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THE BEST YEAR

‘It’s time to have the most inspiring and empowering people that have encouraged this journey in a room together,’ Gibson wrote in the online invite to the launch party of The Whole Pantry app. It was typed on a white background with splashes of green watercolour paint around the edges, and told guests about the charities the event would be supporting: asylum-seekers, birthing kits for women in developing countries, school-building in Sierra Leone, and the family of a five-year-old Melbourne boy with terminal brain cancer. Gibson asked her guests to come to the big night, on 6 December 2013, with money in their pockets to donate to the worthy causes.

The call-out went far and wide. It was emailed to everyone on Gibson’s mailing list. But she made it clear that while she was soliciting donations to support people in need, not everyone was invited to the actual launch party: ‘We wish you could all be part of our world-changing events but unfortunately we haven’t yet found a room big enough, so instead we are selling virtual tickets with proceeds going to the four charities.’ Virtual tickets, as she called them, were sold online through Eventbrite. People could purchase anything from a general admission ticket for $20 to a VIP reserved ticket for $100. Or they could name their price. This way, Gibson said, people could still be part of the event, feel part of her community, even though they couldn’t come.

The app launch and fundraiser night was held at The White House, an ornate St Kilda mansion on Princes Street, built in the mid-1800s for Victoria’s crown solicitor. It’s now the home base to Small Giants, an organisation that works with businesses which have a social or environmentally sustainable streak, such as TOM Organic, which sells a range of certified organic tampons and pads, and independent magazine Dumbo Feather. Gibson, who had struck up a friendship with TOM Organic founder Aimee Marks, had managed to get a cut-price ‘friends and family’ rate to hire the ballroom for two hours.

Guests started arriving just after 6.30 pm. It was a Friday at the start of summer. The clocks had gone forward, and the sun was staying out for longer. It was a warm night, and natural light lit up the stately room. A large table stretching down the centre was draped in Bonnie and Neil tablecloths, made from oat linen, and screen printed in floral patterns of turquoise green and purple-blue. They were laden with food made from the recipes featured in Gibson’s app.

Gibson’s closest friends were in the kitchen preparing the food. There were canapés and drinks. A dark cake was topped with pomegranate, strawberries, and raspberries. Chocolate mousse was sprinkled with little purple-and-yellow edible flowers, served in wine glasses, out of a rustic wooden crate. And there were bunches of beautiful flowers everywhere. Guests filled a glass bowl with cash and coins, and wrote IOUs on pieces of paper nominating their intended charities. They remember an intimate gathering — a few dozen people were there — and they felt honoured to be on the exclusive invite list.

Gibson was heavily made-up, and looked dazzling. Her long hair was styled, and she wore a halter dress by Australian designer Scanlan & Theodore that was white, backless, and flared above the knee. Gibson mingled with guests under the antique chandelier and around the black grand piano. She looked the picture of health.

Gibson was always very particular about whom she connected with. She associated herself with people who were making waves: other health gurus, entrepreneurs, people with their own online followings. Gibson had been embraced by the wellness community, yoga teachers and naturopaths, and people selling raw food and organic tea. Among her friends, she listed soap actress-turned-life coach Melissa Ambrosini, and the well-known nutritionist and prolific author Lola Berry. Others included Sarah Ranawake, a former features director at Cleo magazine and the founder of online fashion and health magazine Sporteluxe; vegan cook and author Kate Bradley; and the late Polly Noble, an English health coach who died from cervical cancer in 2014. She ranked among her friends small-business owners such as Nat Warner, from cold-pressed Prahran juice company Greene Street Juice Co., and Georgie Castle, who founded vegan chocolate company Citizen Cacao, and Colly Galbiati, the owner of Australian food company Soma Organics. As a mentor, she singled out Charlie Goldsmith, a PR expert and self-proclaimed ‘energy healer’ who is set to star in a US television series where he attempts to cure the sick.

On the night of the app launch, businesswomen Bree Johnson and Erika Geraerts, co-founders of the $20 million-a-year skincare line Frank Body, attended. So, too, did Lisa Hamilton, a fashion blogger with 350,000 Instagram followers who launched the website SeeWantShop. Diamond Rozakeas, one of the owners of a string of Melbourne’s most successful cafés, including Top Paddock in Richmond and The Kettle Black in South Melbourne, came with her partner. Melbourne wellness coaches and business owners and social-media influencers posed arm-in-arm around Gibson.

