Hi, I'm Gus Wallin and this is Not An Overnight Success, brought to you by Shoren Partners
Financial Services.
This is a podcast where we sit down with some very successful people from the world of business,
entertainment and sport, and talk about their life's journey and what got them to the position
that they're in today.
In today's episode, we are chatting with Betty Cleminco.
Betty has climbed some mountains in her life, she's the outlier, the one who doesn't mind
being different and embraced her own quirkiness and individuality.
Betty calls herself a bogan.
She says it with reverence.
Betty was born a child of addiction and later was adopted by the couple who later went on
to start Westfield.
She is now amongst the wealthiest women in Australia and the only one to have her own
professional racing car team.
She experienced what life was like on the other side of the track with her husband Daniel,
after her father essentially kicked her out of the family for marrying someone 11 years
younger than her that wasn't Jewish.
Betty and Daniel now have been married for 32 years.
She has had a very interesting life.
Betty is generous, she is humble, and she is like no one else you'll ever meet.
As for all these podcasts, Shaun Partners have generously donated 10k to the charity
of choice of each of our guests.
We discuss who that money goes to in this chat.
The executive producer of this podcast is Keisha Pettit.
Let's get into our chat with Betty Cleminco.
We just like to add a bit of a content warning to this episode.
There are mentions of suicide throughout this next podcast.
If that brings up anything for you, please feel free to give this particular episode
a miss or you can always get help from Lifeline on 13 11 14.
During soundcheck for this interview, Betty and I started talking about where she lived
and how I'm passionate about mental fitness and our interview started without actually
Sometimes these conversations start and you just roll with it because what Betty had to
say was so genuine that we didn't want to stop and go back.
The one thing we've got in the street is no one who lives in the street has ever committed
suicide because we see it.
We see the helicopters.
I lost a friend of mine and I did this show to work out why and then since that moment
I just went, you know what, brekkie radio was hard work, three thirty alarm clock and
So I went, you know what, I'm going to do this full time now and that's why I started
I want everyone to find someone who's got you for life.
You can have that warts and all conversation without any.
So yeah, we've been going nearly five years.
My mother committed suicide and I wasn't told till I was in my thirties.
I was eleven at the time.
If I'd kind of been a bit more logical at that age, I would have worked it out, but
What did you think happened to her?
Well, I was at school and I went to Stalinghurst and no one picked me up and then I waited
and I waited, waited, waited, waited, waited, waited.
I went to the shop next door, Mr Nelson's shop and no one came and I couldn't remember
And then I remembered my father's partner's home phone number for some reason and I rang
Frank Lowy and I said, Frank, why isn't anyone picking me up?
And they went, ah, so someone picked me up.
We went to his place.
I stayed the night at his place and I thought, this is so strange.
For some reason, I didn't ask.
In the next morning, my father came and we went to my auntie's place and it must have
been rehearsed because someone said, oh, John, the phone's for you.
So he went to the fire and he said, come with me to me and I went, this is weird.
So we went into my uncle and auntie's bedroom and then he just tapped on the wood and turned
around and said, you know, Betty, your mother's passed away in hospital.
So I was told that she'd passed.
She had bowel cancer and they went everywhere.
They went to Switzerland.
They went everywhere trying to get a cure or a different look at it.
And I think it was just, she lived with it for so long and I think she just couldn't
live with it anymore.
So that's her choice.
That is her choice.
I knew at the end, I said to him, did she commit suicide and he goes, does it matter?
Does it really matter?
I said, you know what?
I'm sorry to hear that.
Oh, don't be sorry.
It's part of my history, which made me like I am.
I mean, if my mother had still been alive, I probably would have been a totally different
I'm not saying I'm glad she died.
I'm just saying that that's the way it happened and it is what it is.
What was your mum like?
My memory of her is getting faded as I get older, but she was beautiful.
She looked like Elizabeth Taylor a bit and she made her own clothes.
But back then in the 60s, a lot of women, they dressed beautifully and they wore suits
during the day and they wore pearls and she was just a beautiful woman because my brother
and I both adopted and we were both blonde haired, blue eyed.
Everyone else in the family was dark haired, dark eyed and they never told me I was adopted.
I was going to ask you that.
They never told me, but when I was 10, we were at the Loewys place again and there was
a barbecue or something and I had a fight with Peter Loewy and he goes, well, that doesn't
matter because I'm not adopted like you.
But this is how my mentality works.
I went upstairs because their pool was upstairs.
I went upstairs to the adults, turned to my father and said, am I adopted?
And he goes, yes.
That was the whole conversation.
We never talked about it again.
As far as I was concerned, he was my father, she was my mother and I was happy.
It didn't matter to me.
It just never mattered.
But I did go looking after they both passed away because I wouldn't do it before then.
And sometimes you've got to be really careful what you wish for.
Did you find your original mum and dad?
No, she passed away.
There was no name for father, but they gave me a name later on.
And I was the fourth of four girls.
So I met two of the girls.
But in my family, I'm the eldest.
You can't go from being the eldest to being the youngest because there's a mentality thing.
