Hitting her hard
In 2011, Sandra tied the knot with banker Symon Brewis-Weston. Having just returned from her honeymoon, Sandra was back at work reading the news.
“There was a story about a young couple in country New South Wales who were getting married and the brother of the bride was a helicopter pilot, and they’d crashed on the way to the ceremony,” Sandra exclusively tells New Idea.
“The groom was waiting on a rural property for them to land and had seen them come down and the plume of smoke. How do you process something like that? I’d been back from my honeymoon three days and could barely get the words out.”
During moments like these, Sandra has developed a persona to help her carry on.
“Some days I have to flick a switch and almost role-play that I’m a reporter doing this job to get through it ‒ but it isn’t always easy,” she admits. “Staying busy helps.”
Opening up
During her 30-plus years in the spotlight, Sandra has remained notoriously tight-lipped, rarely sharing details of her personal life.
However, in a surprising move earlier this year, Sandra invited cameras into her private world when she took a trip back into her family’s history for the SBS genealogy documentary series Who Do You Think You Are?
“I am extremely private but my parents (Sydney and Carol Sully) are getting older and my dad has had some health issues,” she reveals.
“There came a point where I had to stop thinking about myself and realise this was about them ‒ and what a wonderful gift this was to give them,” the TV host says.
During her two-week journey with the series, Sandra had no idea what she’d be doing from one day to the next, only receiving her plane ticket when she was at the boarding gate.
“Everyone thought I’d be off to Scotland, but I actually went to Europe,” confesses Sandra, who has not yet shared the details of what she discovered with her family, and says she can’t wait to watch her Who Do You Think You Are? episode with them.
“It was like finding some puzzle pieces I didn’t know were missing but they just fit perfectly and made everything whole again,” she adds.
Family secrets
“I had a glorious childhood,” Sandra says of her youth, recalling memories of growing up in Queensland with her twin sister Lyn Salter and older brothers Brad and Chris.
“Every weekend was spent at a sporting field, watching my brothers play football, or Lyn and I played netball and hockey,” she shares.
While her core family was “pretty tight”, Sandra didn’t grow up spending a lot of time with her extended relatives. It is the pasts of her grandfathers, who both passed away before her birth, that she’ll be exploring in the series.
“My parents grew up in the depression era so they were always looking forward and not back. There were lots of gaps to fill in,” says Sandra.
There was, however, one family scandal she already knew a little about. Sandra’s grandmother on Carol’s side boarded a ship in Scotland by herself to come meet her future husband in Australia in her 20s.
“Mum once told me that Grandma might have been tempted to not get off and sail off with someone else she met on board,” Sandra explains.
“But she’s not around anymore to ask, so who knows!” she says.
Who Do You Think You Are? returns on Tuesday at 7.30pm on SBS.
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