12/07/2026
Remembering Derryn Hinch & the Journey We Shared
While I am a trained journalist, photography and being behind the lens has always been my preferred position. This collection of images will be more powerful than any words I will write, however, I am going to pen some memories while they are fresh. Much has been written by media about my relationship with Derryn which is factually incorrect and I am sorry - strangers don't get to re-write our history!
Derryn Hinch and I met when I was working for the Seven Network’s Sunday Night program in 2013. I was a researcher and producer in Sydney and he a guest reporter based in Melbourne. My prior occupation as a criminal investigator with the NSW Police made me a perfect fit for crime stories and it was carrying out surveillance on the Dishonourable Soldier story in Melbourne that brought us together.
It was a wild five years that we went on to share as a couple and a thirteen-year long friendship with an unbreakable bond – I can say that because we certainly tested its strength on plenty of occasions. We always came back to each other with love, forgiveness and understanding.
We were together in Sydney when he wrote and posted his blog about Jill Meagher’s Killer. Derryn promised to never speak his name and so I won’t either. That was the blog that saw him jailed for fifty-five days and it's illustrated in this collection in the photo of my thighs on a bed with him at his laptop while also looking at his phone. He was literally fact checking his story against a newspaper article already online.
As a criminal investigator, the charges against Derryn, followed by the conviction and sentence never made sense to me. He posted a blog at 10am. The suppression order he was said to breach did not exist and was not enforceable until 2pm later that day. You can’t breach something that doesn't exist! A technicality that seemed to get lost on the court. How on earth did it go so far?!
On the day Derryn’s arrest came down, I was with him at his apartment. He was being interviewed for a story at the time, there is a photo of that too. We were given a moment’s privacy before he was led out of his apartment by police. We snuck into his spare room for a hug and a quick photo to mark the occasion. Photo credit to Annette Philpott who was with us as this unfolded.
At the time few people knew we were an item because we met only months after his marriage to Chanel ended. Timing was awful and we didn’t want anyone to think their end had anything to do with our beginning. It didn’t.
It was an interesting time in my life. Having been a Detective Sergeant of Police, on the right side of the law and suddenly my now boyfriend was being carted off to jail. It didn't sit well with me and everytime I had to empty my pockets and get searched to see him made me shudder.
I was his staple visitor while he was doing maximum security in Melbourne jail, while Corrections tried to figure out where they could place him to keep him safe. It took them two weeks. I was there every weekend during visiting hours both Saturday and Sunday while he was in Langi Kal Kal prison, making the drive from Sydney each weekend until his release.
Derryn celebrated his 70th birthday on 9th Feb while in prison. Gifts weren't permitted so I put on a dress and a Happy Birthday sash and he had to contend with having me gift wrapped until I could treat him to something more memorable. He was released on my birthday 7th March and we celebrated our birthdays together fulfilling his dream of skydiving within a few weeks of his returned freedom.
We shared many firsts together during our time, things we both cherished in equal measure. I got him out playing tennis, body surfing, riding quad bikes in sand dunes, heli-biking. We travelled to Nelson Bay north of Sydney - a favourite spot of ours, Thailand, New Zealand and Cambodia. I still can’t believe he enjoyed fish eating the dead skin off his feet, it tickled far too much for me to bear.
Some of the more notable things some of you might remember. We plotted the Jail 2 Justice Walk from Langi Kal Kal together, approximately 10kms each day all the way to Melbourne’s Parliament House. I helped him to write the foreword for the petition / submission of signatures demanding a Public Register of Convicted S*x Offenders, that he handed over once he reached Parliament House. We wrote it one evening during the actual walk. He wrote a foreword while I wrote one (for him) simultaneously. He read his aloud then I read mine. He cursed me for writing better than he had, ‘he’d been doing this for more than fifty years and I’d been at it five minutes' which pained him to say. But he did say it and he used it which was the biggest compliment he could have paid me.
Together with tipoffs from police and victims of crime, we covered many stories together, some of which we created our own little videos and played them out on HinchTube, his YouTube channel that I setup for him. If our stories blew up on social media, they led the evening news.
