‘I went home and fell apart’: The stories two high-profile journalists couldn’t shake

Two of the Nine Network’s most familiar faces, Leila McKinnon and Ally Langdon tend to flow with the news cycle. Even when a monumentally devastating story breaks, such as the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, McKinnon says, “You cry and you move on to the next story, because that’s your job, and you hardly ever look back”.

But when filming Events That Changed Australia, an eight-part series examining recent historical and cultural turning points, featuring – like the ABC’s I Was Actually There – accounts from reporters, first responders, witnesses and survivors, both women reflected on what it was like to face the camera while behind them was chaos, heartache, and sometimes, triumph.

Leila McKinnon in Events that Changed Australia.

“It was more emotional than I thought it would be,” says McKinnon. “It’s a whirlwind working in news and it’s not until later on, when you look back a week or two later, that you let out all the emotions. I did that with the fires. I went home and fell apart.”

Langdon was also on the scene in the aftermath of the tragedy.

“I remember a plastic swing set standing and fine,” says Langdon. “And you just look at it and go, ‘There are brick and concrete houses all around it that have burnt to the ground. How is that still there?’ Those little images stay with you.”

The series also revisits the 2014 Lindt Cafe siege, the Marriage Equality plebiscite, the rise of women’s sport, and, for some light relief, “The Birth of the Bogan”.

“Obviously, Corey [Worthington] and I have the starring role in that one,” says McKinnon, laughing, as she references her famous interview with the Melbourne teenage party host, who, in 2008, invited 500 guests via MySpace to his parents’ house.

Episodes dedicated to Kerry Packer’s creation of World Series Cricket and Melbourne’s gangland wars, as dramatised in Nine’s Underbelly series, make use of the network’s archives. Of the 2005 Cronulla race riots, the series asks, “Is Australia still racist?”

“I feel so conflicted in how the Australian flag was used that day,” says Langdon, who remembers “the fear” in the newsroom. “I feel conflicted about what it now portrays. You drive down the street and if a house has an Australian flag out the front, that should be such a proud symbol of all things that are great about our nation. But when it gets used the way it does, over and over again, there can be a darker side to the flag, which sits uncomfortably with me.”

The episode includes footage deemed too graphic and incendiary to air at the time.

Ally Langdon reporting from the Black Saturday bushfires in 2009.

“I think it was the right decision when emotions were so high,” says Langdon. “There was so much volatility, we had to be careful. But you can’t erase history. You can’t rewrite it. It happened. It was ugly.”

While covering the ensuing legal proceedings, Langdon was spat on.

“A lot of the reason why the young men who were involved in the Cronulla riots ended up before the courts was based on visions that the media had shot,” says Langdon. “So we were the bad guys. Some of them would turn up to court with their friends and they were ready for another fight. We were scum, in their minds.”

The public response to news crews after Black Saturday was generally positive, at first.

“It was a really uneasy time,” says McKinnon. “At one point, a lot of those emotions started to be directed at the media. But I also remember beautiful stories and amazing people looking after each other and sharing their story with Australia.”

Says Langdon: “The thing that sticks with me is the guilt you feel when you get on the plane and you go home and your family is safe and your house is fine and your life goes back to normal, when you know that the people you’ve just left, their life is changed forever. And there is a real guilt that comes with that.”

Events That Changed Australia premieres at 8.30pm on Sunday, December 7, on Nine.

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