And I think that was the problem that the eldest daughter saw, who still saw herself
as the eldest daughter and had the same alpha tendencies as I do.
And you can't put two alphas in a situation and expect them to share the alphaness of the situation.
The two that you met, your blood sisters, did you like them?
That's a good question.
But I don't know if I had met them somewhere else that I would have been friends with them.
We were just different lives, different mentalities, different everything else.
They were very beachy, north coast.
I was Eastern suburbs girl.
And back then I was a different woman even to what I am now.
I met them when I was about 49, 48.
I'm a totally different person.
Again, I like to evolve.
Is this great book that my friend talked to me about called Second Mountain,
where you think you've sort of got to where you're meant to do in your life.
And all of a sudden you get there, you go, oh, there's another peak over there.
And it's up to you whether or not you want to have another crack.
Is that who you are?
Is that how you see it?
No, I'm about up to my fifth mountain.
Which is really funny because I always say, you know, you've got to climb your own mountain.
And we were living in a different house and the phone rang.
And I picked up the phone.
And it was all staticky, like, there's this little voice at the end going, hello, hello.
Hello, hello, is Ben there?
I said, there's no Ben here.
I can't hear you.
He goes, why isn't Ben there?
I said, I don't even know who the fuck Ben is.
Tell me, where are you?
And he goes, I'm at the top of Mount Everest.
And he was my one satellite dish answer.
Like, that was the one person that he was going to ring.
He rang the wrong number?
No, he rang the right number.
But we just moved into that house and we got that number.
So he said, well, who are you?
And I said, my name is Betty.
And he goes, well, Betty, you are now my chosen person to ring from the top of Mount
Everest on a satellite phone.
He said, I've got 30 seconds left.
I said, well, what's it like?
He said, oh, my God, this is the most amazing thing.
I can't breathe, but it's great.
I'm like, OK, Ben, I'm so proud of you, Ben.
We're having this intensely personal conversation with someone I will never met.
I don't know who he is.
I don't know his last name.
But it was really intense and personal.
That's incredible.
And I put the phone down, I said, you are not going to believe this.
Can you talk us through your five mountains, if there's sort of an easy way to do that?
Well, growing up as the daughter of someone who became as big as my father
and started Westfield, that was one mountain.
I always knew that I wasn't the same as everyone else.
I was the one who would say, I got a great idea when I was little.
And then it involved going into the house that was being built next door
and using the bricks to build something and always fell down and someone got hurt
or setting fire to the side of the house or trying a cigar or, you know,
that was I was always that child.
So then I got into the end of school, like high school and everything else.
And I climbed my mountain there where I was able to finish school
without burning the school down.
That was a big mountain for me.
Those tough times at school.
Yeah. And then my father said I had to go to Ms. Hales Secretarial College.
So I didn't want to, I wanted to be a nurse.
You know, I could see myself being, you know, really saving these handsome men
and doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things.
So I went to Ms. Hales Secretarial College, where I got kicked out of every class for typing.
So I always go there and type all day.
Then I went from there.
I spent about three months in Israel and then came back.
I got engaged to a soldier.
I just thought it was very romantic.
And my father said, I'll buy you a new car.
So being the shallow person that I was, I was only 19 or something.
What was his name? His name was Noah.
Poor Noah. Yeah, poor Noah.
I wonder if he ever found love.
I think so. Later on, someone said that they'd heard about him or from him.
Then I went and opened a shop in Parramatta.
It was called a gift affair.
I worked very hard there.
That was a mountain. I did the shop by myself and everything else.
Then I got married to my first husband, and he was 10 years older than me.
I always say that because he was born in 1949.
I was born in 1959.
My now husband was born in 1969.
And my ex-husband's wife was born in 1979.
So our family goes up and down with the ages.
And my father was 25 years older than his second wife, who is the mother of my sister.
So my children are closer in age to my sister than she is to me.
So is that all the mountains or another one to go?
Then I went into motorsport and I did my GT mountain where we won Bathurst and we won the championship.
And I thought, that's it. We'll just keep on going there.
And then for some stupid reason, I said, hmm, what about the eights?
And we joined the eights, which was going from a gentlemanly race six times a year
to a not so gentlemanly race at that time 16 times a year.
So you were always flying. You were always on a plane.
You were always in a hotel. You were always...
I swear, I got lines on my face in a year that I probably would have only gotten 10 years.
But it was good. I met a lot of people.
And now I've got to that stage where I just want to calm down a little bit.
We have a new Shannon, who's such a... she's another angel.
And she's a GM. And I want to pass that.
She's extremely good looking lady, mind you. Very tall, blonde, very good looking.
So she becomes the face of Erebus now. I just sit back and be the grandmother.
That's my thing in life. I want to get to a point where I'm sitting on my Australia on a porch,
in a rocking chair, with the moonshine by my leg and a rifle across my lap.
That's it. I've even gone... I had all this jewellery, which I never wear.
And I sent it to my jewellery and I said, make me an Australian flag in diamonds.
Has that happened yet?
