In Guardian Australia’s weekly interview about objects, the actor tells us of a lucky escape from a house fire – and being robbed in New York
That house fire is not the only loss the actor has faced. Her “first great love”, Australian Crawl guitarist Brad Robinson, died from cancer in 1996. The pair married in 1981 when she was 23 and divorced later that decade so Armstrong could marry an American friend and get the green card that would allow her to work in the US.
Here, Armstrong tells us about those singed but precious paintings done by her sons, as well as sharing the story of the cherished item she was sadly separated from – and still mourns the loss of.The three pictures created by Kerry Armstrong’s sons, Jai, Sam and Callum, that she saved from a house fire in Melbourne in 2000.When my three sons were , they each made me a painting that I loved and had framed.
The fire was caused by a faulty wall heater in 2000. We were living in our cottage in Eltham, Victoria. It was our final day of filming for SeaChange, and with three boys under 10, we had to have everything packed the night before to leave early. I’ve been forever grateful for that early start because the firefighters told us the fire must have begun slowly in the roof that night, and not long after we left, the flames were so high that our home was completely destroyed.