In some circles, Natalie Gauci may be best known as the winner of Australian Idol in 2007 – back when she would “pull a rabbit out of a hat” every week and wow lionised talent TV judges like Mark Holden and Ian “Dicko” Dickson.
It’s been 14 years since that bright-eyed singer-songwriter had the world at her feet, but as we later found out, the world was also on her shoulders. Natalie Gauci has battled PTSD and drug abuse as a result of sexual assault in her teenage years, and an eating disorder that took over during her heavily spotlighted early career years.
In the below Q&A, Gauci speaks to Tone Deaf from her hometown Maleny, in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast hinterland. Her baby boy Jedi is asleep nearby as she details her time on Australian Idol and more recently, The Voice Australia, and the strength and healing found through her latest EP and event series project Pictures of Mars.
Note: the below has been edited for clarity.
You won Australian Idol in 2007 and your new singles like ‘Hard To Me’ from your nine episode visual and audio series Pictures of Mars really hint of all the healing you’ve been doing.
It’s been seven years since that stuff kind of stopped and then seven years to heal it, yeah.
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I know that you were thinking about releasing Pictures of Mars in 2017, what happened? Why was the timing not right?
I had to develop it more. It was still not the right time, I had to write the music properly. I had to make sure it was mixed and mastered right. There were lots of things that needed to be done and to be honest, I had a burnout as well.
You were also experiencing PTSD from incidents that happened when you were a school student. It’s powerful how open and honest you’ve been about those experiences.
I think it’s important to talk about these things because at the time, I didn’t realise I even had it. I didn’t realise I had PTSD. The only reason I knew that something wasn’t right was because I was struggling in my romantic relationships, with men. I wanted to get to the bottom of that and went to see a few different psychologists.
It wasn’t until I was pregnant with Jedi and my whole life just… it’s like the universe did a 180 and said you need to go home — I was in America. ‘You need to go home. You need to reset and start your life with abundance’. I’ve got this new responsibility. I want to make my life better, I’ve got this healing business, I’ve got music I still haven’t released. Now is the time to just birth it all.
When I was in Sydney doing a show, while I was pregnant, my dad sent me a message with a photo. And the photo was of the front cover of The Herald Sun and it said Maurice Blackburn Lawyers have taken high schools to court and have been getting millions of dollars in winning civil cases for sexual abuse. They were calling women to come forward. My dad strongly suggested that I give them a call and tell them my story. And so I did.
And that was the beginning of when I started to realise the damage that had been done and why I was struggling to actually just live to my full potential. So, when I called them up they got me to do a psychiatric assessment and we went through my whole story, about everything that happened. So I went back and I relived it all in that session.
I realised that I had high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder at the time, in my teenage years. And that my view of relationships and what love was… it was all that grooming and brainwashing from that time that painted my picture of a relationship. And even though I deep down knew during that psychiatric assessment, what unconditional love is. That programming that happens to you as a child, is stuck in your subconscious for a long time. Recognising what post-traumatic stress disorder is, is half the battle.
I could then go, ‘okay these are the symptoms. There’s anxiety. There’s the running away and not dealing with situations. And not having the confidence to be successful and now owning my own success’. I always looked to other people to do it. A record label, a manager, a boyfriend, a partner, friends. You know, can you do this for me? Oh, if they release it then I don’t have to deal with it and that was all about owning my own success and if I didn’t own my own success I would attract certain people in my life that would emulate that familiar past experience of having a manipulative boyfriend.
It wasn’t until I became a mum that I really felt really strongly about the fact that it was about control, and that it was about me fearing owning my own success. And that I needed to learn how to stay calm in situations and not get angry and not think about things that happened in the past and re-create them now, you know.
I’ve learnt a lot over the time and really, that post-traumatic stress was caused by somebody who is a paedophile, who should be jail. And I can confidently say that now, without any fear. Without any past hurt or distress or post-traumatic stress disorder. Knowing that that’s just the truth.
It’s extremely powerful for you to be so perceptive and for you to have gotten to this position, but also for you to know — as so many sexual assault survivors find later — that they just didn’t have the tools at the time.
They didn’t know that it was PTSD or they didn’t know that the actions they were taking were completely related to what happened to them. Nothing was wrong with them, there was nothing to fix. It was just they didn’t have these tools based on that knowledge.
