Ali McGregor

Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia's Rose

Arts EN ↓ 6 episodes

Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia’s Rose is a 6-part, richly told narrative podcast about fame, forgetting, and the women who built Australian theatre long before their stories were written out of it. Hosted by acclaimed performer and producer Ali McGregor , the series traces the extraordinary life of Eleanor “Nellie” Stewart - the most celebrated stage star of 19th-century Australia. Sweet Nell was adored, scrutinised, scandalised, and mythologised in her own lifetime, yet today her name has all but vanished from public memory. Each episode blends immersive storytelling, archival research, a...

Author

Ali McGregor

Episodes

Episode 6: The Final Act 03.05.2026 23:06

Send us Fan Mail In the final episode of Sweet Nell , Ali McGregor traces the closing chapter of Nellie Stewart’s life while reflecting on her own. Beginning in 1916 with the death of George Musgrove, we follow Nellie through loss and a changing industry as cinema rises and theatre shifts around her. No longer at the centre, she becomes a symbol of a fading era, returning to her defining role whil...

Episode 5: Triumph, Tragedy and the Birth of a Legend 06.03.2026 21:07

Send us Fan Mail In this episode of Sweet Nell: The Story of Australia’s Rose , we follow Nellie Stewart through one of the most dramatic periods of her life and career. Returning to the stage after the birth of her daughter, Nellie throws herself back into touring comic opera across Australia and New Zealand, discovering a stronger voice, renewed confidence and an audience more devoted than ever....

Episode 4: Alone on the High Cs 26.02.2026 32:14

Send us Fan Mail In this deeply personal episode, I trace Nellie Stewart’s return to Australia in 1893 - not as the adored “Rose of Australia,” but as a new mother travelling incognito across the world with her six-week-old baby. From triumph and tragedy at Melbourne’s Princess Theatre to a gruelling 45-day voyage aboard the SS Doric , this chapter reveals a woman balancing ambition, secrecy, love...

Episode 3: Bracelets of Gold 21.12.2025 19:41

Send us Fan Mail A secret marriage, a defiant love affair, and a symbol that would become legend. In Episode Three of Sweet Nell , Ali McGregor follows Nellie Stewart through heartbreak and resolve as she refuses a respectable life in favour of the stage and the man she cannot live without. From the glittering triumph of The Mikado and the opening of Melbourne’s Princess Theatre to a bracelet forg...

Episode 2: Nellie 19.12.2025 29:24

Send us Fan Mail Melbourne in the late 1870s is loud, glittering and hungry for spectacle, and Nellie Stewart is rising with it. In Episode Two of Sweet Nell , Ali McGregor follows Nellie from backstage sewing tables to centre stage, as Christmas pantomimes, comic opera and burlesque turn a gifted teenager into one of Australia’s first true theatrical celebrities. Alongside the chaos of gaslit the...

Episode 1: Eleanor 19.12.2025 28:26

Send us Fan Mail A woman stands on the deck of a steamship in 1893, a baby in her arms and forty-five days of ocean ahead. In this opening episode of Sweet Nell , performer Ali McGregor traces the journey of Eleanor “Nellie” Stewart back through generations of performers, beginning not with fame, but with travel, motherhood, reinvention, and risk. From the crowded decks of the SS Doric to the gas...