‘She knew the who’s who of Melbourne,’ said one business owner. ‘Lots of entrepreneurs and go-getters. They were always in the room, always backing her.’

‘The attraction was her interesting medical condition,’ said attendee Kenneth Meow, a Melbourne foodie, whose Instagram account is dedicated to promoting the local café scene. He was interested in knowing more about the young cancer-fighting mother who was using the profit from her app to help others.

As always, Gibson made a heart-warming speech. Standing in front of a decorative fireplace with wild flowers on the mantle behind her, she spoke about her cancer diagnosis, her ‘journey to wholefoods,’ her vision for a healthier world. Her guests cried. Yoga teacher Monica Aurora remembers the feeling in the room. Here was this young woman who had defied the odds to overcome certain death, was living for her son, and she was positively thriving. ‘There were people up the front fully crying and donating all this money,’ Monica recalls. ‘It was a big thing, a big show.’ Kate Toholka was moved, too. She came to the event after meeting Gibson on Instagram some months earlier. Kate was blogging a lot at the time; it had been an outlet for her after she moved from the city to the Surf Coast. Gibson’s speech inspired her to dedicate a blog entry the following week about the young starlet’s ‘beautiful journey from inspired idea to kicking arse!’ And before she left, like just about everyone else, she dropped some money into the glass bowl.

The year 2014 was Belle Gibson’s best. She had been anointed by Apple, and she had a book deal in the bag. The cheques kept coming, and Gibson wasted no time trading up. She bought a brand-new BMW X3, and had her teeth cosmetically straightened. She started dressing for her new life as a wellness star. Her style was voguish, with a hint of hippie: the ring in her nose and the black-and-gold Alexander Wang handbag over her shoulder; the yin yang tattoo on her forearm above a Georg Jensen watch. Gibson looked fashionable yet wholesome; she wore oversized rings and sunglasses, and shopped at local organic green grocers.

Gibson, the ‘cancer survivor’ and wellness guru, was cashing in. At the height of her fame, she moved into a residence more befitting of a young internet entrepreneur — a $1 million beachside townhouse she rented for more than $1,000 a week just off the picture-book Elwood Esplanade. The double-storey Wilton Grove apartment is 200 metres from the water. Its real-estate listing boasts ‘cutting-edge design, the highest quality finishes, [and a] commanding street presence’. It has three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large wine cellar, Italian tiling and hardwood floors, video intercom, a fireplace, private decking, and an open-plan kitchen with Miele appliances. ‘Exquisite in every way,’ reads the ad, ‘luxurious and beautifully appointed’.

Gibson furnished the apartment stylishly: a grey designer couch; retro laminate dining table and Danish-style wooden chairs; unique prints and a black-and-white photo of Bob Dylan sitting at a piano; piles and piles of cookbooks, stacked perfectly for a #shelfie Instagram post.

In an unusual twist, the modern, cube-style property that Gibson and her family moved into is owned by the Melbourne boss of Google, Sean McDonell, and his wife, Kate. Gibson rented the property through an estate agent while McDonell was working for the internet giant in Sydney. Google refused to comment when we asked if McDonell and Gibson had any professional relationship.

Gibson had a good life in the inner south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, one of the most affluent parts of the city. She would shop and dine out with friends in Prahran, Windsor, and South Yarra, get her nails done in Balaclava, visit a massage therapist in St Kilda. She frequented upscale cafés and restaurants, and cute little stationery stores. Her local village grocer in Elwood was a favourite.

Everyone who met Gibson during this time described her as pleasant, friendly, polite, and generous. ‘She was lovely, really lovely,’ said one. Some people said that she sometimes seemed ‘vague’ or a bit ‘spacey’, but they just put that down to her medical condition. Gibson supported local artists and independent craft shops. She’d go to Red Stitch Actors Theatre in St Kilda East, and visit the Arts Centre. She liked upmarket homewares stores in South Melbourne, and an artisan coffee shop in Albert Park. Sometimes she’d cross town to Northcote to go to the Terra Madre organic shop and wellness clinic. Gibson visited bookstores and markets, and bought things like Good Brew Kombucha and $48-a-box recycled toilet paper. Her new car cost $1187.62 a month, and she’d spend $350 at an Armadale hair salon.

