Susie O’Neill: From touching a wall to hitting one. Why Madame Butterfly wants to alight on a flower

Susie O’Neill, 51, is a dual Olympic gold medallist who went on to a sterling radio career. But last week she shocked listeners with a surprise announcement.

Fitz: Susie, good to chat. I want to get to your latest, extraordinary move, but let’s start with a quick blast from your swimming career that led you to be known nationwide as Madame Butterfly.

SO: I was originally a backstroker at school because I didn’t like my face going in the water, but then took up backstroke seriously to get second in the 1988 Olympic trials in the 100 metres butterfly and a bronze medal in the 200 metres butterfly at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.

Madame Butterfly: Susie O’Neill in action in the pool. The stroke is so “violent and exhausting” it “scares others off”.Credit: Getty Images

Fitz: Butterfly always seemed to me to be such a violent and exhausting stroke, but you made it appear effortless?

SO: No, it is violent and exhausting. But it’s for that very reason it scares off so many others, which is good! And I just had the capacity to push myself to the absolute limits in training, competing with myself, always chasing the lower times. In my mind, the more I could kill myself at training, morning after morning after morning, the faster I was going to get. And I really was good at hurting myself. I felt like I could cut my head off from my body – torturing my body, while still feeling OK in my head. I just kept chasing, chasing, chasing lower times.

Fitz: And on the strength of that, you notch up two Olympic gold medals, in 1996 at Atlanta and at Sydney 2000. What is your most compelling memory of that time, the one you’ll cherish on your deathbed?

SO: It was definitely breaking the 200m butterfly world record held for 19 years by the American great, Mary T Meagher, at the Sydney Olympic trials, with the whole crowd just getting behind me and lifting the roof when I got it. It’s still hard to put into words that experience – but it was like a big, warm hug from the whole crowd – and I appreciate it even more now.

O’Neill decided to quit swimming after the 2000 Olympics: “Once I started wanting to take short-cuts and skip training sessions, I knew it was time.”Credit: Paul Harris

Fitz: How did you know, straight after the 2000 Olympics, it was time to quit?

SO: I just didn’t want to put the work in any more. Once I started wanting to take short-cuts and skip training sessions, I knew it was time. Plus, I was 27, my friends were going out and doing different things, while I felt like I was living the same life I’d lived since I was nine years old. So I stopped swimming and looked to chase something else. But the next few years were hard, and a bit directionless, not sure what to chase. I went from that firm focus of swimming to being married with two children and post-natal depression. I knew something was wrong after my second baby, when the nurses brought him to me and suggested I bathe him – and I said, “maybe we could do it tomorrow?”

“I have a very strong feeling that I want to do other things without quite knowing what.”

Fitz: But going into the media helped get you back direction and chasing once more, yes?

SO: Yes. It started with doing swimming commentary with TV and radio and then moved, a decade ago, into doing the breakfast show on Nova in Brisbane.

Fitz: What sort of show is it? Before you spin the disc, do you say, “Now here’s a sound that was around when you were a little closer to the ground, but before we spin that fantastic black plastic, here’s the weather!!” That kind of thing?

SO: [Laughing.] No, it’s much more conversational. It’s me with two others, great people [co-presenters Ashley Bradnam and David ‘Luttsy’ Lutteral], and I suppose my role – especially when my kids were young – was more observational, mum stuff, family stuff and sometimes swimming or sport stuff.

Fitz: And you pretty much smashed it, topping or near-topping the ratings, until last week – the most extraordinary thing. You announced live on air, your resignation, saying, “I do this with a heavy heart. The decision wasn’t easy. It’s hard for me to articulate exactly why I’m leaving.”

SO: Yes, that’s what I said, and that’s what I felt. That announcement has been coming for a while, and I was finally ready to say it.

Fitz: But, Susie, Madame Butterfly, what are you doing?? You’re on big bucks, in a world where the tone is set by Hunter S Thompson’s immortal line: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.” And the tradition in those gigs is you NEVER resign. You hold on ’til they drag you kicking and screaming out the door, replaced by somebody younger, sharper and faster!