I haven't got it yet, but they're finding it a bit hard to actually, you know,
smallish ring to, even though it's a big ring, to make an Australian flag.
But they'll get there.
Talking about racing, because it's such a male-dominated thing, isn't it?
You must have heard this question a thousand times.
But how were you invited in? The fact that you're successful and a fresh face in it,
did that mean anything?
At that point in time, they wanted new manufacturers.
And we were already working with Mercedes, well, AMG, and we ended up going with AMG.
That's another long story. But I put a lot of money into the R&D.
And the car was brilliant. But then they changed their mind.
It's like going into Gen 3 and everyone changes their cars.
But then they decide to change it and got to dumb it all down.
So I spent two or three years dumbing my engine down just to race equally with everyone else.
And it was costing a lot of money every year to dumb down these engines.
So that's why we changed to Holden. And it was much, much cheaper.
And, you know, people tell me it's a male-dominated industry.
No, there just happens to be a lot of men in it. It's not dominated.
There are a lot of women in that sport. You just don't see them.
You know, they're the media girls. And I'm not talking about grid girls.
I'm talking about actual media. And they take care of everything behind the scenes,
especially in supercars, the actual organisation of supercars.
There's a lot of women who work in there.
And I think we actually get angry when people say,
oh, we want to do this thing on women in motorsport.
Well, no, there's just people in motorsport.
Because it's not an industry where you can go in there.
And I've said this a thousand times, but you can't go in there and say,
I'm a good mechanic and I can do the cars and I can change the times.
If you can't do it, you're going to be out the door in 10 seconds.
You've got to be able to do what you say you can do.
Under pressure? Under pressure, under everything else.
So you can't fake it till you make it there.
You just have to go in and do your job.
And everyone romanticises it and makes it so, I want to work in motorsport.
No, you don't, unless you're a bit of a sadist,
because you never see anything because you arrive at the tracks and it's dark.
You spend the whole day at track working your brains out.
And you go home in the dark at 11 or 12 at night.
You sleep in the hotel, you have a shower, you go to sleep, you wake up.
You go back to the track and you eat breakfast, lunch and dinner at the track.
Everything is about the track.
Then on Sunday night, when you cannot keep your eyes open,
you get on a plane home and you get home really late.
And then you've got to get up the next morning,
especially with me at that time, I had to get up and work in normal work.
So it's a hard industry to be in.
And you're not judged by whether you're a man or woman.
It's about how you handle the stress and how you handle everything else.
And there is a club, but everyone's in that one club.
It's not a man's club. It's not a woman's club.
When you see them working 24 hours on a car that's hit the wall
and then do a whole day of work again, there's this pride that comes up.
And there's this pride that goes, I love these guys.
And I've had a very big long conversation with my biological children
that when I say I have a motorsport family, it's on the other side.
There's two families.
There's my family family and my motorsport family.
Is that why you love it so much? It's that connection?
Yeah, but the funny thing is my favourite part is when the car is in the garage
and you can watch them fiddling with the car, trying to make it better,
everything else. Once it goes out of the garage, it's not up to us anymore.
It's up to the driver. You know, you can't help it.
If the driver ends up in the wall, it ends up in the wall.
Actually, it's a really good job to have to get used to rejection
because there's only going to be, out of the 25 cars, one winner.
Who cares who came second or third? One winner.
And so every time you go racing and you have three races,
normally three races a weekend,
there's only three times you can be a winner and that's it.
You have to learn to be rejected or to be not to come in first.
And it's very hard to win a race in supercars
because you have the top three teams or the top, you know,
whichever teams are at that time, and to get past those is very hard.
And if you do, it's a big celebration.
And, you know, you might only get two podiums in a year,
but that keeps you up the top of the grid, which gives you a better garage.
So it's the fight I like. I like the fight.
I like to be, I actually like to be the underdog.
I like people to underestimate me.
And I like to go out there and just and win.
You know, I'm not ashamed to say, you know, I'm there to win.
That's what I'm there for.
Of course, when you won Bathurst, my brother is like he, you know,
every race, all the races through Europe, motorbikes, Formula One, V8s, everything.
And I said, I was talking to you, she goes, oh, can I come along?
I said, no, you can't.
But he said, can you just tell her I love her,
that she puts her money where her mouth is and she's fair dinkum.
Would that be a way that you would nod and say, yeah, it's like I said,
I was on a TV program and I said, yeah, I'm the wealthiest bogan in Australia.
I mean, I am at heart, I am a bogan.
I and I say it with reverence.
I was in heaven, you know, when, you know, a woman says, oh, we were in Los Angeles
and we're in Rodeo Drive and I walk past Chanel and I walk past this and I walk past that.
That moment for me was in Florida, in Daytona.
And we stayed in an RV and I walked in there and we rented an RV.
And it was just, just as you come out the tunnel into the centre part of Daytona
and you could see all the cars coming.
So I never stayed in an RV before.
So I was excited and I was in heaven.
I literally was crying tears of joy, tears of joy.
And Daniel brought with him like a hard drive or something.
And it had for some reason it had the GT Bathurst race when we won Bathurst.
