"They're gonna come after you" Joyce and Campion tell all

"They're gonna come after you" Joyce and Campion tell all

IN THE frenzy over Natalie Joyce’s interview with the Australian Women’s Weekly this week, one rather striking detail managed to escape much notice.

Mrs Joyce claimed Vikki Campion relentlessly pursued her husband Barnaby, bombarding him with phone calls even while he was attempting to patch up his marriage.

Mrs Joyce said Ms Campion, 33, continued to pursue the former Deputy Prime Minister and National Party leader by calling him up to “20 times a day” — even months after a furious Mrs Joyce told her to back off an infamous showdown on a Tamworth street.

Mrs Joyce said in July, she joined her husband on an official trip to Europe to give their 24-year marriage “one last shot”.

“Apparently [Ms Campion] had given ‘her permission’ for me to go. I thought that he needed me by his side,” Mrs Joyce told the magazine.

“So I agreed on one condition — no contact with her for two weeks — but she was relentless and called sometimes 20 times a day.”

Within weeks of the couple’s return from Europe, Ms Campion was pregnant with Mr Joyce’s child.

Ms Campion gave birth to their son, Sebastian, in April.

Mrs Joyce, 48, also said she felt “taunted” by the child’s name, as Sebastian was her top choice for a boy alongside daughters Bridgette, 21, Julia, 20, Caroline, 18, and Odette, 15.

“It felt like another malicious taunt in a very long line of appalling behaviour,” Mrs Joyce said.

“He always wanted a boy and while the girls really are the epicentre of his universe, we had no chance, she was giving him a son.”

She also went into more detail about that public confrontation in Tamworth in March last year, after she realised her husband was having an affair with his media adviser.

“I was very measured and made sure I didn’t raise my voice. She and Barney were smoking outside,” Mrs Joyce said.

“He bolted when he saw me. I turned to her and said, ‘My husband is out of bounds, off-limits, he’s a married man with four children’ and then I called her a home-wrecking wh***. “It was not one of my finer moments but, looking back, I’m proud I stood up to her.”

Mrs Joyce broke her silence following a controversial $150,000 Sunday Night interview with Ms Campion and Mr Joyce, in which the former deputy prime minister said the pair “didn’t stumble into this like we were kids” and hadn’t set out to hurt anybody.

Mrs Joyce watched the program with close family members and said she took several calls from the heartbroken and angry girls asking why their dad did this to them.

“They were asking if their dad ever changed their nappies and, for the most part, I had to say no,” she said.

“It’s disgraceful to air such rot. Did they consider the girls were in the middle of exams?

“They’ve been pushed aside and it remains to be seen if that can be mended. There are many casualties here.

“Whether the girls will ever meet Sebastian, that’s their decision and I’ll support them either way.”