Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin reveals moment she was seconds away from tragedy – and how a simple act brought her back from the brink

Masterchef winner Julie Goodwin has revealed her lowest moment and the miraculous intervention that saved her life.

Goodwin, who rose to fame after winning the first season of the Channel 10 reality cooking show in 2009, opens up about how trying to capitalise on her fame has left her struggling with overwork and crippling anxiety and depression.

Goodwin told SBS’s Insights program on Tuesday night that she had been to a Central Coast Mariners A-League football match with her husband Michael, but had left him to meet some friends when she was overcome by a wave of despair.

“I realized I didn’t want to live anymore so I just went for a walk,” Goodwin told host Kumi Taguchi.

‘I walked a long way to a park on the waterfront.

‘I sat there trying to gather courage to free my family from my existence.

‘I understood that I would cause sadness and pain, but in my head, which was not feeling well, I thought that this would be the last time I would cause that pain and that it would be over.’

Goodwin said what happened next was “kind of divine intervention.”

“A beautiful young couple saw me and they came and sat down with me, a young man, a young woman and a dog, and they just said, ‘You seem like someone who could use some company, so we’re just going to hang out here for a while,'” she said.

‘They talked to me about life, about their children, their family, and about dogs.

“I told them about my dogs and my children, and after two hours I had already changed my mind.”

She called her husband Michael and asked him to pick her up. There she told him what had happened.

“It was completely shocking,” Michael said.

“We just turned the car around. We drove to the local hospital and checked in at the emergency room.”

Goodwin, who revealed in her 2024 biography “Your Time Starts Now” that she was sexually abused as a child and later attempted suicide as a teenager, said her 2018 drunken driving conviction weighed heavily on her.

“The shame is still there,” Goodwin said after she tested twice the legal limit for blood alcohol, which resulted in her losing her driver’s license for six months and a $600 fine.

“That made me lose every trace of any good about myself.”

Goodwin said that after winning Masterchef she was “inundated with amazing opportunities, jobs and events”.

“I was afraid to say no to something because I didn’t know how long it would last,” she said.

‘I dealt with everything that came through the door and what ultimately happened.

‘What my family got as the last bit of me when I came in at the end of a long day.’

By the end of 2019, Goodwin had written six cookbooks, was starring in a morning radio show, and was running a cooking school, Julie’s Place Cooking School.

“There was definitely a sense of overwhelm and overwork,” she admitted.

‘I ignored many warning signs about my mental health.

‘There was unresolved trauma from the past and all that caused a real storm. I would really call it a breakdown.’

Once she was in the hospital, Goodwin said she “came to the conclusion that the things I had tried to try to improve the situation weren’t really working.”

This led to her quitting radio in 2019 and later closing her cooking school.

Just three weeks into a five-week hospital stay, she received a surprising phone call.

“It was a chance to go back to Masterchef,” she said.

After talking to her husband, two sons and a psychologist, they agreed that she should do it, provided she could do things that were good for her mental health.

“It actually came at a great time in her recovery,” Michael said.

“She was a little lost after she closed the business and gave up radio. It gave her something to focus on and a real purpose and excitement as well.”

For confidential support, call Lifeline on 13 11 14