She went away on location, with her team, to the charming rural town of Daylesford, outside Melbourne, at the foothills of the Great Dividing Range, to shoot the images for her cookbook. To unwind, she took an ocean cruise to the Pacific Islands. ‘She was clearly coming from a space of, I’m successful, I’ve made so much money from the app,’ said a former friend. ‘We thought she was all that.’

Gibson wanted to lose four kilograms. She bought the Kayla Itsines’ Bikini Body Bundle, and started seeing Lachlan Clarke, a high-profile personal trainer, once dubbed ‘Melbourne’s model trainer’, who had a reputation for sculpting a healthy, toned, and lean physique. His business was called Body Psyche, and he charged $99 an hour for tailored one-on-one sessions in his studio in Abbotsford. Lachlan said one of his clients, a fashion model from the Chadwicks modelling agency, had referred Gibson to him, and he did 10 sessions with her.

Lachlan is very tanned and absurdly trim. He wears low-slung T-shirts and has a large Adam’s apple. His hair is coiffed, his stubble thick and short. He talks fast, but when it comes to health and fitness, he is a qualified exercise coach who knows what he’s talking about, and, after a little while, Gibson began to seek out and to value his opinions. They would often send each other links to nutrition articles and workout videos. Outside their sessions in the studio, the pair caught up a couple of times, and developed a friendship. Of all the people in Gibson’s circle, everyone named and acknowledged in the back of her book, Lachlan appears to have been the only one in these early years, when her star was rising, who pulled her up. Everyone else, it seems, showered her in unconditional praise. He felt obliged to say something: about her extreme dieting advice that was encouraging people to cut out entire food groups; the things she was saying about nutrition and the human body that simply weren’t true. ‘I call a spade a spade,’ said Lachlan, ‘and was incredibly blunt with her.’

One morning, they met up at the Weylandts Kitchen, a café near Lachlan’s studio. Lachlan hadn’t seen Gibson for some time, not since she had returned from her trip with Apple to the US. He had been reading much of her writing, and had typed out an entire page of notes. ‘She was getting into the dangerous world of dictating advice to people, and people were listening,’ he said, ‘but she was someone who never grasped the fundamentals … she didn’t know what she was talking about.’ Lachlan chose a table at the café that would be the furthest away from prying eyes. He was ready to unload on her. Gibson sat down and ordered a peppermint tea. ‘A lot of what she was claiming was just fucking irresponsible. I pulled her up on some of the things she was saying, like saying coconut oil hydrates connective tissue … “You can’t say that”, I told her. “It’s bullshit.”’

Gibson became defensive, and said, ‘Well, that’s just your opinion,’ recalls Lachlan. ‘She didn’t care how valid her information was.’ Lachlan was concerned about the trend he was seeing on social media where people were increasingly turning to Instagram celebrities for health and fitness advice, instead of seeking out professionals. But it was too late. Gibson was already a star on Instagram, and she was fast becoming well known in wellness circles.

Gibson was selected to go on a creative retreat to Bali with a group of about two dozen women, including her good friend and one of the former directors of Kinfolk café, Bec Villanti. The retreat was run by singer-songwriter Clare Bowditch’s organisation, Big Hearted Business. Those who were chosen spent a week in Ubud with Clare and her closest friends singing and dancing and meditating, and taking part in personal-development classes. They stayed in beautiful villas with private lagoon-shaped pools, shaded by palm trees and overlooking rice fields. Gibson booked a place for her family so they could all be together, and also travelled to Seminyak on the holiday. There’s a warm, smiling photo of Gibson standing cheek-to-cheek with Clare and Melbourne life coach Julie Parker. In another close-up photo of Julie and Gibson, taken in Bali, Julie talks about how blessed she feels to be on the retreat and how honoured she is to spend more time with ‘one of the most inspirational women I know’.

‘This lady is changing the world with her grace, beauty and courage,’ she wrote. ‘She is Big Hearted Business personified.’ Julie is the founder of the Beautiful You Coaching Academy and the author of Inspired Coach magazine. Clare Bowditch has graced the front page, and the first-ever edition featured bestselling self-help author Melissa Ambrosini on the cover. Among the glowing endorsements of Gibson’s book and app to flood social-media pages for the best part of 18 months were those from Ambrosini, who was also a close friend of ‘Wellness Warrior’ Jess Ainscough. Ambrosini lives in Bondi Beach. She became close with Gibson as her star was rising, and they caught up when she was in Melbourne. Ambrosini had her tips about de-stressing published on The Whole Pantry app. ‘Soulsister’ is how she referred to Gibson. ‘I’m so grateful to be part of such an amazing product and even more grateful to call Belle my sister,’ she once wrote. ‘What an inspiration.’

