Mike Munro reveals secret career move inspired by abusive childhood

Mike Munro has become a huge name in Australian TV and news, but his road to the top had a very difficult start – as he battled an alcoholic and abusive mother, as well as a distant, violent father.

Now, having moved on with his own family, and made the incredible decision to forgive his late mother for her violent outbursts, the 65-year-old star has embarked on an inspirational new volunteer project to help others who have gone through difficult childhoods or are experiencing mental health issues.

Speaking in an exclusive chat with Starts at 60, Mike has revealed the full extent of his troubled past, and said he’s secretly spent the last three years working as a volunteer phone counsellor for charity and crisis support service Lifeline.

“For three years I’ve been doing it very quietly. I do 92 hours a year and it’s so worthwhile. I thought at first ‘Gees, will I be able to handle someone’s life in my hands on the phone’, but by the end of the six week course I thought ‘yeah, I’ll be able to do this’,” he said.

“Everything is very private. We have to tear up all our notes after every session. I do four hours a fortnight, not much, but it also keeps me aware of the many mental health problems out there. It also makes you feel how lucky you are.”

His decision was partly inspired by his own tragic childhood. Mike spent 10 years as a child living in a monastery with his mother, who worked as a housekeeper there at the time. She had escaped his “rogue” bushranger father when he was a toddler, to bring him up alone there.

However, while Mike praised her for her “hard working” attitude and amazing sense of humour, he admitted she became a “Jekyll and Hyde” character as she fell into alcohol addiction.

Read more: Where to go for help with domestic violence and other abusive situations

“As a four or five year old, I thought ‘why is mummy coming out of the bathroom so mean all the time’,” he recalled. “I just didn’t understand – but she was a closet drinker. I never saw her take a drink for the first five years of alcoholism.

“I slowly learnt what it was, and only really realised at around nine or ten. I’d just see her go into the bathroom and think ‘there she goes she’s going to come out mean again’. Of course she did, and often very violent.”

However, while his mother would beat him during her alcohol-fuelled rages, Mike remembers her caring, selfless side too – and maintains she did the best for him that she could have.

“As tragic a figure as mum was, sober she had a great sense of humour and was well read. Mum would often give to people who were worse off to us, and she didn’t have very much,” he said. “She was a good decent woman – just a Jekyll and Hyde character unfortunately. Seeing her as that really helped me.

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“She wasn’t affectionate – because she had a lousy childhood herself – but she was hard working and well read. She gave up her own life [by moving away] to give me a better one.”

Mike ended up staying at home until he was 21 to try and get her sober, but he didn’t manage it. His mother died shortly after he and his wife Lea welcomed their first child together – missing not only her grandchildren growing up, but also her son’s entire success in the TV industry.

“She missed all my success. That was hard, all I ever wanted to do was buy mum a unit that she could call her own. But while she never had her own, she kept me stable,” he added.

Incredibly, Mike said he’s moved on now and can completely forgive his mum for her violence – insisting it was fuelled completely by alcoholism.

“I understand a lot more about alcoholism now, I just wish I could have understood it more as a kid,” he explained. “We couldn’t have left our kids with her while she was alive anyway. I feel tragically sorry for her.”

He went on: “I won’t pretend I don’t have some anger issues and baggage – I’ll always have baggage. But Lea has taught me about family.”

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Unfortunately, it wasn’t only his mother who suffered with anger issues, and while Mike didn’t live with his father as a child – he was always in contact with him, and even fell victim to his own violence on separate occasions.

“He knocked me out once,” he said of his father. “And he thought it was such a funny story to tell, he jumped out of a wife‘s bedroom once where he had me as a young boy. I said ‘that’s outrageous’, but he said ‘the husband came home, I had to get out’.

Read more: My memories of a childhood without the rose-coloured glasses

“He knocked me out. He was a very violent character himself.”

Mike stayed in touch with his dad, but admitted he remained a “rogue” until he died two years after his mum. While he lived with Mike for the final nine months of his life, they were never close.

Mike is now working on a new documentary looking at the lengthy relationship between the US and Australia, in a partnership between Foxtel’s HISTORY channel and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. The show, named MATESHIP – Australia & USA: A Century Together.

Hosting the show and exploring the past through several wars, political rows and more, Mike even reveals some of his own experiences as a young journalist in Australia during the tumultuous Vietnam War.

MATESHIP – Australia & USA: A Century Together will air on Foxtel from July 4 at 7.30pm.

Did you suffer a difficult childhood? Have you managed to move on and forgive the past now, like Mike? Would you consider a volunteer role like this?