{"id":248894,"date":"2025-10-29T15:12:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:12:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/248894\/"},"modified":"2025-10-29T15:12:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T15:12:16","slug":"the-secret-geeky-passion-that-changed-luke-batemans-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/248894\/","title":{"rendered":"The secret geeky passion that changed Luke Bateman’s life"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s a story stranger than fiction – one even the best author couldn’t pen.<\/p>\n

The farmer and rugby league prodigy, turned reality TV heart-throb, who revealed a secret geeky passion for fantasy fiction and ended up scoring himself a book deal after sending social media into a meltdown.<\/p>\n

Luke Bateman is a man of contradictions – but behind the headlines, his life has been full of fascinating plot twists.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Wrong identification bracelets put on newborns at NSW hospital<\/a><\/p>\n

\"LukeLuke Bateman is a man of contradictions – but behind the headlines, his life has been full of fascinating plot twists. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n

Spoiler alert? Luke Bateman is exactly where he needs to be right now, and he couldn’t be happier.<\/p>\n

That place is humble caravan, 900 kilometres north-west of Brisbane, in remote outback Queensland, 90 minutes past the town of Injune, where Luke now works as a logging contractor.<\/p>\n

“I climbed the mountain, and then I got to the top, and I found the view not really worth the price,” he told A Current Affair while reflecting on his past life in the spotlight.<\/p>\n

He was signed by the Canberra Raiders as a teenager and went on to play 71 games in the NRL, before being recruited to try and find love on the reality TV show The Bachelor.<\/p>\n

And behind the glamour, Luke’s bigger secret? Apart from a love of reading? A gambling addiction.<\/p>\n

“I was on a very high income in the NRL and I had no money in the bank,” he said.<\/p>\n

“My mum was paying my mortgage for me.<\/p>\n

“I couldn’t buy groceries … I would go a day without eating because I simply could not buy food.”<\/p>\n

And it’s the mention of his mum and the role she played in his recovery that brought Luke to tears.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Freeman ‘could survive for a year or more’ if hiding in abandoned mine\ufeff<\/a><\/p>\n

\"LukeLuke Bateman is exactly where he needs to be right now, and he couldn’t be happier. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n

“There were times in my recovery where I couldn’t go any further and Mum would pick me up,” he said.<\/p>\n

“She gave me life, and she also saved my life.<\/p>\n

“To cause her so much pain – it hurts me a lot.”<\/p>\n

But Luke admits she’s also proud of how far he’s come – and so is he.<\/p>\n

Unlike most authors pushing out deadlines, Luke has just handed in the first draft of his debut fantasy novel – three months ahead of schedule.<\/p>\n

He’s hoping it will be part of a series of books he plans to write – describing the world in his head similar to the Marvel universe.<\/p>\n

But that’s the only detail you’ll get – Luke’s tight-lipped on the rest, and that has Injune locals like publican Tony guessing.<\/p>\n

“Well, they’re a bit out there,” Tony tells us when asked what he’s heard about the books.<\/p>\n

“They told me they were children’s books,” he joked.<\/p>\n

Luke has other plans – to write romance from a bloke’s perspective and a self help book about the lessons he’s learnt in life.<\/p>\n

He’s also got his own podcast with Nine, called In the Good Books.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Man forced to pay almost $10,000 to remove dangerous tree from his backyard\ufeff<\/a><\/p>\n

\"LukeLuke has plans to write romance from a bloke’s perspective and a self help book about the lessons he’s learnt in life. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n

For now though he spends daylight hours logging, and night time writing.<\/p>\n

“Usually up about 4.30 or five o’clock, and then just brekkie … and then work through till four o’clock in the afternoon, and then come home and write through to 9, 9.30pm at night. Two to three hours every night,” Luke said.<\/p>\n

And somewhere in his downtime, he’s posting book reviews on social media where since April he’s amassed millions of views and fans – among them, Reese Witherspoon.<\/p>\n

He films the clips from the cabin of his logging harvester – where the ceiling lining is peeling away, and every corner is lined with a thick film of dust.<\/p>\n

But it’s his happy place.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Parents fined hundreds of dollars trying to pick kids up from school<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ForFor now though he spends daylight hours logging, and night time writing. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n

Never far from him the whole time, his mobile phone with a picture of him at 12 years old as his screensaver.<\/p>\n

“There are two people whose opinion matters – and that’s your 12-year-old self and your 80-year-old self,” Luke said.<\/p>\n

“And those two people are the people that I wake up and do things for every day, because I want my 12-year-old self to be proud of me and I want my 80-year-old self to be proud of me.”<\/p>\n

You get the feeling Luke Bateman is at the summit he was destined to reach – one where little Luke’s dream is finally coming true.<\/p>\n

“Writing and magic and storytelling are his mountain … and that’s the view that brings him the most joy. And he sits up there and looks at him and he’s happy,” Luke said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It’s a story stranger than fiction – one even the best author couldn’t pen. The farmer and rugby…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":248895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-248894","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=248894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/248894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/248895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=248894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=248894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=248894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}