Nutritionist Lola Berry met Gibson at an event in Melbourne in 2013, at the beginning of the rise of health influences on social media. The two quickly became close. Like everyone else, Lola was moved by Gibson’s story of survival. She wanted to help her. Sometimes Lola drove Gibson around because she didn’t yet have her licence. Lola was also named as a contributor to a guide on The Whole Pantry app, called ‘being in the moment with food’. Colly Galbiati, the owner of Australian food company Soma Organics, once posted a photo with the two authors at a Prahran café, describing Gibson as an incredible woman making a difference in the world.

Welltodo, a London-based consultancy firm that advises businesses in the wellness industry, said of Gibson: ‘This woman is incredible. She is a game changer and a complete hero. Her story speaks for itself. Follow her, be inspired by her, pray for her.’

Health-food shops, fashion labels, skincare brands, homewares stores, chefs, bloggers, personal trainers, yoga instructors, and photographers posted about the ‘amazing’, ‘inspiring’, ‘authentic’ @healing_belle. InStyle Australia promoted her ‘healthy’ Instagram feed. Cold-pressed juice company The Seed Bali celebrated Gibson on International Women’s Day for the ‘goodness you offer to the world’. Her fans compared her to Gandhi. One said her book was an ‘eye opener’, praised Gibson’s wisdom, and said she’d follow her footsteps to boost her own health and wellbeing.

In 2014, Cosmopolitan magazine awarded Gibson its Fun, Fearless Female Award in the social-media category. Gibson flew in from Melbourne for the star-studded event, held during the day at Otto Ristorante in Sydney. The Italian restaurant is on the wharf at Woolloomooloo. Gibson arrived late, just as dessert was being served, and took her seat. She sipped sparkling water, but didn’t touch the food. Then her name was called. She’d won by a landslide, receiving thousands more votes than the other women in her category. Dressed in a white, loose-fitting top and watermelon-coloured shorts, the 5 foot 5 inch blonde nervously took the podium to accept her award in front of about 100 people, including American actress Tara Reid and Australian model Jesinta Campbell. Watching on were the winners in the other categories, including TV personalities Lisa Wilkinson and Samantha Armytage, actress Demi Harman, singer Dami Im, and snowboarder Torah Bright. Gibson gave a heartfelt speech about her son, Oli, her community — the followers on Instagram — and the legacy she would leave them. ‘It was really emotional,’ said a former Cosmopolitan staffer. ‘I remember Belle wasn’t crying, but pretty much everyone else was. We were celebrating women, we had all these amazing women in the room, and there pretty much wasn’t a dry eye in the house.’

Belle Gibson, apparently dying, had blossomed. She had quickly become an in-demand keynote speaker, sharing the stage with other young business owners and wellness entrepreneurs. She wasn’t a natural public speaker, but it worked for her. Her story was incredibly moving. She always held the room.

Gibson appeared the perfect fit for an all-female networking event called Fierce Women, which raises money for cancer research. The exclusive $100-a-head dinner at Rokeby Studios in Collingwood was promoted as a night to inspire. Along with Gibson, TOM Organic founder Aimee Marks, and Emma Seibold, who started Barre Body yoga studios, were asked to speak. The MC on the night was TV personality Gorgi Coghlan, and there was an intimate performance by Aria-award-winning singer Megan Washington.

The organisers of Fierce Women were Melbourne friends Karla Dawes and Cara Norden, who worked in events and PR. Both women had been touched by cancer, and started the event in 2012 to raise money for the Cancer Council of Victoria. The idea was to host a beautiful, highly curated evening for women, run by women, with all proceeds donated to charity. They’re proud to have showcased the stories of many inspirational women and to have raised more than $50,000 for cancer research over the past five years. Karla and Cara didn’t know Gibson personally, but asked her to speak because she was ‘seen as an inspiration in the wellness space’ and was proving herself as a successful entrepreneur. Like the other 130 women there that night, they had no reason to doubt her story.

After Gibson’s speech, everyone gave her a standing ovation. ‘I was hysterical when she was talking,’ said one business owner. ‘The way she spoke, it was so devastating.’

‘The whole room was crying,’ said another. ‘She had us all convinced.’

