Maggie Beer - The Secret To Happiness

She’s our favourite cook and a national treasure, but the path to her idyllic life was hard fought. In her most revealing interview, Maggie Beer tells Michael Sheather about her childhood heartache, the love of her life and how she built her dream.

- Michael Sheather

It was Mother’s Day, 1984. Eighty customers were seated in the Pheasant Farm Restaurant on Maggie Beer’s farm for an à la carte lunch. It’s a day Maggie will always remember.

“As it was Mother’s Day, we had a big crowd and my daughters, Saskia and Elli, wanted to be with me, but I had to be in the kitchen,” recalls Maggie. “They were only eight and 10, and the only way they could be with me was if they were in the restaurant, too. Saskia got in the sink [restaurant parlance for doing the dishes] and Elli went on the floor with her father, Colin, to wait tables.

“Elli has a magic memory and we have a competition in the family to see who can take orders for a table without writing it down. Sass prefers to be out the back. It was such a perfect day, the family working together like that. It was full of adrenalin and everyone moving quickly, but it was the essence of us as a family.”

Maggie Beer would appear to have a perfect life. She is one of the country’s most beloved cooks. She runs a high-profile and successful business. She is widely acclaimed for her warmth and charm, and she lives in idyllic rural beauty among the orchards and vineyards of South Australia’s Barossa Valley.

However, the truth is that Maggie’s life hasn’t always been picture-perfect. In fact, she has been through a lot of personal hardship and heartache. Her childhood dreams were shattered when her family fell into financial ruin, sweeping away her ambitions for a university education and setting her on a divergent path. She spent years pondering what her direction in life should be before finally realising she had known all along.