Julie Goodwin: ‘I have so much hope for this generation of young men’

The boys in the youth group were rough-and-tumble fellas. I saw vulnerable and kind-hearted men who used to do blanket drives in the winter and hand out sandwiches to homeless people. They had hearts of gold.

Mick reminds me of my dad, Tony – a kind person with a beautiful sense of humour. I laugh so much with him – that’s an attractive quality to me.

I had to be patient with him when we first started dating. It would be four years into our relationship before he asked me to marry him and a further two until we did. He was a bit slow on the uptake and couldn’t read the signs. [Laughs]

We have three sons – Joe, 27, Tom, 26, and Paddy, 24. They are kind-hearted, hilarious and good people. Mick has been fully involved in raising our sons. His father died young, aged just 49, and we were all close to him.

Tom is the father of my granddaughter, Delilah. He likes to portray himself as the tough guy but he’s such a marshmallow inside – he will kill me for saying that. Delilah is the apple of his eye. Our two other sons still live at home, which we love.

I never expected to get married, but I did think I’d become a mum one day. I just never knew how it would come about or what shape it would take. I was happy for life to come along and make decisions as things cropped up.

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Raising young men with Mick in this era is interesting. We have very intelligent sons who are open-minded and kind and aware of humanitarian and social-justice issues. These days, young men also have to be across consent and how to behave – and rightly so, because equality has to happen. But I have so much hope for this generation of young men; I think we are in good hands.

Julie Goodwin will appear as a guest judge on MasterChef Australia on Network 10.

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