So we put that on the outside television and just left it going.
We didn't have the Bathurst win from the VA, but for some reason we had the...
And people were just stopping and watching and said, where is that?
Oh, is that Bathurst?
I'm thinking, how do these bloody rednecks know what Bathurst is?
Like it was pure redneck.
And every morning I would get up and I'd park myself outside the RV,
put my feet up on the cooler and I'd watch the world go by.
Because across from us were these guys that were celebrating.
It was a bachelor weekend.
And every morning they'd get up and they had this baseball bat,
the top of it's unscrewed, and they would drink beer.
Then they would put the pipe down there.
They would just drink copious amounts of beer, put the baseball bat down,
put their forehead on the baseball bat, run around circles and then have to do something.
I can't even remember.
I was already on the floor laughing by then.
And this happened every morning that we were there.
And then we'd been invited there by Roger Penske.
And so they would send a little car, a little like a golf buggy,
and would pick us up and take us there.
And I'd have to, we always waited for lunch when Roger was there,
because when he wasn't there, they tried to feed you gourmet.
But when they knew Roger was coming, they'd put out hot dogs and hamburgers
and chicken nuggets.
But for me, that was, that was Nirvana.
I mean, that was the best three days of my life.
And I didn't even feel guilty because my son lives in Florida and he lives in Orlando.
But they had just happened to have booked a cruise for that weekend.
So you didn't have to go and see them.
Yeah, I was like, oh, that's such a shame.
You got to do exactly what you wanted to do.
And the fact that Daytona and I are the same age, we were born in the same year.
So I've nearly done everything that I want.
There's only one more place I want to go.
And what place is that?
That's where I want to go.
Look, give me eating out the back of a truck, a bit of flannel, a bit of beer,
a lot of cars, a lot of grease and, you know, just give me all that.
And I am in heaven because these people have this tendency to like people
for who they are, as in the type of person they are.
It doesn't matter.
We got asked to have dinner with two people down there.
So you want to come and have a they eat out of their boot and they call it something.
It's just my husband would know.
And they invite you to come and eat out and they cook barbecue.
And it's all sitting in there in the back of their huge or in their boot.
And you eat out of there.
And I said, OK, we're in Rome.
So we went. Nice people.
They were getting drunk. They made their own moonshine.
And we were drinking cocktails with the moonshine.
So we were getting we were pretty peaceful.
It was really nice.
And this goes on for about an hour before the food's ready.
And then they made the barbecue and they put it in the boots.
And we were all enjoying it.
And he goes, just before we eat.
And I said, yes, this is do you mind if we say a prayer?
I'd had like five moonshine drinks.
So I was pretty happy saying a prayer.
I said, sure, go ahead.
They were Jehovah witnesses.
And we did the whole Jehovah thing.
And I'm like, this is just a mind warp.
But they were such nice people that made moonshine
with Jehovah's witnesses eating out the back of the boot of the trunk.
And I just went, this is life.
Better than any dining I've ever had.
Like minded people.
There's just something so liberating, freeing about being among a group of people
who don't give a crap who you do, how much you have.
If you're enough to buy a bit of alcohol and a bit of, you know,
melted cheese sticks, then you're fine.
And the eighth, I went to the most poshest restaurant ever
with a few of my mates on our fiftieth.
It was called the something.
The French Laundry was called.
And a mate of ours said, oh, mate, this is going to cost us $1500 US.
Anyway, the chef came out and he was explaining this meal.
It was small little bites and stuff.
And I said to him, I don't want to be rude or anything,
but I just like some cheese on toast and maybe some donuts or something.
And it was a bit of a joke.
And everyone laughed.
Well, this chef came out with cheese on toast and donuts.
And he goes, if that's what you want,
I just want you to be happy eating the meal.
I still think I got charged, whatever they got charged.
But that's what we have.
And that was just nice that he stepped up to the plate for that.
That's very cool.
You must have heaps of moments in your life where people know you
and they try to impress you.
They try to make you a part of something, to get you to love something
so you can get so they can get your support.
Yeah. How do you how do you make sure that you just support the people
that you want to support and not get caught up with the in the beginning?
I tried to support everyone and nearly drove myself insane.
But then I realised that there are layers and there are people who don't really
they're just doing it because it's a thing to do at the time.
And, you know, you meet someone once, especially on track,
you'll meet someone once you say, hi, how are you?
You have your photo taken.
And then the next time you get there, they're also your best friend.
This they want to sit at the back with you.
And I'm like, well, who are you?
And then I don't you remember you, maybe.
And I'm like, that was 365 days ago.
But I have worked it out.
I have worked it out.
I've met a lot, a lot of people like I meet thousands of people every year.
And if a woman comes, do you remember me?
I don't want to be rude.
So I go, yeah, but your hair is changed.
I mean, what woman doesn't change her hair in 12 months?
And then the children should you remember my kids?
And I got, oh, my God, this is like 100 percent logic.
My God, you've grown.
What am I going to say?
No, I do remember in some form back in the back of my mind.
If I think long enough, I will remember them because they were the kid that
or she was the woman that I don't remember the name,
but I do remember the person.
