A little girl with a life split in three — how Mimi made it [PART II]

Mimi Kwa tells her family’s saga, featuring her dad — the thirty-second child of a wealthy Chinese silk trader, and her mum, who survived decades of undiagnosed schizophrenia, and Mimi's glamorous other life in the intoxicating hubbub of Hong Kong.

Mimi presented the news on ABC and Channel Nine, and worked in the newsroom for more than 20 years.

Today she has four children with her loving husband, John.

This is all a long way from Mimi’s early life in Perth, where she managed backpackers’ rent and cleaning toilets at her father’s sprawling youth hostel from the age of eight.

Then she would shuttle over to her grandparents’ house in the suburbs, where her mum, who lived with chronic schizophrenia, would do her best to love Mimi, despite her paranoia.

Mimi had yet another life, in Hong Kong, where she would visit her relatives, and stay with her loving, steady, glamorous Aunty Theresa, who adored her.

Mimi had to synthesise all these parts to grow herself up and become what she had always wanted to be: on telly, reading the news.

And once she succeeded in her dream of journalism, she would need all the strength she could get when she unknowingly ambushed Russell Crowe at the airport.

Further information

Help is always available. You can call Lifeline on 13 11 14, text on 0477 13 11 14,  chat online, or speak to an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Crisis Supporter at 13 YARN (13 92 76).

House of Kwa is published by HarperCollins ABC Books.

This episode was made on Gadigal country. It was produced by Alice Moldovan. The Executive Producer was Nicola Harrison.