A rugged 57-year-old salvage tugboat formerly owned by media magnate Kerry Packer is playing an unlikely romantic role at the Mallorca wedding celebrations of his granddaughter, Francesca Barham.
The muscular 88-metre refurbished icebreaker Arctic is in service as the floating wedding HQ and luxury hotel to a select group of wedding party guests who have travelled to Spain for the bride’s wedding to failed Australian wellness entrepreneur Robert Bates.
The boat, currently moored off the east coast of Mallorca in the Bay of Pollensa, is also tipped to serve as a reception venue – possibly for a cocktail cruise – during the three-day wedding festival, which kicked off yesterday and will be based at a five-star resort nearby.
Arctic’s presence is a nod to the sentimentality of its current owner, Packer’s daughter Gretel, the bride’s mother, who took ownership of the $100 million boat in 2018 following a carve-up of family assets with her younger brother James.
Described as the “strongest toughest salvage rescue vessel in the world”, the boat, which is at home in deep water and among giant icebergs, is expected to also play an important diplomatic role this week as it hosts the formerly estranged billionaire scions, helping break up any ice that exists between them.
For the sake of their six children, the siblings are setting their well-publicised differences aside as their offspring, respective exes and current partners come together to celebrate the first wedding of the next generation of Packer billionaires-to-be, writing a new chapter in a family history riven with bitter sibling rivalries.
The pair were at odds for the best part of a decade after falling out over the division of their father’s assets, which Gretel pressured her brother – then dealing with his mental health breakdown, addiction issues and the collapse of his second marriage – to settle up in 2015 as his Crown Casino was pressing on with expansion plans in Vegas and Macau.
Packer would, in 2022, be forced to offload Crown and abandon his father’s dream of owning a casino in Sydney – along with the casinos in Vegas and Macau – following a damning royal commission.
Both siblings at one time issued statements saying they loved one another, but in his 2018 biography, The Price of Fortune, Packer conceded “unforgivable” things had been said during the feud, the pain of which has lingered for years.
The rare reunion in Mallorca has also brought James Packer’s magnificent $280 million motor yacht IJE into the Balearic Sea.
It’s believed to be the first time the two vessels, Arctic and IJE, have dropped anchor together. They are currently moored together off the Spanish island.
James’s ex-wife Erica and children Indigo, who turned 18 this week, Jackson, 16, and Emmanuelle, 13, have flown in from their home in the UK for the celebrations.
Erica’s French billionaire pharma heir partner Sebastien Aguettant has also joined the party, as has Packer’s fiancee Kylie Lim.
The bride’s two brothers, Benjamin Barham, 27, and William Murray, 20, are expected to both have roles in the wedding party as too, in all likelihood, will the bride’s English financier father Nick Barham. Barham’s second wife, former Miss World entrant Karen Carwin, is also among the guests.
The bride’s almost 90-year-old grandmother Ros, Kerry Packer’s widow, is believed to have remained at home in Sydney, having attended the couple’s official wedding at the family polo property Ellertson near Scone in May.
The two luxury boats, with their rival design philosophies, reflect the vastly disparate personalities of their owners.
Like her father, Gretel has said she finds her working class German-built cargo and research ship “very beautiful”.
The ship has had four refits since Packer Sr acquired it for about $25 million in 1993 and consigned it to a Malta shipyard for a year-long top to bottom overhaul, which included the addition of three new decks, a swimming pool and the most modern satellite, navigation and telecommunications equipment money could buy.
In the two decades following Packer’s 2005 death, there have reportedly been two subsequent upgrades, the most recent of which, in 2019, saw the boat redesigned to commercially compliant standards so that she might be leased out for $750,000-a-week exploratory charters. The pool and jacuzzi have also been upgraded.
Despite the many millions of dollars Gretel and James have spent modernising the icebreaker, Arctic has for decades offended the snooty yachtie classes, who prize sleek streamlined profiles, timber artistry, the classic graceful sweep of a canvas sail and the thrill of taming the wind above dependable power and speed and generous home comforts.
Such hallmarks of romantic yachting tradition were apparently lost on Kerry Packer, whose own father, media proprietor Sir Frank, loved yachting and was the driving force behind Australia’s first America’s Cup campaign in 1962.
Famous for gambling with his fortune, Kerry was not going to gamble with his life at sea and opted for a sturdy and stable deck beneath his feet and the comforts of a five-star hotel.
At 107 metres, James’ motor yacht IJE dwarfs the Arctic both in length – by 20 metres – and style.
Designed by British design studio RWD and Italian masters Benetti, the motor yacht is a sleek, modern, sculptural partyboat, complete with nightclub, cinema, gym, bar, beach club, helipad and three tender boats for exploration, all of which will likely be put to good use by the extended family this week.