And I've always loved the fans.
The fans are a big were a big part in.
Motorsport life changed for me when Covid came in,
because my job was literally to go there and to besides being there
for the team, I was there for the fans.
And I would I would do my Betty thing where I jump out on the track
with when they got doing a track walk and I would go out there
and do a little dance.
And I like to see people smile.
And that was my way of doing it.
And Covid came in and there was no one there anymore.
And it wasn't the same for me.
And I mean, I love the racing.
It's the most important thing.
But what made the racing for me was the fans.
And to get have no fans.
It just took us that shine off the top for me.
And I just felt like a fifth wheel because I don't work on the cars.
Everything is already set up weeks beforehand.
There's nothing much you do once you get to that garage.
And I was sitting there like a fifth wheel and I felt bad.
I felt like, you know, what are we going to do now?
I'll go out the back, get the front, go out the back.
And normally you'd be out there with the punters.
Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Hearing the noise and the stories and how they got involved in motorsport.
And one of the best ones I ever heard was this woman.
And she said, I just want to thank you.
And I said, oh, what for?
She goes, I was listening to you.
You were speaking on my father loves the V8s
and you were speaking on the on the show one day.
And my father passed away.
And I've come here alone.
And I bought myself a ticket in the grandstand and I've never done that.
And I'm here alone.
And I was just gobsmacked.
And she said, it took a big thing for me to come here alone, sit in stands,
grandstands alone.
And there was a couple walking past about the same age.
And they heard it and they they turned around.
They said, well, you're not alone now, love.
And they put their arm around, come on, let's go and get some lunch.
And I saw her at the end of the day.
And she said, I've been with these people all day.
And then we had more people and then more people.
I have new friends.
And I went, that's V8.
That is what V8 does.
I call it V8 supercar.
But that's what it can do for you.
You can go in there alone and come out with a hundred new friends.
And it's not because you were drunk in a pub or anything else.
It was because you all loved motorsport.
You love the noise and the and the people and the atmosphere and everything else.
And you have something to talk about.
I love my sport, but at the moment, it is just it's friendless, as in fanless.
Yeah, we'll get better, though.
Just quickly interrupting the episode to say a very big thank you to the sponsor
of this podcast, and that is Shure and Partners Financial Services.
Shure and Partners are an Australian investment and wealth management firm
who manage over $28 billion of assets under advice.
With seven offices across Australia,
Shure and Partners act for and on behalf of individuals, institutions,
corporates and charities.
For more info, you can check out their website at shureandpartners.com.au
That's S-H-A-W for sure.
Shure and Partners Financial Services, your partners in building and preserving wealth.
And let's get back into the episode.
How did the name Erebus come about?
I used to watch very late, like two weeks later, F1.
Was this on in the middle of the night?
Well, no, because it didn't come.
It was recorded and then brought to Australia.
And then we watched it.
We bought a car and it was a Porsche.
And it ended up being like two months late.
And they said, look, we can't give you any money off,
but we can give you a course at Mount Cotton.
So Daniel and I went to Mount Cotton.
Did this. I'm doing this very short.
And we started talking to a guy called Peter Hackett.
And we started sponsoring him because I was I really enjoyed what I did that day.
And so we started sponsoring him.
And then we went from sponsoring him to sponsoring the team, to buying a car,
to becoming the owners of a team and me not knowing Australian slang,
because I grew up in the eastern suburbs, called her team Cactus.
And the commentator would always say, well, I hope they're not cactus.
And I went, well, we are cactus.
And then someone felt sorry for me and told me what it meant.
And then we went from being cactus to being smoking angel.
And then smoking angel didn't really work for V8.
So I went to all GTs.
And then so I went to being Erebus.
And that means Erebus was the god of darkness.
Betty, can we circle back and ask about your adoption?
How did that happen?
Like when I was adopted, my father walked in.
There was a room of children and they could go along the rows and just pick a child.
I think there was like 30 kids in the room when I was adopted.
So there's 29 very sad kids out there.
What a beautiful moment for you, though, to be picked and now to have this life.
Well, I was I was born in a child of addiction.
And back then, they didn't understand it.
And apparently he liked me because I was laughing that I was giggling.
And I wasn't giggling.
I was apparently going through a withdrawal.
That's why my fingers are stunted because of the drugs that she was on.
I didn't notice. Now you're showing me, right?
Tiny little fingers from knee to ankle.
I'm stunted from elbow to arm.
I actually have the body of a six foot woman, but my extremities are shortened.
Like most people from there to there, nearly the same length as from there to there.
I'm big from there to there, but very short.
My knee is very far down.
Has that ever bothered you?
Sometimes when my husband says you got sausage fingers.
And I say, give me tomato sauce.
You know, you got to laugh at life and what it gives you.
It gives you with one hand, it takes away from the other.
And if you can find that balance, that's then you're on the right path.
Yeah. You know, is that what you teach your own kids?
What sort of mum are you? Oh, I'm a shocking mum.
Oh, no. Look, I'm not a shocking mother, but I wouldn't.
