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News.com.au
01-08-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
The unassuming 71-year-old ‘ketamine queen' who changed Australia's drug scene forever
Kerrin Hofstrand used to have a foolproof ritual every time a package of ecstasy would arrive from the US. She'd head to a bar on Sydney's Oxford street, play the song California Dreamin', drink a Stoli and drop half a pill. If she wasn't high as a kite in 15 minutes, she'd know the drugs were no good. And if you think that's the most shocking thing you'll hear out of the mouth of a kindly-looking 71-year-old, you're in for a surprise. Known as the woman who introduced ketamine to Australia in the 1990s, Kerrin's life has been colourful enough to fill several books, and in this week's episode of Gary Jubelin's I Catch Killers podcast, she weaves a fascinating tale spanning decades - including stories of her time working as a stripper, selling cocaine in Hawaii, managing a brothel and taking LSD at the age of 12. 'It was just what we did in my group,' she explains candidly, referring to her childhood dalliance with LSD. 'I did acid before I ever even smoked a joint. It was very strange.' Despite the early indoctrination, Kerrin says her true 'drug days' didn't begin until she moved to the United States. An international move and an introduction to criminal life Kerrin's father, Gordon Stephen Piper was a household name in Australia. An actor, he was best known for playing Bob the plumber on the long-running television show A Country Practice. At 19, Kerrin's dad organised an opportunity for her to study at a prestigious New York acting school, a move she bankrolled with an inheritance she'd received from a great aunt the year prior. 'A girlfriend of mine, Sandra, was going to Hawaii,' she explains. 'She'd already been there, and she'd met this guy named Mark. She was in love with him. And I said, 'oh, well, I'll stop off in Hawaii with you' [en route to New York].' Mark, a semi-pro surfer with long blonde hair, lived in the penthouse of a 1930s building locals called 'the Hippie Hilton' in Hawaii. And as soon as Kerrin arrived, she fell for him. The pair quickly struck up a long-distance love affair between Hawaii and Sydney. 'Sandra went home after a month, I never went to acting school, and I ended up marrying Mark back here two years later,' she says. Once the pair moved together permanently to Hawaii, Kerrin began studying nursing by day, and working in a strip club by night, where she quickly progressed from cocktail waitress to fully fledged dancer. 'I was a tall leggy, good-looking person,' she explains. 'I was a size six on a 5'11 frame. I passed the audition.' Over the next few years, Kerrin achieved her nursing degree and made an extraordinary amount of money. In the process, she also developed a cocaine and quaaludes habit. Eventually, Kerrin's relationship with Mark ended, and she had to move temporarily back to Australia to nurse her mother, who died of cancer on Mother's Day in 1981. Cocaine, cruise ships and ecstasy Over the following decade, what Kerrin describes as her 'unusual' lifestyle took her through a career working on cruise ships around Hawaii (during which time she sold cocaine to 'everyone onboard, from the Captain down') to her eventual firing (because a guest saw her exit the bathroom without washing her hands, none the wiser that she'd actually been doing drugs), to her return to Australia, determined to detox. And it was here, in 1990, that Kerrin's role as a key player in Sydney's drug scene took off. During a night out on Oxford Street, a friend visiting from the States had suggested he begin sending her ecstasy from overseas. 'He said to me, 'Kerrin, if I sent you over 300 ecstasy a week, would you send me the money back?' I was like, 'yeah, sure, of course I will!' I was high as a kite! At the time, I just thought it was post-Mardi Gras, ecstasy talk.' 'About a week later, I get a phone call from the United States. And he goes, 'OK, so I need you to go to Bondi post office, you're going to take this letter saying you are who you are, and you have the authority to pick this up, and there's going to be six macadamia nut canisters'.' And so it began. Soon, Kerrin was doing a roaring trade. 'Every couple of weeks I'd send him back $9,999 from a different bank each time, to keep it under that $10,000 mark [which would flag suspicion].' Swimming in cash, she was soon able to move from her one-bedroom apartment to a fancy three-bedroom house in Paddington. Asked whether she worried about the potential harm she was doing through selling drugs, Kerrin is decisive. 'I was not standing at a kindergarten gate selling heroin,' she says simply. 'I felt absolutely no remorse about selling ecstasy because it wasn't a bad drug in those days,' Kerrin continues. 'In those days, you couldn't get anything more pure as a party drug. You only had to do a half to have eight hours of fun with no alcohol, a Chupa-Chup in your mouth, and a lemonade.' 'Special K' One day, a few months into Kerrin's ecstasy-dealing career, her American contact got in touch to tell her he was sending something different in the post. It would arrive in liquid form, in contact lens containers. It was ketamine - a previously unknown drug on the Australian scene. Kerrin began cooking it up and selling it for $200 per half-gram. Because she was the only person supplying it, Kerrin made 'an insane amount of money', but in the back of her mind, she knew she could be found out at any moment. In June 1991, that's exactly what happened. Unbeknownst to Kerrin, she'd been under police surveillance for a month before they decided to arrest her. 