Gibson had grand plans to expand her business. The Whole Pantry was to morph into The Whole Life. The new domain name was registered, and Gibson placed a job advertisement to recruit a digital designer. ‘We are looking at adding complementary apps to the family, including others outside of our current category that still support the interests of our current users,’ she wrote. Gibson said a second book was in the works ‘with a focus on community, the revolution of living The Whole Life and stories [from] within the community.’

According to her glossy three-page proposal for The Whole Life, she was going to create a social enterprise: a space for entrepreneurs to meet, collaborate, and host events. Gibson wrote that ‘all profits’ were given away to those in need. ‘We really care about the earth, its communities and their local environments,’ Gibson said. ‘App sales are donated to rotating charities and organisations that support the health and wellbeing of those globally, protecting and conserving the environment and giving education to those who otherwise don’t have the opportunity.’

She took on an assistant and hired a consultant to negotiate office space for her in South Melbourne. Gibson chose a charming Victorian terrace on Cecil Street. The double-storey building has seven offices, a boardroom, bay windows, and marble fireplaces. Gibson signed a three-year, $70,000-a-year lease. She developed a ‘furniture proposal’ that she had her volunteers pitch to high-end designers in an effort to fit out her new offices for free.

Gibson had plans for a standalone kids app. And she set her sights on the Royal Children’s Hospital. She had a proposal to lease space in its new commercial precinct to set up a ‘The Whole Pantry kitchen and kiosk’. The North Melbourne hospital’s $1 billion re-development includes shops, restaurants, and a hotel for families of sick children. Before it opened, Gibson toured the site, wearing a hardhat and high-vis vest, pointing out potential opportunities for her shop. According to her submission to the hospital’s board, her vision was to provide ‘nurturing wholefoods for those in need most’. In the submission, which is under her company name, Gibson writes about her commitment to low-waste packaging, and her support for farmers by using seasonal and local ingredients. Gibson’s vision included a herbal-tea menu, cold-pressed juices, healthy soups, and chocolate. ‘Keeping in line with our successful core food principles on The Whole Pantry app, we continue to offer recipes and meals which are low-inflammatory and free from gluten, GMOs [genetically modified organisms], refined sugar, corn … soy, peanuts etc,’ she wrote. According to one source familiar with the proposal, Gibson’s sights were set on the soon-to-be-built hotel. ‘She wanted a retail space in there to do healthy meals for the parents of sick kids and tap into the hotel, do in-room dining and a kiosk type thing’ they said.

Gibson’s 2014 proposal included a copy of her CV, in which she described herself as a ‘mama, writer, gamechanger’. What is noticeable about this document is what was missing. Gibson was applying for retail space in one of Australia’s best-known hospitals, yet she provided little quantifiable information about herself or her business. The document was also full of fabrications. In it, Gibson wrote that ‘all profits’ from app sales ‘go directly back’ to the community, donated to rotating charities supporting health, education, and environmental conservation. ‘We feel that everyone already part of The Whole Pantry community … are in a privileged position to be able to access their whole life. We feel it’s important that part of their spending goes to help those who aren’t as privileged.’

Fairbank Grange Property had a deal with the hospital to sublet space in the new development to retailers. Hayden Warszewski, who took applications from retailers vying for space to the hospital, said Gibson’s representative called him to talk about her opening a shop there in mid-2014. ‘He contacted me and said there’s this amazing woman, blah, blah, blah,’ Warszewski recalls. ‘I put it to the hospital, but it didn’t really go much further.’

It is understood the proposal was rejected because of Gibson’s support for unproven treatments and her history of making non-evidenced-based medical claims. ‘The board’s approach is to be very cautious around what kind of retail we promote in the hospital,’ one source said, ‘and especially cautious if there are any health claims being made.’

Another source said the hospital wouldn’t have even given Gibson’s proposal serious consideration. ‘The position was that [retailers] had to be ethically right, in the same way that we wouldn’t have someone in there selling alcohol or tobacco.’

Gibson was wearing a black jacket badged with WWDC, the acronym used by Apple for its yearly Worldwide Developers Conference. Apple selected her to attend the event in June 2014, in San Francisco. She told an interviewer there about her illness and the impetus for building an app. ‘I had gone through lots of adversity,’ she said, in front of a vegetable display at the Whole Foods Market on 4th Street, just a couple of blocks from the Moscone Center, where the event was being held. ‘I still have the cancer, but I’m doing really well, considering.’