It’s a matter of just living the best life we can live and being positive. And knowing what our rights are, knowing what we are capable of in this world and actually living that life. And to keep on talking about it and exposing it. Because that then disempowers them and empowers us as women, or men who have experienced also these kind of traumas. It’s just a matter of us actually coming out and using our voices to speak the truth and make it open and clear. And the more that that happens, the better.
Was the team at Australian Idol and your record label at the time, Sony BMG Australia, aware of what had happened in your past, during your time on the show?
Yes they were. I was really scared of it coming out. I was so afraid of people knowing and that was the one thing I didn’t want them to bring out in the public about me, because I wasn’t ready to talk about it.
I just wanted to do my music and so they promised me that they wouldn’t expose it and if anybody brought it up it would just be a non-conversation. We wouldn’t talk about it.
Did you feel supported by them in terms of how they handled the situation?
The psychologist was excellent. Australian Idol was extremely nurturing compared The Voice. With Australian Idol, I spoke to the psychologist every week and she got to know me really well.
Talk me through the decision to go on The Voice last year.
I realised that I’d been there, done that and it’s not me anymore. They approached me twice before and I said no. But I had this new approach to life where I would say yes to everything and just go with it.
I was 36 weeks pregnant with Jedi when I went and did my audition. And that was the beginning of the end for me for The Voice, I should have gone with my instincts and stopped there. But I didn’t. My ego was still playing on me a little bit and I thought, ‘maybe they do really want me. Maybe I can win it. Maybe this is something I still need to go through. Maybe it’ll boost my profile. Maybe this, maybe that’.
I sang a cover and an original. I sang ‘Heart Beat’ from my Pictures from Mars album. They said to me that for the actual blind auditions they wanted me to sing ‘The Greatest’ by Sia. I didn’t realise that I could have sang my own original song on TV, because some of the other contestants did; I didn’t even know about it.
Check out Natalie Gauci performing ‘Heart Beat’ at Sofar London:
I just let it pan out the way that they were going to do it, because my priority was Jedi and it wasn’t The Voice. Once I came out on The Voice [with my PTSD and what caused it], all the publications wanted to talk to me about my drug and alcohol abuse, that happened to me when I had post-traumatic stress disorder. I was in the paper for two weeks. I was on double spreads and I’m thinking, ‘wow people actually care about this story. This is important’. It didn’t become about the music anymore, it became about this story. Because I started to speak out and speak out and speak out, I was out by the second week. That’s it. Battle rounds, gone.
I took my teacher to court and he got acquitted. And now I’m taking him through civil courts.
Your project Pictures of Mars is not just an album, there’s a whole visual and live series around it, including psychic readings at each session as well.
We had our launch on the 14th of March and I did two sets. I did one of just all my live music, and the songs that are coming out over the next few months. And then I did a second set of healing, with my drum. It was really powerful. It was all about opening up our sixth sense, so that we’re able to become more awakened within ourselves, to actually see truth and see things that are coming across like they are the truth.
That whole Australian Idol thing and the whole Voice thing, a lot of it is about people pleasing and pleasing the ego. It’s all about learning lessons. And what I learned, is that the songs that I’ve written are all from my past experience that I feel I’m ready to leave behind now. I’m letting it all out and you know, moving into more of a healing space. That’s where I feel I’m definitely aligned at the moment.
I feel like that’s what we need, that raising of collective consciousness and bringing us into a space where we can just rise above all the chaos of everything that is going on and live our best life; the most positive life despite what’s going on in the world or what may have happened in the past. It was a massive revelation for me, at that launch.
Check out Natalie Gauci’s ‘Hard To Me’ single below:
To me, to be releasing the music that you initially had intended to release in 2017 is a big part of your overall message around healing in your own time. And the message of breaking psychological patterns is really pertinent given where Australia is at with our #MeToo movement too.
I love to bring as many people together as possible. We are stronger when we’re together, when we work together. My mission has become to bring people together. Starting in Maleny. Starting in my home.
Natalie Gauci is hosting a string of intimate concerts and gatherings at Sunshine Coast’s Maleny Community Centre, bringing the community together through music, meditation, story telling, fun, laughter and healing. Tickets are by donation and are available at linktr.ee/nataliegauci.
Natalie Gauci at Maleny Community Centre, Sunshine Coast
Sunday April 25
Sunday May 9
Sunday May 23
Sunday May 30
Sunday June 27
Sunday July 4