'They came in at 7.30am, and I was up in the top bathroom,' she recalls. 'I lived with three guys, and I thought it was one of them wanting to use the bathroom. I was in my pink flamingo pajamas, and they knocked at the door, and they said, 'get out now'. And I said, 'just hold on a minute, guys'. And they said, 'it's the police'. And I was like, 'OK, I still gotta clean my teeth anyway.'' As police searched her house, seizing drugs and other evidence, they eventually came to the oven, where Kerrin had left a batch of 'Special K' (ketamine) she'd cooked the night before. It was worth $10,000. 'They said to me, 'what's that?'' she recalls, 'and I said, 'it's Special K'. And they said, 'what? Like the Corn Flakes?' I said, 'no, like the ketamine that you give horses, it's a dance party drug, yeah?' So I was the first person in Australia to be busted with ketamine, and they changed the law to make ketamine illegal.' Because the drug had not been on the list of prohibited substances at the time of Kerrin's arrest, she wasn't charged for the ketamine they found. She was, however, charged for the 300 ecstasy pills, 2000 hits of LSD and $100,000 worth of cash that police found. She was eventually sentenced to three years and two months in Mulawa Correctional Centre - an experience she describes as 'hell on earth.' Life after drugs These days, Kerrin lives life on the law-abiding side of the street, exploring a passion for French cuisine, caring for her adopted Maltese Terrier, Bowie, and making videos about her adventures on TikTok for her fascinated followers. And in spite of her former money-making activities, she says that these days, the stakes are too high when it comes to drugs. 'It's a war on quality,' she explains. 'If the drugs were the quality of what I was dealing with when the ecstasy I sold was around, when the Coke was around, when all the drugs were around in those days and nobody was stamping on it 100 times, then you could feel safe about people taking them now.' 'I wouldn't, wouldn't trust anything on the streets these days,' she says. 'And anybody who gets involved with ice is just a goddamn idiot. I see the effects of that every single day.'
7NEWS
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- 7NEWS
Australian actor Henri Szeps, star of sitcom Mother and Son, dies aged 81
Legendary award-winning Australian actor Henri Szeps has died, aged 81. Szeps is best known for his turn as dentist Robert Beare in the ABC sitcom Mother and Son, a role he played from 1984 to 1994. His TV credits also include Number 96, A Country Practice, All Saints, Stingers, and mini-series Vietnam opposite Nicole Kidman, as well as dozens of feature film and stage appearances. He collected countless acting prizes and received an Order of Australia Medal in 2001. Szeps has lived in a residential care facility for the past two years, after revealing he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's. 'His decline from Alzheimer's was largely peaceful, and Henri retained his sense of wonder and joie de vivre until the end,' his family said in a statement. He is survived by wife Mary, two sons and four grandchildren.
Sydney Morning Herald
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Henri Szeps, star of the ABC's Mother and Son, dies aged 81
Henri Szeps, who starred in the original version of classic ABC sitcom Mother and Son, has died. He was 81. Szeps played Robert Beare, a philandering, mustachioed dentist, opposite Garry McDonald and Ruth Cracknell from 1984 to 1994. He also starred in the racy soap opera Number 96; the medical dramas A Country Practice, GP and All Saints; and war drama Vietnam, in which he played prime minister Harold Holt opposite a young Nicole Kidman. Szeps revealed during a 2021 television appearance with his son Josh that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He had lived in a residential care facility since 2023. The actor was beloved by the public and his peers for the intensity, audacity and variety of his performances. Trained in 'the Method' at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre – where a green room is now named in his honour – he made a name of himself in a 1968 production of The Boys in the Band. It was there that he met his future wife, the actress Mary Ann Severne, who was by his side when he died on Wednesday. Aged in their 20s, the pair moved to London, where they became prominent members of the 1970s acting scene. Szeps starred in I, Claudius alongside David Warner and toured in the Prospect Theatre Company with Derek Jacobi. Returning to Australia for his 30th birthday, he became a fixture of Australian stage and television. Geoffrey Atherden's Mother and Son was voted the best Australian television program ever, and Szeps lovingly called his character, Robert, 'the arsehole of the family'. The son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, Szeps was born in a Swiss refugee camp in 1943. His father had already left the family to join the French Resistance and his mother had Henri fostered out to a Swiss couple when he was a baby. He lived with the couple on and off until 1949. He was then reclaimed by his mother, Rose, but due to illness, he spent time in a French orphanage until 1951, when he migrated to Australia with his mother and younger sister Maria.