The trip wasn’t all business. Gibson spent the rest of the month in the US, checking into four- and five-star hotels. She toured West Hollywood and Santa Monica and Venice, and shopped at Trader Joe’s and Wholefoods. Then she travelled over to New York, and stayed at the four-star Park Central Hotel. While she was there, Penguin deposited in her bank account the first of three $44,000 instalments for the book advance. A few days later, she spent more than $2,500 at Michael F & Co Inc, a Manhattan jeweller on West 47th Street. Then she went to the IRO New York clothes store, and spent another $500.

In New York City, acai bowl-enthusiast Ksenia Avdulova, the founder of popular website Breakfast Criminals, said she was honoured to meet Gibson while she was in town. She told her legion of online fans about the ‘incredibly authentic, driven, beautiful, larger than life’ Australian woman with whom she shared a superfoods breakfast at a hotel. ‘Belle is one of the most amazing people I’ve met in this lifetime,’ she wrote on her website — in a post that has since been deleted.

Another person who promoted Gibson’s app was American wellness blogger Jordan Younger. Jordan is about the same age as Gibson, and she exploded online about the same time. On her blog, The Blonde Vegan, Jordan wrote about her vegan diet and healthy lifestyle, and before long she had 70,000 followers. Jordan first met Gibson in New York, and they became fast friends. ‘Actually, more than fast friends — we connected on a level of practically soul sister-ness that would be hard for me to capture in words,’ Jordan told her followers.

Jordan said they held hands and cried together while talking about Gibson’s fear of dying from cancer. And that Gibson told her that 100 per cent of sales from The Whole Pantry app and book were donated to charity. Jordan confided in Gibson during that first meeting that she had decided to dump veganism for health reasons, but she didn’t yet know how to tell her followers. She was concerned about what it would mean for her future. She said Gibson offered a shoulder to cry on, and then gave her valuable business advice: change the name of her business immediately. Two days later, Jordan went public with the news at an event in New York. Gibson was there, she said, standing at the back of the room, quietly supporting her. Jordan’s transition away from veganism earned her a book deal, Breaking Vegan, and she is still hugely popular. Her website is now called The Balanced Blonde, and her business has grown into an empire that includes publishing, an app, podcasts, a clothing line, and a range of cleanses.

Jordan remembers the excitement around Gibson in 2014. On the night she went public, she introduced Gibson to her friends in the wellness industry, who were all eager to meet her. ‘She was a huge inspiration to all of us — a celebrity in the wellness world and a physical embodiment of strength and success in the face of great adversity.’

In the last week of June, Gibson booked a flight with Qantas out of Los Angeles and headed home. Some people quietly expressed wonderment that Gibson, apparently so deathly sick, appeared to be so healthy. She travelled extensively in 2014 — multiple trips to Sydney, Adelaide, Bali, Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York — and yet no one questioned her diagnosis in the early days. Some said later that they had asked themselves about her commitment to her family, to her little boy, about why she would leave him while on round-the-world jaunts while seemingly on the brink of death. But none said anything about that then. ‘I didn’t question whether she was genuine or not,’ said one former friend. ‘I just thought, Where are your priorities: do you want fame and fortune before you die or do you want time with your kid. [Then I would] just think, My God, how could you even think that?’

Belle Gibson’s cancer story had been in circulation for half a decade. She marked the occasion with a post on Instagram. ‘Wow. Holy sh*t,’ Gibson wrote:

Just when I thought this month couldn’t get any BIGGER I woke up on my way back home to Australia celebrating with the sunrise over the Pacific. Five years ago today, I was sitting alone in front of a man who was about to tell me I was dying of malignant brain cancer with just six weeks to live. I cared as little as he did and waited the days out. Fast forward soon after, I started a brief relationship with conventional treatment which saw me regress quicker than imaginable and led me down the life-changing path I’m on today. It’s a surreal morning for me, amongst jet lag, a phenomenal month in HK and the USA with my community, Apple and my publishers. I feel so blessed to have seen an opportunity to take control of my life and health, to be here today, to have the beautiful son I was told would never happen and be changing the world with each of you every single day.

Gibson, for a while, was untouchable. And so she went on, tapping away on her phone, with messages about cancer and medicine and nutrition echoing far beyond the suburbs of Melbourne, and into bedrooms and workplaces and oncology wards around the world.