SO: [Laughing uproariously.] I got precisely that advice – “hang in there!” – from friends who had been previously cleaned out, dragged out, kicking and screaming. They said: “Take the money and just do your life around this job. Soon enough, you won’t have a job, so enjoy this while it lasts!”

Fitz: Yes, but you said on resigning, it was “hard to articulate why I am leaving”. Can you try now?

SO: Just a very strong feeling. Look, you know that feeling, that you’re going to die ...?

Fitz: [Uncertainly.] Ummm, no?

SO: Well, let’s say that feeling that you haven’t got as much time left as you did, and there are other things you want to do. I don’t know, I feel like I’m gonna die soon, and I have a very strong feeling that I want to do other things without quite knowing what. And I don’t mean I am ill; I mean there’s a lot fewer years ahead of me, than behind me. I find what I am doing now a very tiring job. I know that everyone pooh-poohs that because it only goes for three hours, and even the people I work with don’t find it as difficult as I do. But to be honest, I just feel like I’ve been run over by a truck after every show. I want a break, and this is the only way I can think of having a break.

Fitz: OK, so to give you a line I have always loved from the French writer, Guy de Maupassant, “it was not so much four years of experience as one year repeated four times over.” Has it been like that for you, with the greatest respect, to Nova?

SO: At first, I think no … and yet truly the answer is … yes! But genuinely with the greatest respect because I have loved it.

Fitz: And you mentioned Cliff, your ophthalmologist husband, tried to help you see it more clearly?

SO: [Laughing.] Yes, he took me through all the scenarios. He said, “Everyone’s replaceable, so they’ll just replace you, and life at the radio station will just go on without you. Are you OK with that?” Yes. “And you’ll never again earn that amount of money for doing that little amount of work?” Yep, okay with that, too. “And you’ll probably be directionless for a while like when you quit swimming, and it’ll take you a while to find something?” Tick. He supports me in whatever I want to do, but wanted me to truly examine the consequences, and to really, really, really think about it. I have. But do I still want to stop the whole thing? I do. I can’t explain why. I just feel absolutely cooked. The only way I can think of having a break is to hop off the train. And it’s not flaky. Having done it for 10 years straight says it is not flaky.

Fitz: Is it like when you quit swimming?

SO: Yes, but this time I want to completely stop chasing, and just be. I am not sure if it makes sense to you, but I just want to come into ... me, get into myself. I feel I’m quite introverted, and I feel like I want … I feel like I want more time with me, right?

Fitz: Right. Do go on.

SO: I do want some more meat in my life. You know – substance. I say that with great respect to all those I work with. Actually, when I think about it, “substance” is the wrong word because it’s been really rewarding as well, and I’ve been shocked at how many people listen to our show and related to things that I said. It was like when I was living in Melbourne in 2004, with my first baby. I was really lonely, and my only friends were the ones I listened to on the radio, Dave Hughes and Kate Langbroek. In fact, when I was leaving, driving out of Melbourne back to Brisbane, I was so sad that I was leaving them, I wanted to ring them up and say goodbye. I wish I had now. [A pause, as she composes herself from her voice breaking.]

Fitz: [Gently.] Go on ...

SO: Why am I getting upset? I know the connection that you get with the people on the radio, which is weird, isn’t it? Yeah. So I’m not dissing that connection that I had with listeners, but I just feel like ... I feel like, yeah, there’s something else out there.

Fitz: All right. Last question. If you find it, this time in a year, what would your perfect day look like?

SO: I don’t know, but I intend to have a go finding out. I want to feel a lot more content. Like I said, my whole life I’ve been trying to chase something, or reach something, and I want to stop that. I want to just be … content. I kind of want to feel just happy in myself, right? Without other people telling me I’m doing well.

Fitz: Let me simply say then: brava and good luck. May Madame Butterfly alight happily on a flower, and let the rest of world flutter by for a bit. You deserve it.

SO: Love it. Thank you.