It’s almost immediately clear when you meet Bernadine Oliver-Kerby that poker is not the game for her. It’s not that she isn’t competitive – as a long-time sports lover her motto is, “You don’t take part just to take part; if I’m on your team, I’m going to want to win.”
It’s just that she absolutely does not have a poker face – if she feels it, she shows it. During our Australian Women’s Weekly chat, myriad emotions are displayed across that extremely recognisable face. There is a lot of joy in the life of Bernadine: she has a healthy, loving family and a thriving career that is almost threatening to bubble over on any given day. But she has also known a tremendous amount of loss in her 47 years. As a result, she is almost evangelical about squeezing the life out of every single day – she knows, all too well, that time is limited, and that things can change in a second.
On the day we meet, Bernadine has been up since 4am – as she has been every weekday for the past 15 years. She has a love/hate relationship with her working hours: she loves her jobs (yes, there’s more than one of them), but she has never grown used to her alarm going off at, as she calls it, “silly o’clock”. Over the years she has worked across TVNZ and Newstalk ZB, and since the beginning of 2018 has been breakfast host for radio station Coast, alongside Jason Reeves. It is a job that brings a raft of opportunities, including a recent interview with Dame Julie Andrews, which was, she says, “Take my breath away, best day ever. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be interviewing Mary [she mouths an expletive] Poppins. I was a bit misty-eyed in the studio. Jason did have to stop me from wearing my Mary Poppins T-shirt and bringing the umbrella – I own the umbrella with the parrot handle. I had to pull back.”
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