The Baghdad Hotel

At first glance Narelle Benatsky and Gwyneth Paltrow would seem to have little in common. One is brunette and curvy; the other blonde and willowy. One lives in Melbourne; the other in London. One is a full-time mother of two boys; the other is a Hollywood movie star with a little girl and another baby on the way. Yet Narelle, 33, and Gwyneth (or at least her character in the hit movie Sliding Doors) share one of life’s most profound experiences: how they met the man they intend to spend the rest of their days with.

Destiny played her maverick hand in both stories – not, as is often the case, by putting each woman in the right place at the right time, but by putting her in the wrong place at the right time. For Gwyneth’s character it was the quintessentially London location of an Underground train she wasn’t meant to catch. For Narelle, it was the true blue Aussie setting of a neighbourhood pub she wouldn’t normally frequent.

It was a rainy New Year’s Eve in Melbourne in 1995, and although Narelle had never been one for resolutions, the night was to be more auspicious than she could ever have guessed; it would change her life forever. “I hadn’t planned to do anything for New Year,” she admits. “Myself and a friend, Kim, had been out the previous night and we were still feeling a little tired. But her boyfriend Bill said that was a really poor attitude to have so we ended up going to this pub in Collingwood called the Baghdad Hotel. I’d never been there before because I lived a little way out of town in Highett in the south-eastern suburbs – and it just wasn’t my type of place anyway, a bit rough. But Bill said some of his mates from football were going to be there so away we went.

“I was just out on the town to enjoy my new-found slimness. I’d lost 15kg by cutting out most fat, sugar and red meat from my diet, along with exercise, exercise, exercise! I’d broken up with my boyfriend earlier that year and I guess I’d lost the weight to prove a point to him and to myself.”

Finding a life partner though, or even a new boyfriend, was the furthest thing from Narelle’s mind. “My mum had told me there wouldn’t be any marriage material in a place like the Baghdad Hotel, and to start with I thought she was right. It was pretty quiet when we got there and no-one caught my eye.”

However that all changed when a young man called Jason walked into the pub with a group of football mates – as it turned out, the same group Narelle’s friend Bill was a part of. But Narelle’s first impression of Jason was not a good one; far from it. “I noticed him as soon as he arrived because he had a shaved head. I was horrified. He looked really aggressive, like the skinhead Russell Crowe played in the movie Romper Stomper. I didn’t want to speak to him at all looking like that.”

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