‘We Want People To Do The Work’: Brooke Blurton On The Burden Placed On Indigenous People To Educate Others

Launching a podcast has become somewhat of a post-reality TV trend, but don't expect Brooke Blurton's to be like the rest.

The 27-year-old has joined forces with fellow media personality Matty Mills to co-host the new Not So PG podcast on Nova. Here the duo will speak about topics such as relationships, careers, mental health and what it's like being part of the First Nations and LGBTIQ+ communities while navigating careers in mainstream media.

"I feel like a podcast has been something that I've always had on the vision board or been wanting to do for a while," Blurton tells Refinery29 Australia. "But I kind of get sick of my own voice," she laughs, "and I wanted to
find a really awesome co-host."

The Noongar-Yamatji woman says she and Mills "both have so much to say" as queer Indigenous people working in Aussie media, but she's wary of the pressure and burden that can be placed on First Nations people to overly educate the masses about their culture.

"With the podcast, we want to be a place for open conversations, especially about things that we're passionate about, like NAIDOC week and other community problems," she says.

"But I think we want people to do the work. We'll be able to provide resources but sometimes we're at our capacity of constantly having to educate. We support allyship, so I feel like people do need to do the work and put in the work. We're happy to direct you, but we're not always constantly going to have to be the ones [that hold your hand]."

This latest project has come at an ideal time for Blurton — six months after her season of The Bachelorette finished airing, in which she made history as the first bisexual and Indigenous bachelorette. Just after shooting wrapped up earlier in August, she received the sad news her sister had passed away. It's now also been five months since her split from Darvid Garayeli (whom she met on the show) became public knowledge, and it's been somewhat of a messy breakup.

"I do feel confident in myself at the moment because I feel like not only was last year really tough, but this year has been even tougher on the other end of that," she explains.

"I've only just gotten over that massive hill in the last seven months. I've been writing a book, dealing with grief and loss, dealing with a public breakup whilst dealing with the media."

Since first appearing on The Bachelor in 2018, Blurton has become more comfortable sharing personal elements of her life on social media, whether that be about her mental health journey or her recent admission about getting an abortion (she spoke up about this following the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the US).

The podcast now strives to be an extension of her and Mills' social media presence so they can delve deeper into these issues.

"I do pick and choose sometimes what I share on Instagram, but I think our podcast will probably open up a lot more because we're trying to break down taboo topics," she explains.

"We're trying to talk about things that need to be spoken about and I think Roe vs. Wade was one thing that I would love to have a platform to speak about, but I just find that on Instagram it's so difficult to capture such a deep conversation in a couple of Stories.

"It's a hard platform to navigate sometimes with things that need so much more information and so much more depth to them."

With that in mind, the first episode of Not So PG dropped today on the Nova network where Blurton speaks about having to make some tough decisions during The Bachelorette including one that involved Abbie Chatfield. No doubt Blurton and Mills will have more in-depth discussions in store when episodes release every Tuesday.