Simmone captioned the footage with some heartfelt words: ‘This morning I whispered to the winds of the southern skies… “Take my love and birthday wishes to my friend, who resides up there. Wrap yourself around her, give her a birthday hug from me.”<\/p>\n
‘Happy heavenly birthday Carpo\u2026 sure do miss you.’<\/p>\n
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McLeod’s Daughters star Simmone Jade Mackinnon (pictured) shared a sweet tribute to her late co-star Rachael Carpani on Monday, to mark what would have been her 46th birthday\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/110831815-16076911-The_Australian_actress_posted_a_throwback_clip_on_social_media_w-a-18_17876315540.jpeg\")
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The Australian actress posted a throwback clip on social media which featured never-before-seen footage capturing some of the fun times she and Rachael (pictured) had enjoyed together on the set of the Channel Nine drama series<\/p>\n
The pair co-starred on the popular drama series from 2003 – 2008, alongside Bridie Carter and Jessica Napier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Many of their former co-stars took to the comments section to offer words of support.<\/p>\n
‘Love you Rach. You too Sim,’ wrote series veteran Michala Banas, while Brett Tucker posted a love heart emoji.<\/p>\n
Rachael died on December 7, 2025, following a ‘long battle with chronic illness’.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n It follows reports that Rachael hid her battle with crippling pain when she appeared on McLeod’s\u00a0Daughters in the early 2000s.<\/p>\n The Australian actress revealed last year she suffered from endometriosis.<\/p>\n Impacting one in seven women, endometriosis occurs when cells in the lining of the uterus are found elsewhere in the body, and symptoms include pain, heavy periods and fatigue.<\/p>\n Rachael’s role as the country girl Jodi working on a cattle station was intensely physical,\u00a0which left her in considerable pain.<\/p>\n The sweet footage captured Rachael enjoying a break between filming as she joked with Simmone that she felt ‘strange and nervous’ to almost be done with her scenes\u00a0<\/p>\n Rachael died on December 7, 2025, following a ‘long battle with chronic illness’\u00a0<\/p>\n In 2007, Rachael was nominated for the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actress and the biggest award, the Gold Logie\u00a0<\/p>\n ‘Getting on and off a horse and riding while you’ve got full-blown endometriosis is terrible,’ Rachael told Stellar Magazine<\/a>\u00a0in 2024, adding: ‘[It’s] unbelievably and indescribably painful.’<\/p>\n Rachael went on to explain why she had to keep her condition a secret.<\/p>\n ‘In 2001, you didn\u2019t announce to a crew of 80 men, ”I\u2019m sorry, I\u2019ve got endometriosis. I feel like I\u2019m being stabbed in the stomach. I\u2019ll need five minutes”,’ she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n She said she used ice packs to ease the discomfort and hid surgical scars from abdominal surgery from the wardrobe department.<\/p>\n Rachael’s family confirmed the star’s tragic death last year, revealing she died ‘unexpectedly but peacefully’.<\/p>\n ‘It is with great sadness that Tony and Gael Carpani announce that their beautiful daughter, beloved Australian actress Rachael Carpani, unexpectedly but peacefully passed away after a long battle with chronic illness,’ her parents wrote on social media.<\/a><\/p>\n ‘The family requests privacy at this very difficult time and will be making no further statements,’ they added.<\/p>\n In 2007, Rachael was nominated for the Silver Logie for Most Popular Actress and the biggest award, the Gold Logie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"McLeod’s Daughters veteran Simmone Jade Mackinnon shared a sweet tribute to her late co-star Rachael Carpani on Monday,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579762,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[66166,557,156,111,139,69,1766],"class_list":["post-579761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-celebrity-life","tag-dailymail","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tvshowbiz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/110831823-16076911-The_sweet_footage_captured_Rachael_enjoying_a_break_between_film-a-15_17876315535.jpeg\")
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<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/110831861-16076911-Rachael_and_Simmone_were_then_seen_bonding_on_set_as_they_joked_-a-17_17876315538.jpeg\")
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