PATRICIA KARVELAS How childhood tragedy shaped me

Patricia Karvelas hustled hard to chase her dreams, but it wasn't easy. In a deeply personal interview, the ABC host talks about family loss, finding love, battles fought and motherhood.

- JULIET RIEDEN

Patricia Karvelas - best known to the nation as ABC's "PK" – opens her front door with the hyperactive bundle of fluff that is Bindi the cavoodle hot on her heels. "Sorry," she says holding back the family pooch whose exuberance, I soon discover, mirrors her mistress's unquenchable zest.

To an onlooker Patricia's work life over the past few years seems jam-packed: Early mornings on Radio National Breakfast, late nights hosting TV's Q+A and a punchy podcast, The Party Room, all with an imperative to keep her finger firmly on the pulse of a febrile political landscape.

Fitting in a private life may sound like a stretch, but very quickly I see that family is the necessary still point that allows her to succeed. It has always been thus.

Raised in the warmth of a Greek community in Melbourne's western suburbs, Patricia was the youngest of the Karvelas family's three daughters. "My sisters are eight and 11 years older, I think I was the mistake," she laughs.

"My parents were born in Greece, migrated here together in their 20s and then had their children in Australia. I spoke Greek at home and went to Greek school at the weekend which at the time I resented. Now my eldest daughter, Luca, chooses to go to Greek school and loves it. That says something about the way generations work. She now speaks better Greek than I do!"

Patricia's parents were economic migrants who spoke just enough broken English to buy groceries. "That was the norm then. The expectation on migrants has changed, but I'm pretty happy about it because as a result I'm bilingual," she says grinning. This is a typical PK response. She's an inveterate optimist - most clouds have a silver lining if you look hard enough.