Having faced life-threatening situations during their careers, not much can rattle 10 News+ co-hosts Amelia Brace and Denham Hitchcock. Tamara Spray chats with the pair about journalism and the unexpected grenades life has thrown their way.
They’ve covered catastrophic weather events, US school shootings and dangerous protests, but that all seems a world away when I meet 10 News+ co-hosts Denham Hitchcock and Amelia Brace by the calming waters of The Spit.
It’s a clear spring day and our view from Marine Rescue’s Middle Harbour base is sublime. There’s an easy, friendly banter between the pair, who work seamlessly together. So when I ask if they worked together prior to 10 News+ airing in June this year, I’m surprised by the answer. “No,” Amelia, 38, says.
“I wish we had,” Denham, 49, adds. “It’s been a blast.”
Despite having both worked as US correspondents, their paths didn’t cross. Denham worked at Nine’s Los Angeles bureau for over four years from 2010, while Amelia was there for the Seven Network from 2017 to 2020.
Between them they have covered numerous breaking world events, and their pairing for the in-depth news show works. “It’s a perfect cohesion on the desk because Amelia is weighted towards politics and finance, which are easily my two weakest points, and I’m more weighted towards crime and human behaviour,” Denham explains. “We complement perfectly.”
10 News+ offers viewers deeper reporting on news stories. Denham particularly likes the way the show gives stories ‘time to breathe.’ News stories could be five minutes or 20 minutes long, he explains.
The co-hosts source, investigate, and report their own stories, with a team other journalists, in addition to presenting the show.
Both admit they ‘like to work.’ “I can’t imagine not chasing a story or writing a story,” Amelia says. “So while it makes long, full, busy days, I think that’s how we both thrive.”
There’s an added bonus to working on the show for the pair, who both have young families. Amelia says: “We get to go home most nights (and see our children).” For Amelia, that’s Cremorne Point, where she lives with husband Adam Bovino and son Leonardo, two. “(Denham and I) have both been bouncing around the world for a long time,” Amelia says.
“Totally,” Denham agrees. “I’ve done enough travel…I’m happy to stay home.” Denham and his wife Mari are currently based in Dee Why with their children Kaia, five, and Hendrix, nine-months, while their usual home, a catamaran Catana 47 moored at The Spit, is being repaired.
Denham grew up on the Northern Beaches, living ‘everywhere from Manly to Avalon,’ and is a former Mona Vale Public School student. His father, Kevin Hitchcock, was a reporter on Ten Eyewitness News, and Denham grew up watching his dad on the television each night, knowing that was the job for him.
On finishing high school, Denham, then 18, took a job answering the phones at 7’s Today Tonight, the start of his 30-year long career. He’s been to Iraq and Syria twice to cover the rise and fall of Islamic State, covered the death of Osama Bin Laden and reported live from Hurricane Sandy in the USA.
Denham’s drive to get the story out there has helped in situations where bullets have been whizzing past him. “You don’t really have time to think about it. It’s only when you get back to the hotel later in the night and you think, ‘There was a drone above me with a grenade underneath it.’
“And of course there’s part of your brain that’s worried about your safety, but you’re also there to tell a story. So how close are you to the front line? Are there civilians around? Is the audio running? Are we capturing this?”
At the Logies
Denham’s seen his share of traumatic events. “Sandy Hook Elementary School was the worst one for me,” he says, recalling when 20 children were gunned down in Connecticut, USA in 2012. “And some of the tsunamis and fires, people pulling their kids out of the rubble that haven’t survived.
“I don’t carry it with me. Ultimately, we are tourists in a way in that we come to report. We try and make things better for the people that are there. Try and identify where aid is missing and try and find stories that do help.
“At the end we come back to our beautiful families and living in Sydney in this amazing country. And I feel it would be a little introspective to carry that kind of trauma with you when people are still there living with the losses and the troubles they have.”
Despite having lived on the North Shore since 2020, Amelia admits she loves to play ‘tourist’ in Sydney. Growing up in Caloundra, Queensland, she completed degrees in political science and journalism, before starting as an intern at Seven News, where she worked for 17 years. She was a political reporter in Canberra before heading to Los Angeles.