I was the mother that took them to the sci fi conferences.
And we made some really good friends through the sci fi conferences,
because I love sci fi.
Yeah, that's your love.
And we went on this set of Stargate.
And I have one son who's a Stargator, one son who's a Startrekker
and one son who is a Starwarer.
I think Stargate, very underrated, just quietly.
We met Richard Dean Anderson.
So me being my age, couldn't give a crap about Stargate.
All I've got going through my head is MacGyver, MacGyver, MacGyver, MacGyver.
And he said, oh, who are those people?
And they said, oh, they're the Aussies, you know,
because we were standing in the set watching them do the scene.
And he said, oh, the Aussies, OK.
And he just and then someone looked at me and said,
he usually tells them everyone to get out, but he didn't.
I said, yes, because we're Aussies.
Yeah, Aussies are cool.
Yeah. And then 10 minutes later, he comes in with all this watermelon.
I don't know why watermelon, but he came in with this.
Yeah, it's hot. Have some watermelon.
And I'm just like the first time in my life, mind you.
And my heart's going, I love you.
I want to tell you, I love you.
It's only happened twice in my life.
And the other one, this is a really sad story, not sad story,
but for me, no, no, no, just it makes me look very pathetic.
Last year, my sister, who's the chairman was chairwoman of
she does the function for the Children's Hospital, the gold dinner.
So she was putting on the gold dinner.
So, you know, I really don't want to go this thing.
But I went and I always think free champagne.
It's actually the world's most expensive champagne I'm assuming.
Look, champagne tastes like champagne to me,
except maybe there are a few that don't.
So anyway, we go to this function.
And I'm standing there and I looked at it just through the peripheral of my eye.
And my heart's just, I'm like, Daniel, Daniel,
look at that other table, look at the other table.
And he goes, oh, knowing that I'm going to do something really embarrassing.
I said, Daniel, I'm fangirling.
I'm either going through menopause again or I'm really fangirling.
And my sister was at the next table and it was really loud.
So I woke up to my sister. I said, Monica, I'm fangirling.
And she goes, don't talk to her.
I said, who's her?
Don't talk to her, because, I mean, my sister had all this stuff going on.
I said, who would I talk to?
And then I thought she said Delta.
I said, why would I want to talk to Delta?
I'm not fangirling over Delta.
And then we just couldn't hear each other.
So I thought, so Carl Stefanovic was talking to someone.
And I saw what passed. He said, hi, babe.
I said, hi. So I started talking.
You know, you just start talking between the three of us.
Then Carl went away. So I was left with this other person.
And I'm talking to the other person.
I mean, I came up to his belly button and it was Chris Hemsworth.
Oh, well, I'm talking to him.
And I said, listen, is it rude if I go up to someone and tell them I'm fangirling?
So I'm having this whole conversation with Chris Hemsworth.
So Chris Hemsworth wasn't the one who was right.
No. But here's someone I can ask if it's rude to go up to someone and say,
I'm fangirling over you.
And he said, well, who is it? I said, it's Hamish Blake.
Hamish, wouldn't mind.
He said, no, do you want me to introduce?
I said, no, don't introduce me.
I will go over there and introduce myself.
So I was sweating.
So I walked over and said, hi.
I never in my life have I been done this.
Usually I go in there like a, you know, a bull in a china shop.
And I just stick my hand in someone's hand and shake away.
And that's it. My heart was in my mouth.
And, you know, I'm just a Lego tragic, as you can see over in that corner.
But I introduced myself and he goes, he has coffee up here.
And I sometimes see him when he has coffee up up here.
I said, I'm fangirling.
And I was like, really, I was playing with my fingers.
Finally got talking to him and his wife.
And, you know, the whole fangirl thing went, you know, only lasted all of 20 minutes.
Yeah. But it was something that I hadn't felt for years.
And then I was telling somebody and they couldn't say.
So you were talking to Chris Hemsworth about fangirling over Hamish Blake.
And I'm like, yes.
Was there someone who didn't believe in you that you wanted to prove them wrong
in the stuff that you've done? My father.
That's it. My father.
My father was an old Hungarian.
And old Hungarians were, well, he went through the concentration camp.
And, you know, women belonged in the kitchen.
And I'd be in a board meeting with him.
I mean, he hired me and he wanted me to learn about the business.
But it would be like in front of everyone.
I used to weigh 130 kilos.
So I actually think I'm really skinny now, but 130 kilos.
And he'd say, I'd be walking out of the room because your bottom looks fat in there.
And then, you know, it was he didn't understand the mental torture
that he put me through, but it was actually quite good.
Because if I can survive, I call them the Hungarian mafia.
I could survive anyone.
And that made me very tough, very tough.
So, yeah, my dad.
How does a normal day look for you?
Usually involves a lot of dogs.
I have two British bulldogs and a French bulldog
that one of the British bulldogs is disabled.
He's much smaller and he's got a twisted spine and he has hip displacement.
He's got heart problems, lung problems, liver problems.
He's died three times.
What's his name? His name is Bowie, as in David Bowie.
That's because his front two legs bow.