Armytage comes out firing
Breakfast television escapee Sam Armytage came out firing during her stand-in role on Nine’s Today show this week.
A highly-energised Armytage slipped seamlessly back into the hosting seat and looked mostly happy to be there – if not at times sounding a bit snide and, during one cross to a woman dressed as mermaid, coming off a bit mean girl.
The same (re happy to be there) could not be said for Nine’s latest male fill-in host, Mike Willesee Jr, aka Mr Allison Langdon, whose laid-back style suggested he doesn’t covet the seat vacated by Karl Stefanovic last month.
That’s surely a good thing too for Nine, which must surely have learnt – having once stacked the company with Stefanovics – Karl, Peter and Peter’s wife Sylvia Jeffreys – that while talent can run in families, so too can loyalty, and subversive Uber pile-ons.
Luckily Armytage, who according to a report in The Australian, put the kybosh on Brisbane news anchor Joel Dry’s chances of sitting opposite her for the week, was prepared to do more than her share of the heavy lifting with the verve of a veteran Rockette taking to the stage at a Vegas residency. (A cheerio to Kerri-Anne Kennerley while I think of it.)
This at times saw her sounding forced and frantic, something she might want to work on next week.
The pairing with Willesee also highlighted a rather large fault in Nine’s breakfast show casting.
Of the four regular main panel spots – male and female host, a news reader and sports presenter – three of the roles are filled by women.
Jayne Azzopardi and Danika Mason normally flank the main hosts and this week that meant they bookended Willesee and Armytage, who is currently filling in for on-maternity-leave Sarah Abo.
When the dominant Stefanovic was in the chair, for reasons best known to Nine execs, he was surrounded by women.
This may have been to offset Stefanovic’s established supremacy or balance his predisposition to blokeyness but in the end, because of the lower profiles of the women involved and their tendency to servility, the program ended up being little more than a showcase for Stefanovic.
(This column recognises that entertainment reporter Richard Wilkins and weatherman Tim Davies also contribute to the show, but as they are given proportionally less airtime, this perception remains largely unaltered).
In creating this dynamic, Nine has driven a greater wedge between Stefanovic and the rest and added to the ratings collapse that invariably followed his sacking: the audience believed he was the program’s primary star, and so many left with him.
That puts greater pressure on Nine to either replace Stefanovic with another alpha male or make broader across the board changes.
Breakfast babies at ten paces
Last Friday, both Today and Sunrise had exclusive baby announcements.
Today crossed to regular anchor Sarah Abo, in a hospital somewhere, to announce the arrival of son Sonny “about a week ago”, while Sunrise crossed to weatherman Sam Mac to announce the arrival of son Miles.
Abo was apparently without a spare pair of hands to help conduct the cross – the presenter resorting to holding the baby in one arm and the camera – her phone? – in another; a vantage point that left the viewer periodically “rocking” along with Abo as she soothed her silent newborn, something she apologised for.
Mac also held the camera for his cross to a hospital room where the viewer met his partner Bec and new baby son, Miles, born the day prior – a sibling for Margot and Mabel McMillan.
With scant promotion of Abo’s long-awaited announcement, Sunrise – which hasn’t skipped a beat in the ratings in a decade – out-rated Today by 449,000 viewers to 326,000 nationally, a margin of 38 per cent.
Newcastle radio GM incoming
Newcastle regional radio station 2HD has advertised the role of general manager following the sacking of boss Guy Ashford last month.
Ashford, the boss of Super Radio Network’s 2HD, was stood down in May after manhandling 2HD presenter Cheralyn Darcey on stage at the 2026 Australian Audio Awards at Carriageworks, where the presenter picked up the Best Newcomer award for her show The Nightline.
Super Radio Network managing director Graham Mott later confirmed Ashford had “apologised to Cheralyn and her husband” and suspended Ashford from duties.
A week later, Ashford was sacked.
According to this column’s Central Coast sources, a familiar local identity could be a contender for the job – Sarah Warry, who for a brief moment in 2023/2024 became the seventh wife of businessman John Singleton.
Warry is currently general manager of community radio station CoastFM at Gosford, a role she picked up in August 2025, having previously served as the station’s sales manager – the gig that landed her in the path of serial Gosford spruiker Singleton.
Working in Warry’s favour, or so we hear, could be that she knows the aggrieved Darcey, who was on the receiving end of Ashford’s groping.
Possibly working against her, however, might be the fact Super Radio Network has thrown its lot in with Singleton’s old mate Chris Smith – serial sex pest and veteran boozer.
Smith has claimed to have given up the drink since being sacked from 2GB and Sky News in 2022 for inappropriate behaviour – just his latest misdemeanour in an impressive line.