Amelia and Denham had not worked together prior to 10 News+
While the role of a journalist is to ‘never become the story,’ Amelia found herself unwittingly going viral after being hit by US riot police outside the White House while covering the Black Lives Matter protests in June 2020. Amelia was struck with a truncheon (baton) and hit at point-blank range with rubber bullets, while cameraman Tim Myers was also injured. Both inhaled tear gas. It was 30 minutes before the cityimposed curfew and occurred inside the designated media area.
The incident was broadcast live, with Amelia getting up, battered from the attack to continue reporting. So how did she keep on going? “I think the fact that it was live helped,” she says. “I knew I was on, so I just had to keep speaking. Then all of a sudden it was 40 minutes later and the world’s longest live cross.”
There was widespread US condemnation about the attacks on journalists at the protest, and Amelia testified before a US congressional committee about the incident weeks later. “It was scary. At that point the USA was still very much a powder keg,” Amelia says of the atmosphere, explaining that she was seen as an anti-Trump target, despite having said nothing to warrant it. She was ‘copping a lot of abuse’ as a journalist and was worried about being out in public in Washington DC. “But it was important,” she says.
“You can’t tell the story of what happened that day or what happens in war zones by standing a block away. I had to stand there. So, as a qualified human being, I could say ‘No, you (the police) came in early (before the end of curfew). No, you didn’t warn people. No, you were too violent and that wasn’t right.’ And that was my job. That was why I was there that day – to tell the world what happened,” she explains.
Denham with wife Mari and daughter Kaia
The footage later won Amelia and Tim a Walkley Award, journalism’s highest honour.
Working as foreign correspondents, running on little sleep, has set the journalists up for parenthood. “I passed out once doing a live cross to the Today show,” Denham says. “It was the Boston Bombings and we’d been going straight for four or five days because those guys were on the run. And the story just kept growing and growing and there was just no stopping.”
“It’s made us very good parents – not much can rattle us sleep-wise!” Amelia jokes. Which comes in handy as Amelia’s son Leo is a toddler. He was named for his ‘lion heart,’ a tribute to the strength he gave Amelia when her husband, Adam, was diagnosed with Stage 3 bowel cancer less than a year into their marriage in 2023.
He had just started treatment when Amelia discovered she was pregnant, which left her worried, not knowing what the future held for Adam. “But my husband was amazing when I told him, he was so excited. I know it’s cliché, but I think it gave him something else to fight for.”
Their unborn Leo got the couple through. “Every update we had on my husband seemed to be bad news at that point, but every time we had to check on the baby, the baby was perfect and strong and kicking. And I felt like he was kicking away, being like, ‘I’m okay, you guys sort that out, I’ll be fine.’ So he was a brave little boy,” Amelia says, adding that Adam is now doing well.
For Denham, love struck in the ocean – he met his wife Mari, a fellow surfer, while paddling out at Dee Why Beach. They wed on the beach, with a reception at Narrabeen Surf Club in February 2019, had their daughter Kaia the following year, and took off for an adventure in January 2023, sailing the Pacific Ocean for two years. “We were going to go around the world,” Denham says. “Fiji was the first stop on the circumnavigation and my wife and I both surf and we got stuck there for two years! Then we got pregnant again, so we came back to have little man (Kendrix).
Amelia, with son Leo and husband Adam
“Ultimately we are tourists in a way in that we come to report. We try to make things better…try and identify where aid is missing.”
Denham
Amelia surrounded by US riot police outside the White House at the Black
Lives Matter protests in June 2020
“What a wild and crazy life. I was expecting to be travelling around the world for a few years and now I’m sitting at a desk with this lovely lady, presenting the news.”
Denham’s love of the ocean recently spurred him to do a story back on his home turf of the Beaches. Denham took a dive into the waters off Dee Why to have a closer look at the controversial shark nets where local surfer Mercury Psillakis tragically lost his life following a shark attack.
“I like telling any good story, but I like that one because shark nets are contentious,” Denham says. “So that was a good example of bringing some understanding to a story. So many people have come up to me and said: ‘I can’t believe they are so small,’ or ‘I can’t believe you can swim all around them.’ And those shark nets have been there since 1937 and most people still don’t understand them.”
We wrap up our interview and soon the co-hosts are whisked away from the calm waters of The Spit, back to the bustling newsroom in Ultimo, keen to deliver ‘the stories that matter.’
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