Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery: July 29

The one and only Ita is guest tonight on Julia Zemiro’s Home Delivery.

“You wouldn’t be dead for quids. This is the best job in the world,” she says of journalism.

Ita – no surname required – has been involved in the media since the age of 16. The daughter of an ‘old-school’ journo and newspaperman, Ita takes Julia back to where she grew up in the garden wonderland of Parsley Bay in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs.

The only girl in a family of boys, Ita says that battling with her brothers stood her in great stead for mixing in with the men throughout her media career.

Ita and Julia visit the site of her original home and sit below the gum tree where she played as a child. Then they are off to her favourite spot by the bay where she reveals that her parents’ marriage was a stormy one, and ultimately her mother was very unhappy. But she says it taught her a lesson about self-reliance and to not depend on others too much.

They visit what was once Dover Heights Home Economics School for Girls, now Rose Bay Secondary College, where, as they visit her old classrooms Ita reflects on editing Cleo and the Australian’s Women’s Weekly. She reveals that she is still as passionate about journalism and broadcasting as she was as a sixteen-year-old copygirl.

Joined by Ita’s beloved dog, Cleo, they wander through Centennial Park where Ita chats about being single, public advocacy, her relationship with Kerry Packer, and her commitment to positive ageing.

9pm Wednesday on ABC.