Bronwyn podcast: Rare video captures tender moments before she vanished

She approaches the hospital bed with eyes only for her stricken father. Bronwyn Joy Winfield is just 24, and she goes directly to her Dad | SEE THE VIDEO

Clockwise from left: Bronwyn Winfield, second left, with her father Phillip, left, and other family members; Phillip with Bronwyn and her baby girl Chrystal; a documentary image of Bronwyn at her father’s hospital bedside

She approaches the hospital bed with eyes only for her stricken ­father. Bronwyn Joy Winfield is just 24. Her hair is blonde, shoulder length and parted with gentle flicks away from her young face.

She drops her handbag into a chair beside the bed and goes directly to her Dad – Phillip Allan Read – who is fighting for survival after a liver transplant.

It is August 1986, and trailing Bronwyn to the bedside is her then boyfriend, Jon Winfield. His brown hair carries blond streaks, perhaps from the sun and the surf.

This is a scene from a Network Ten documentary – Sometimes I Get Frightened – filmed at Brisbane’s Princess Alexandra Hospital in Woolloongabba.

Almost seven years after the cameo, Bronwyn would vanish without trace. Later, Jon would become a police suspect in her disappearance, but he has always strongly denied any involvement.

Just a year before the documentary, the hospital had become famous after Russell Strong had successfully performed Australia’s first liver transplant there.

Phillip Read happened to be a patient in the Princess Alexandra during the filming of the documentary, narrated by newsreader and then Brisbane Network Ten news director Des McWilliam, and written, produced and directed by journalist Howard Sacre.

The cameras roam the liver transplant ward. Philip is in post-operative recovery.

The program features an uplifting interview with a woman who has successfully negotiated her liver transplant. Then there is Mr Read. “On the third day, Phillip Read still hasn’t gained full consciousness. He remains critical,” the narrator says.

Phillip is dying. He is bloated and sallow. Several nurses in their blue tunics are hovering nearby.

Bronwyn, her visit to her father captured by the documentary cameras, offers one of the nurses a knowing, closed-mouth smile. The sort of smile that is also acknowledging the graveness of the situation.

“Bronwyn,” the narrator continues, “forever optimistic, looks for signs of progress and tries to ­reinforce her father’s will to live. But his system is failing.”

What nobody could know watching this tragic cameo – the documentary will feature in episode three of Hedley Thomas’s new podcast, Bronwyn – was that Bronwyn would go on to marry Jon Winfield in late 1987, move from Sydney to Lennox Head on the NSW Far North Coast, and have a child (Lauren) with him.

But this is in a future far removed from the orbit of the dying man, filled as it is with tubes and monitors and nurses and visiting doctors and family, like Bronwyn, looking down at Phillip Read, prone, tired, his hair ruffled and askew. Everyone is hoping for the best.

At her father’s deathbed, Bronwyn is the epitome of care and grace. She is outwardly upbeat in the documentary: “Some days are better than others, you know, but I think he’s responding. If I think he’s responding it makes me feel a lot better.”

There is vision of her leaning over her father, stroking the top sheet in a gesture of comfort. At one point she brushes back the hair from his forehead and kisses him on the cheek.

“All I ever tell him … is he’s going to get better … his heart’s still strong, and he’s going to be ­alright,” she says.

It’s impossible to escape her ­vitality, her life force, lined up as it is beside her fading father. She is bright, clear-eyed and clear skinned, her voice positive, her laugh girlish.

In the brief two minutes that Phillip and Bronwyn appear in Sometimes I Get Frightened, the sense of tragedy is inescapable. This is a scene played out over time through the ages – a parent’s last days, with the child as witness.

At one stage there is a bedside close-up of both Jon and Bronwyn. She nibbles on the nail of her little finger, watching, assessing a puzzle she can’t quite figure out.

For a moment there is a full-screen shot of Phillip Read, his eyes open. He is shirtless beyond a network of thick white tubes and bandages. You can see Bronwyn’s features – particularly around the eyes and the nose – in his face in that instant.

“Even though his liver is functioning, Phillip’s heart has finally failed him,” the narrator continues. “Twenty-four hours after this, twenty days since the first transplant, Phillip died.”

Hiss death notice appeared in The Sydney Morning Herald: “READ, Phillip Allan – August 13th, 1986, at Princess Alexandra Hospital, Brisbane, of Anitra Avenue, Kareela, formerly of Fairy Meadow. Beloved husband of Jennifer, loved father of Bronwyn, Andrew and Melissa, and dear grandfather of Chrystal.”

Sacre, now in his early 70s, went on to become a senior producer for shows like 60 Minutes.

He said he remembered the liver transplant program – one of a series of magazine-style TV features that Sacre and McWilliam made at the time – featuring Bronwyn’s father.

“I do remember Phillip Read; he was very sick at the time we filmed the documentary,” Sacre recalled.

“Phillip had a large build-up of fluid, a symptom of his liver problems. He died very quickly. I don’t remember Bronwyn.”

There would be no death notice for Bronwyn. No funeral service. She would leave behind two children but little else; some faded photographs in the albums of family and friends, and the fragment of an old TV show showing a stoic young woman facing one of life’s most difficult moments.

A warm, gentle and caring woman in the absolute prime of her life.

Do you know something about this case? Contact Hedley Thomas confidentially at [e-mail]