next year. She never asked my brother and me for anything after Dad died, even though we felt we had to step up and fill the gap a bit for her.

My first kiss was as awkward and thrilling as it could be. It happened at the local tennis club dance when I was 14. There was nothing pretty about it. She was a nice girl, but we were both incredibly nervous and had a dance followed by a quick pash around the corner in the dark.

My kindergarten teacher Mrs Nibb was one of those big, lovely, nanna-type characters who loved every kid. I have memories of sitting with her and drawing on paper, but her character was the school and a whole world unto herself.

I started to notice girls when I went to St Augustine’s College, Brookvale. I signed up to help with the school play for three years in a row to be part of the theatre production. It was mostly to be around girls and have a chance to hang with them.

I started dating around 16. The normal thing to do back then was sneak into FJ’s on the Northern Beaches in Sydney at Narrabeen on a Wednesday night and use your fake ID and have a bob. All the girls and boys did the same thing at the time. It was an optimistic time to date and hang with girls and a larger network of friends.

I met my wife Kylie when I was 20, but we didn’t start dating until a year later as I was in a relationship with someone else at the time. We worked in the daggiest clubs at the time. I was at the Harbord Diggers Memorial Club making Flaming Lamborghini cocktails for guys who wanted to impress girls, and saw Kylie when I was polishing glasses one night.

Kylie and I moved to Hong Kong for a year to live and work in 1999. I then did my master’s at Columbia University, and she got a transfer to Virginia with her big telco company at the time. She would get the Amtrak to come and see me in New York, and we did that for 18 months before she moved to Brooklyn. We lived in NYC for four years and planned our wedding day from our brownstone house. We got married in Bowral and have two kids – Alec, 20, and Elyse, 18.

Our relationship works because we are complementary, but we both love travelling and being in other places. We recently went to a yoga retreat in Sri Lanka. Our daughter Elyse came with us and probably missed her phone a bit too much.

Grand Designs Australia can be watched on ABC iView.

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