OK. And then I got a French bulldog called Buddy.
And he is the security guard of the house.
And then the other English bulldog is called Buster.
And Buster is Buster.
And he is the typical English bulldog.
And he just wants cuddles and kisses and love and tension.
Where the little one will jump off the couch and say, look at me, I can twist my spine.
He does. He jumps.
He twists in the air, lands on his back and looks at me like, I'm not dead.
I get it. I'm a dog man myself.
Your first tattoo, because you say you have lots.
What was your first? My first tattoo.
And why do you love tats so much?
My first tattoo was I've got it here.
It's my husband initials.
We won't put our names, but it's really cool because mine's a B and he's a D.
And it's a ribbon.
And it's got the B at the top and the D.
And I said, well, if I ever divorce you, I just put an A in the middle.
But we were married in Vegas.
He was 19 and I was 30.
So, you know, age is just and I hate when people say age is just a number.
No, you are what you are.
And you reckon he's a keeper?
Well, two days ago, we had our 32nd wedding anniversary.
Not bad for a second marriage.
Do you do your own groceries?
Sonia does most of them. I make a list.
Let's talk about Sonia just quickly, because Sonia has been with you for 25 years.
She's my brother and trust her more than anything.
More than anything.
She keeps my world together.
I refuse to have do anything on my phone because I hate phones.
So my diary is on a blackboard in the kitchen.
Old school. And on a calendar, you know, the ones you get from the chemist.
Yeah, it's written on that as well.
OK. And she sends me a message on my phone.
You have da da da da da in an hour, half an hour, 15 minutes if she's not here.
Where did you guys meet?
Oh, she was the nanny.
She was my children's nanny.
And then when we didn't need a nanny anymore,
she kind of just flipped over to looking after me.
The kids love her as well. Oh, yeah, she's Sonia.
She's just the best.
Yeah, she's I don't I could never think of her as not being part of my family.
You know, she's made a lot of tough times easier.
Everyone needs a Sonia.
Everybody needs a Sonia.
What's the personality trait of your own that you don't like?
I tend to give people a lot of leeway and then regret it.
And then I go, why did I do that again?
Again, again, again.
OK, and what's the trait that you just love about yourself?
You went, God, I'm glad I can put up with my husband.
Thirty two years last week.
Well, we worked it out.
There's no one else that can put up with either of us.
We were together 24 hours a day, seven days a week, especially during motorsport,
because he was a music producer and they had his own company and everything else.
And they were in Darlinghurst and they were doing amazingly.
And he said, OK, I'll give you two years.
And that was eight years ago.
OK. When you first met him, you said he was 19.
Yes, he was. Was it love at first sight sort of thing?
Or you just went, actually, this guy's really cool.
There was nothing. It was.
Yes, we've been married for five lifetimes.
And this is the person I need to be with.
And my father threw me out of the family.
I ended up with nothing.
Living in Matriville, he made $19,000 a year gross.
And that's what we lived on.
And I have never loved a time more than I've loved that time.
It's great to have money again.
But it was also good to live without money because it changed my whole mentality.
I went from being a princess where the fairies picked up the clothes
and the fairies did this and the fairies did that, to understanding
what actually a fairy is and having to be my own fairy.
And he worked for the Australian Defence Force down at Garden Island.
So I had to get up at four third, make him his sandwiches, his lunch.
This is something I've never done in my life.
We got to a point sometimes where we would go to the supermarket
and wait for that trolley to come out.
There were the meats just on that date so that my kids could have sausages.
We didn't eat the sausages, but we gave them to the kids.
So we had no money.
My father still paid for the education of the children.
But it was something that if I hadn't done it, I wouldn't be who I am today.
I wouldn't understand my fans.
I wouldn't understand where they come from, how hard their lives are.
How much they had to save up to get it by a ticket.
And that's what people forget.
These people, when I first started, it was like three hundred dollars for a weekend.
That's a lot. And then they buy the gear, the merchandise.
You could be a thousand dollars for a weekend.
It's like, oh, my God, that is just so much money for someone.
And it gave me a very good respect and a very healthy way to look at people.
And I was able to look at these mothers that come in and the kids might be dirty
or their shoes a bit scruffy or they've got a hole in their shoe.
And instead of looking down my nose at them, I just kind of went, hey, come here.
And I take them in the garage.
So they're already going through the roof with excitement.
And I'd get some race tape and I'd put the race tape around their shoes.
So there's the would stop flapping.
But that's the way I just now I respected these people because I know the shoes
flapping because they just can't afford a new pair of shoes for them.
Yeah. So can you tell us why you were thrown out of the family
for that period of time? Because I married someone who was
10 years younger than me, which was really stupid because his ex-wife
was 25 years younger than him.
But that was a man and a woman, not a woman and the younger man.
He wasn't Jewish.
He was from the wrong side.
The tracks is from Metroville or Little Bay.
Yeah, from Little Bay.
And it was just all wrong.
And it was wrong. If you looked at the stats, you'd go,
there's no way this is going to survive.
This won't survive.
