Kyabram mother Steph McLennan doesn’t get a lot of sleep.
That is not unusal considering she is the primary carer of a 22-month-old boy who isn’t yet attuned to his own body clock, let alone that of his mother.
Steph is regularly up in the early hours of the morning to tend to her almost two-year-old, but she is not blaming him, or his 11-year-old brother Zak, for her recent lack of sleep.
That fault lays squarely at the feet of the musician who is among the great loves, next to her family, of her life.
That is one Taylor Alison Swift, originally of West Reading, Pennsulvania.
“I have a toddler (Harry) who hardly sleeps, so when Taylor announced the pre-registration and Australian concert dates at 3am one morning, I was awake and pre-registered straight away,” Steph said.
So desperate was the former Kyabram pharmacy worker that she did every bit of research she could to find out just what was the best course of action in order to secure a ticket to the “hottest act in town’’.
“I found out if you had an Amex card, that gave you a two-day head start,” she said.
“I didn’t have one, but I did a lot of ringing around and one good friend came through.”
Steph said being able to use the Amex purchase method was literally the “trump card’’ in getting her across the line.
“I even underestimated how hard it would have been with the card. I was crying, I was in disbelief,” she said.
“It was so easy to get tickets for the first three concerts.”
Steph also gave credit to son Harry — who, by the way, would probably have been named Taylor if he was born a girl — for securing the tickets.
“If I hadn’t have been up with him, I may not have registered straight away. It could have made a difference,” she said.
Steph said she wasn’t going to try for tickets to Sydney shows, but after watching the debacle that was the release of tickets to Taylor Swift concerts in the US, she decided to “have a go’’.
Not only did she secure two tickets to a Sydney concert, but after deciding to try her luck in the Melbourne lottery that was the T-Swift concert sale, she managed to buy a third.
“I got a couple of the VIP tickets for Sydney as part of her Karma is My Boyfriend package,” she said.
She will take her husband, Scott, despite a friend already having made a play for her to leave her long-time partner at home and take her instead.
The VIP packages involve close-to-the-stage standing positions in the reserved section and front-of-the-line access for merchandise.
"I thought I had no hope for Melbourne and I was online for six hours,“ Steph said.
“I finally got through and purchased one more ticket (another in the VIP section). That was the only option that was left, part of her All Too Well package.”
Steph knows they are expensive tickets, but she explained the spending away by saying “she is worth it’’.
It won’t surprise anyone to discover, being a long time Swifty, Steph is among millions who have been swept up in the emotion of the recent ticket sales for the seven Australian concerts which are scheduled for February next year.
At 37, she admits to being an “old Swifty’’, but she felt like an emotionally unbalanced teenager when she managed to secure tickets to the Melbourne and Sydney concerts.
So emotional was Steph when she realised she had been “one of the lucky ones’’, she found herself immediately in tears before going into unusual ”radio silence’’ status in regard to her securing the tickets.
“None of my friends got tickets. I kind of felt really bad,” she said.
“Even though I felt like celebrating and telling the world, I held back.”
However, she was able to immediately share the news with her sister and mother, neither of whom are fanatical about the performer who is listed by Forbes as the richest female musician in US history with music as the only source of income.
It wasn’t until one of Steph’s closest friends did a “welfare check’’ that she realised just how lucky she had been in securing the tickets.
“She is as big a fan as me and missed out,” Steph said.
“I know of two others who got tickets, but they are just fellow Swifties, not close friends.”
She said everyone who knew her was aware of how Taylor Swift-obsessed she was.
“I’ve been following all the socials since she announced the tour. I knew that it was going to be hard to get tickets since she first announced the Eras tour,” Steph said.
“I’ve been checking the website every day for international tour dates.”
Steph has been to every Taylor Swift tour apart from Fearless (2009-10).
“I have been to the other three, The Red Tour (2013-14), Reputation (2018) and The 1989 World Tour (2015),” she said.
She said the Eras tour would be the first time she had shared her love of T-Swift with husband Scott, who she described as ‘’a secret Swifty’’.
“I went to the other concerts with my close girlfriends,” she said.
“I will go by myself to Melbourne and the following week we will go to Sydney.”
For those who missed out on tickets — my partner was one of them — Steph knows just how incredibly lucky she is.
“I follow a lot of fan pages as well. A lot of Australian ‘Swifties’ are applying for overseas concert pre-sales,” she said.
“It blows my mind how lucky I was. I lost sleep waiting for the tickets to go on sale, from her announcing pre-sale tickets to find out when they would go on sale.
“My friends and family really underestimated how hard it was going to be. They had no idea.”
Four million Australians signed up for the pre-sale, but only 630,000 will attend the seven concerts.
But it was the Saunders St mother, with the backing of her supportive husband, who became the toast of the area by securing three tickets.