When Derryn decided he wanted to enter politics he intended to hold a press conference at a restaurant and invite media along. An old school idea, I thought. I said to him, ‘You need people to sign up to be members of your party to register, why not speak directly to them and ensure they get your full message rather than trust media to tell the story for you? He agreed and with that we filmed his launch video right there and then in my lounge room at Redfern in Sydney.
It was launched when we returned to Melbourne, with Annette Philpott and Dermot O’Brien. Together, we four were the founding members of Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party.
Next, we needed a website which I built. Created quickly but said enough to convince people to sign up to be members, to provide details and donations. I remained in Sydney and managed the website and much of the social media while everyone else on the ground in Melbourne organised campaigns, speeches and much of the media coverage he needed down there for his campaign to give him a chance of being elected. We did all the promotional photos for the campaign out of a studio in Sydney and it was a real career highlight for me as a photographer to see those photos that we created together appearing on skyscrapers, billboards and vehicle wraps – Derryn was everywhere.
When he was elected into the Senate, to visit Canberra and pose for photos with him outside Parliament House, to visit his office and sit at his desk, what a buzz. A real ‘we did it’ moment.
By this time, I was already living in New Zealand, a bucket list move for me. I won’t lie, having a long distance relationship with Derryn suited us far more than our year of living together at his Melbourne apartment. Something about absence makes the heart grow fonder!
Tapanui in West Otago, New Zealand became another favourite holiday spot for Derryn whenever he could get a break and come over. We both made the commute across the ditch as often as we could over the course of two years, 2016-2018. He was largely left alone here and he could live like normal folk with fewer interruptions by fans looking for pictures. We did bushwalks, swam in the rivers, hung out with my neighbours, played scrabble, did some sightseeing and just enjoyed each other without pressures of the outside world. He helped to paint my back shed and mowed my lawns. He wore shorts and did things people back in Australia never saw him do.
It would be remise of me to not mention the Hinch Back on the Booze moment. What was portrayed by both Derryn and the media at the time as me being a bitch, was actually a last dash effort to get him to stop drinking.
He had given me permission to reach out to his friends, his surgeon, people on the ground in Melbourne who could help influence him to stop, or at least slow his drinking, and I had done that. Nothing worked. He was drinking heavily, passing out, breaking bones and landing in hospital. He was relaying to me what doctors were telling him, ‘If your broken ribs had punctured your lungs, you would have died.’ When he relayed that to me I was horrified, scared that I was going to lose him prematurely.
My last resort was to serve Hinch a dose of Hinch. Name him, shame him. I had hoped public pressure would have an impact.
It didn’t.
I was coined a bunny boiler and fiery ex.
If you have ever loved an addict and watched them hurting themselves and felt despair, that is where I was at.
I could live with him being alive and hating me, I couldn’t live with doing nothing.
It wasn’t long and he forgave me. We were back together and back to commuting back and forth across the ditch. Our reuniting was reported but buried in par within a Herald Sun article. So few knew we were still in a relationship until early January 2018.
Our bond was unbreakable and we stayed in touch right up until the end.
By chance I called him and we spoke at 5.39pm (Melbourne time) on Thursday 9th July for just over five minutes. It was long enough for him to tell me how he was, how his legs were failing him, that he was in pain but even so his spirits were good. He had desires of making it to his 85th Birthday some three years away, a party he would hold for a small group of thirty people, and how he’d like me to be there if I could. We also spoke of Joan Rivers as I’d just watched something on Youtube and he told me how he met her and how funny she was, how quick witted. Then he asked after me and his very last question was, ‘how are your doggies?’
We said our I love yous and hung up so he could go to bed.
He never woke up.
When I learned of his passing the next day, he broke my heart for the last time. It was 10th July 2026.
My father, John Fraser passed away on 11th July, 2024 aged 84.
For the rest of my life, I shall mourn both my father and my father figure on the same weekend. That’s life!
Natasha Chadwick
