After almost nine years of living on a boat, Denham Hitchcock and his wife Mari are thinking of making the move to dry land. The couple now have two children – Kaia, nearly five, and Hendrix, six months – and Denham has a new job, co-hosting 10 News+, the news and current affairs show replacing The Project. Being a busy family of four, having to climb into a dinghy every time one of them needs to get to land for work, daycare or a doctor’s appointment is just getting too tricky, especially when the weather’s not great.
“We are sailors at heart and we love the freedom of being on a boat,” Denham, 48, tells TV WEEK, “but it’s kind of colliding with all the realities of land life, unfortunately.”
Denham might be a sailor at heart, but there was never any doubt that he was always going to become a journalist. His father Kevin was a journalist, also for 10 News.
“At the age of eight or nine, he would get me to read the newspaper and then write a television story out of it and then he’d mark it,” he remembers. “I never even thought of going down any other path.”
He says his father is his greatest fan, “but he is also the greatest critic”.
“Oh my God. If I get any of my grammar wrong, he will be the first one on the phone. If he doesn’t like the look of the suit I’m wearing, he’ll tell me… I’m a little afraid, because it’s going to be an hour a night five nights a week, so I really better sharpen up.”
In his three-decade-long career, Denham has been the Nine Network’s US correspondent and also worked for Channel Seven’s Sunday Night and Spotlight. He’s reported from war zones in Iraq and Syria, and been shot at by snipers.
“You don’t really have time to be frightened at the time,” he says.
But the stories that have really stuck with him are the ones about “regular people that have done extraordinary things”, like Sharn McNeill, who was diagnosed with motor neurone disease and wasn’t able to do an ironman event in Cairns she’d wanted to do, so her friend Carl Gruber towed and pushed her the whole way through.
“They crossed almost last but everyone was on their feet,” Denham remembers. “I get teary just thinking about it now.”
Two years ago, Denham decided to take a break from journalism to sail around the Pacific with Mari and Kaia.
“After so many years – 27, 28 years – of interviewing people who’d mostly been through horrific experiences, and everybody says the same thing, which is, ‘I never thought it would happen to me,’ I just thought, ‘Man, the future is not waiting for you. Don’t leave your dreams on the pillow.’”
Kaia has been living on the boat since she was two days old, and Denham says she’s “more surefooted” than he is. Rough seas don’t bother her either.
“We might have friends with us that will be vomiting overboard and Kaia will be reading her books and singing songs and having a great time. She’s a proper little sailor.”
With the arrival of Hendrix, Denham says he and Brazilian-born Mari are done having children.
“How blessed can you be? We’ve got two healthy kids, first one a girl, second one a boy, my wife is just the most patient, most beautiful soul… It just feels like the circle is complete.
“I can tell you right now, we’re shutting up the shop,” he adds with a laugh. “That’s it.”
Denham is now ready to take on any story for 10 News+, including going back into war zones – “there’s nothing I would say no to if the story is right, nothing” – but he and Mari and their children will always be drawn to the water.
“We’ll be sailing on weekends, in the ocean, surfing at the beaches. That’s where our family lives.”
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
