Lisa Millar is feeling a little bit nervous about wearing her engagement ring.
“I’m still so new to having a ring on my finger that I keep worrying that I’m going to lose it on a Back Roads shoot,” Lisa tells TV WEEK over the phone from Western Australia. “Yesterday when I went surfing I took the ring off and left it back at the hotel because I thought, ‘Oh my God, I’ve only had it a few weeks. I can’t lose it.’ So I’m at that stage of being the new fiancée.”
Lisa’s engagement
Lisa has been engaged since New Year’s Eve. Her partner, pilot Simon Carless, popped the question as the two of them watched the fireworks at Murray Bridge in South Australia from Simon’s houseboat.
“It was a total surprise,” Lisa says. “I was absolutely blindsided by it. And it’s lovely.”
She and Simon have both been “blown away” by people’s “beautiful” comments about the engagement.
“I actually couldn’t fathom it,” she admits. “Someone had said something about the reaction and I said, ‘Oh, no one’s going to be interested.’ And I looked on Instagram the other day, and Simon and I had put up a photo to just say thank you to everyone, because we’d already been overwhelmed, and that post alone has now got 20,000-something likes and thousands of comments!
“I’m trying to work it out. I think people are just really happy to see happy people.”
Lisa’s wedding plans
But now comes the hard part: getting married.
“I don’t know how people plan weddings,” Lisa says. “We started trying to plan an engagement party and felt completely overwhelmed by the whole thing.
“I actually rang my very dear friends Georgie Tunny and Rob Mills, and I said, ‘Now I understand why you two haven’t got married. This is really hard!’”
The problem is that Simon’s family are in South Australia, Lisa’s are in Queensland, and the two of them have lots of friends in Melbourne and Sydney as well.
“Do we run away and do it overseas and elope?” Lisa wonders. “But we both love a party. So do we have a huge party?
“I rang my friend Hamish Macdonald, because I went to his wedding and it was the most gorgeous wedding I’ve been to recently, and I said to him, ‘Right, I think I need you to plan my wedding. I want one exactly like yours.’”
One thing’s for sure: Lisa’s bestie, Australian Story host Leigh Sales, will give a great speech at the wedding.
“She met Simon in 2007 when I met him,” Lisa reveals. “So she’s just still shaking her head, going, ‘If someone had tapped us on the shoulder and said, “Hey, that guy there, in 20 years, is going to be your second husband,” we would have rolled over laughing.’”
Although Lisa and Simon have known each other since 2007, they’ve only been going out for just over two years. Both their careers involve a lot of travel, but they make sure they’re never apart for too long.
“We made a pact that the most time we’d ever spend away from each other was 14 days. And with his travel overseas and my Back Roads, for two years, we have managed to keep that pact.”
Back Roads new season
While Lisa is currently travelling Australia filming the 13th season of Back Roads, the 12th season is just about to premiere. The first episode sees Lisa in Western Australia’s Shark Bay, and there’s a beautiful shot where she’s floating in turquoise water, filmed from above by a drone. But although it looks relaxing, Lisa reveals it wasn’t quite as relaxing to film.
“I’m just floating, floating, starting to picture all the things that might be swimming beneath me,” she remembers. “I look really peaceful but in fact I was having a little nervous attack – how far out do they want me to go here?”
While in Shark Bay, Lisa also gave standup paddleboarding a shot – at one point, losing her balance and falling into the water.
“I joke that I’m very happy to be mediocre at everything!” she laughs. “I just love giving it a go.
“Yesterday I was with an 18-year-old female pro surfer who we’re featuring in our story and she said to me, ‘Do you want to go and have a surf?’ And I said, ‘Oh God, it’s 18 years since I took lessons at Bondi Beach just because I had a bit of a crush on a young surfie dude.’ She’s like, ‘Come on!’
“I couldn’t end up standing up but we had so much fun.”
Lisa, who turned 57 this month, hopes she can encourage other people to try new things.
“I’m not young, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, whatever. Why not do it?’ But it is a weird experience, doing it for the first time in front of a camera. If I’m going to screw up here, it’s going to be absolutely recorded – and probably used!”
For Lisa, who grew up in country Queensland and then spent years as the ABC’s foreign correspondent in Washington and London, Back Roads has always been more than just a TV show.
“I had such a sentimental attachment to it,” she explains, “because all the years that I was overseas, I would come home to see my elderly parents and Mum and I would sit down and watch Back Roads together. Mum’s no longer alive and I often think, ‘Oh, if only she could see me hosting Back Roads now, she would be so thrilled!’”
Being able to narrate the much-loved Muster Dogs as well as host Back Roads makes Lisa feel “so grateful”.
“I’m working on shows that bring happiness… and my own engagement brings happiness to people, and that makes me happy,” she says. “So it’s just happiness all round!”
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