Guest
Melody Horrill
Episode Number
№3
Melody Horrill is an award-winning journalist, author, documentary producer and conservation advocate whose extraordinary relationship with a wild dolphin changed the direction of her life.
Growing up in a home marked by severe domestic violence, Melody learned early how to survive by shutting parts of herself away.
Years later, while studying at university, she began volunteering with researchers monitoring wild dolphins in Adelaide’s Port River.
There she met Jock, an injured, solitary dolphin.
What began as scientific observation developed into an extraordinary relationship that helped Melody rediscover trust, connection and a sense of safety she had struggled to find elsewhere.
That relationship became the foundation of a lifelong commitment to protecting dolphins and the natural environment.
Melody went on to build a successful career across Australian television and journalism, working with ABC, Nine, Ten and Seven and producing environmental documentaries that reached audiences around the world through CNN.
Her work raising awareness of the Port River dolphins contributed to the campaign that ultimately led to the creation of the Adelaide Dolphin Sanctuary.
Years later, Melody told her full story in the memoir A Dolphin Called Jock, later released internationally as The Dolphin Who Saved Me, documenting how an animal living freely in the natural world helped a traumatised young woman begin to heal.
Today, she continues that work as co-chair of the Jane Goodall Institute’s international Cetacean Committee and as an advocate for marine conservation.
In The 8th Voice, Melody explores trauma, trust, resilience, nature and the extraordinary relationships that can change a human life. It is a conversation about what happens when healing comes from somewhere we never expected to find it.