The Age
24-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Henri Szeps, star of the ABC's Mother and Son, dies aged 81
Henri Szeps, who starred in the original version of classic ABC sitcom Mother and Son, has died. He was 81. Szeps played Robert Beare, a philandering, mustachioed dentist, opposite Garry McDonald and Ruth Cracknell from 1984 to 1994. He also starred in the racy soap opera Number 96; the medical dramas A Country Practice, GP and All Saints; and war drama Vietnam, in which he played prime minister Harold Holt opposite a young Nicole Kidman. Szeps revealed during a 2021 television appearance with his son Josh that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. He had lived in a residential care facility since 2023. The actor was beloved by the public and his peers for the intensity, audacity and variety of his performances. Trained in 'the Method' at Sydney's Ensemble Theatre – where a green room is now named in his honour – he made a name of himself in a 1968 production of The Boys in the Band. It was there that he met his wife, the actress Mary Ann Severne, who was by his side when he died on Wednesday. Aged in their 20s, the pair moved to London, where they became prominent members of the 1970s acting scene. Szeps starred in I, Claudius alongside David Warner and toured in the Prospect Theatre Company with Derek Jacobi. Returning to Australia for his 30th birthday, he became a fixture of Australian stage and television. Geoffrey Atherden's Mother and Son was voted the best Australian television program ever, and Szeps lovingly called his character, Robert, 'the arsehole of the family'. The son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, Szeps was born in a Swiss refugee camp in 1943. His father had already left the family to join the French Resistance and his mother had Henri fostered out to a Swiss couple when he was a baby. He lived with the couple on and off until 1949. He was then reclaimed by his mother, Rose, but due to illness, he spent time in a French orphanage until 1951, when he migrated to Australia with his mother and younger sister Maria.
The Guardian
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Forty years later, Molly's final farewells on A Country Practice remain a blueprint for a good death
When I talk to Australian gen Xers about my new play, I invariably get the same response: a dramatic intake of breath, a hand swiftly covering the chest and an 'Oh my god! Molly! God! I was devastated.' The play imagines two days in the writers' room of A Country Practice, dreaming up what they went through to kill off Molly Jones, arguably the show's most beloved character – played with charm, wit and truth by actor Anne Tenney. Tenney had become Australia's sweetheart and one of its biggest TV stars. It was a big deal to off her. It's a television death that really meant something to the viewers at the time, and in the four decades since it broadcast in June 1985. When I asked people about their memories of the episode, two responses stood out. The theatre director Lee Lewis, a teenager in rural Goulburn at the time, wore funeral blacks to watch the episode: 'I lived my life through the television – it was an important window into other lives, growing up in the country. Molly was dying, and I was dressing in black for her funeral.' Kate Mulvany, who's gone on to be an actor and television writer herself, remembers the night of Molly's death profoundly. Eight years old when it aired, 'I was so grief-stricken afterwards that I asked to sleep in my parents' bed. I wet the pillowcase with inconsolable tears, then changed the pillowcases before my parents came to bed so that they didn't think I'd had some kind of 'accident'. That's how much I cried.' Why is it consistently on lists of the best episodes of Australian television? Why is it such a formative memory for so many? After watching it at least 30 times, I think it's because the episode, written by the screenwriter Judith Colquhoun (who wrote more than 100 episodes of A Country Practice and pretty much every other great show of the 80s, 90s and noughties), provides a blueprint for the perfect death. Of course, there's nothing perfect about a young mother dying of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in her late 20s but the way Molly dies is how most of us would wish to go: at home surrounded by people we love. Molly died over a 14-episode arc, for a couple of reasons: the late James Davern, the creator of A Country Practice, hoped his star might change her mind and stay on the show. If she was determined to leave, he wanted his team of writers to remember that children loved Molly, and he didn't want to traumatise them. The audience lived through the progression of her illness. They were there for the first rumblings of ill health, the diagnosis, the treatment – just as they'd been there in the years before as Molly had a baby, lost a baby, ran for council and tied herself to trees. Her death ultimately became about the importance of love and community, and believing in a future of beauty even though you're not going to be there. Molly is brought home from the hospital to die on her beloved farm, which has been painted lovingly by her community while she was in hospital. In the days leading up to her death, as an audience, we're offered a glimpse into her world. There's the barbecue with her friends, each of them having time to say goodbye and letting her know how much she means to them. The uneasy discussion with her best friend, Vicky (played with an exquisite vulnerability by the late Penny Cook), about the mothering Molly's daughter might need when Molly is gone. A heartbreaking and practical conversation with her husband, Brendan (a beautifully underrated performance from Shane Withington), about the importance of him allowing himself to move on: 'We've had a perfect marriage … well, nearly. And you can't live with just a memory.' These are the conversations we dream of having with those we love, and often circumstances or a lack of emotional courage prevent us from having them. These hard conversations never become saccharine. You can feel the love these actors all have for each other and their sadness at losing their colleague but there also is humour. Somehow, while our beloved friend Molly is being taken away from us before the final ad break, we're laughing at one character marinating a steak with garlic (these are tomato sauce people!), and Molly is joking about who Brendan needs to stay away from after she's dead. Nothing is left unsaid. Even though she is so young, Molly has had a full life, she's accepted her fate and she's loved to her final moment. Maybe that's why we still love this incredible episode of television 40 years later – because who among us wouldn't want the same when our screen fades to black? Melanie Tait is a playwright and journalist living in Sydney