And for years, my father's friends were all like, no,
watch it, they'll get divorced next year.
They'll get divorced next year.
And 32 years later, we're still together.
And you knew. Oh, I knew.
I just knew. And which was really weird, because to look at him,
I would never have thought so.
But it wasn't about looking at him.
It was looking in him that got me.
Yeah. And, you know, I'm not a small woman either.
And he is a 19 year old marrying a woman with two children
who gets kicked out of the family and everything else.
Oh, no. First, my father sent me to America.
For a year, trying to sort you out.
Yeah, with my children, they went to school there and everything else.
And then one day, Daniel, Daniel was not mentoring me, like, as if you would know.
And Daniel Ramey said, what are you doing?
I said, I'm just taking the kids to school.
He says, do you want to go for a drive?
I said, why would I want to go for a drive?
He says, otherwise, I got to sit in this bloody airport all day.
I said, what airport? He goes to Los Angeles.
And I said to the nanny, look, I'm going to go away for the weekend.
So we went away and we went to Vegas and got married in Vegas.
Went to Reno for our honeymoon, which saved my soul,
my soul, because my father sent a rabbi later on to ask me if I'd got married in Reno
because I'd used a credit card in Reno and said, did you get married in Reno?
And I just kind of went, no, no, I swear on everything holy,
I did not get married in Reno.
I got married in Vegas.
No, it was the little white little candle.
Yeah, whatever it was, I can't remember.
It was the I laughed going down there.
I mean, we hadn't had anything to drink because he was underage.
So it was the Reverend, the Reverend's wife, who thank like she was very big woman
and she was sitting at an organ going, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk.
And I had plastic flowers in my hand.
It was the funniest thing.
And it was just the Reverend and Daniel and me and plastic flowers.
And I thought, this is how it's meant to be.
We got married and then we had to go and stay in the hotel
and order room service just to get the alcohol because he couldn't go out
because he was two years under 21.
So add on about six months.
And when we came back to Australia and then I got kicked out of the family,
we got married again for everyone else that was here.
So we actually had another wedding.
And then my father took us back and Daniel converted.
And then we had another wedding at the synagogue.
So we got married three times.
And why did Dad, was Dad just needed to see it after a period of time?
He just went, look.
No, his cousin from Israel said, are you nuts?
To my father, he said, he treats her like a queen.
He's not an alcoholic.
What more do you want? She's in love.
He loves her. You can see it.
And then after Daniel converted, it was like, OK, it's just the age thing now.
We actually believe in the force and not the force be with you force.
We just believe that there's something higher than us.
Yeah. And I don't need a middle man to get there.
I think you're doing enough good down here to get a seat on that plane.
Oh, I don't know. Some days I make myself laugh.
Well, the thing is, you're doing a lot of stupid.
You're doing a lot of good stuff. So I try.
It's lovely to talk to you.
We need to finish off with our final five questions, which are sort of quick
fire, quick fiery type questions.
Your favourite holiday destination?
Anywhere where there's snow.
Actually, I like The Art of War.
I have read it many times.
He who has health has hope and he who has hope has everything.
Is that your own?
No, no, no. I found my father love quotes and I found that for him.
I don't know where.
And he took that on as his own.
That's beautiful. Favourite movie?
The first one, the original.
And as part of this podcast, we're giving ten thousand dollars
to a charity of each guest choice.
So who would you like to give the ten thousand to?
And what do you think that they will do with that with that money?
Food bank. Food bank.
Beautiful. Because that does go to food
and they use all the money to to feed the homeless.
Yeah. And in Australia, unfortunately,
we don't think about our own homeless or our own problems.
The family under the bridge first.
I suggest any family that's stuck under the bridge, go overseas
and you'll get the money, unfortunately.
And I know it sounds terrible, but that's the way my charity begins at home.
Yeah. And my home's Australia.
So it shouldn't be about what state you live in or a border
that doesn't exist.
It should be about being an Australian
and allowing Australians to help other Australians.
Beautiful. A lot of meals will go for ten thousand dollars.
So we'll make sure that money goes to them.
And Betty, thank you so much for, A, letting us in your home,
but B, just being so candid and honest.
And it's been a lovely chat.
So thanks for your time. Anytime.
That was Betty Klaminko.
What an interesting and multifaceted woman.
I really liked her. I love the fact we were sitting in a home.
She was having a ciggy.
She was just chilling back, having a good time, just telling,
you know, really authentic stories and what a life that she had.
So what I really learned from her is being authentic
and sticking up for what you believe is right
will eventually get you the success that you need.
So just loved her.
Coming up in the next episode of Not an Overnight Success is Peter Costello.
Peter was the longest standing treasurer of Australia.
For a long time, there have been rumors about whether he had a deal
to become the prime minister after John Howard.
But things took a bit of an unexpected direction.
Peter answers a lot of that in this chat.
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A big thank you to Shaw and Partners Financial Services,
who have generously supported this podcast and also donated
$10,000 to the charity of choice of each of our guests
to thank them for their time.
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who manage over $28 billion of assets under advice.
With seven offices around Australia, Shaw and Partners act for
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