From netball captain to I'm A Celeb's queen of the jungle: Liz Ellis crowned winner in emotional finale.

Content warning: This post includes discussion of pregnancy loss that may be distressing to some readers. 

For the first 37 years of her life, Liz Ellis never planned on having kids.

She was busy – studying law, practising law and becoming the captain of the Australian netball team. She also wasn't sure she wanted to be a mum. 

Ellis' impressive netball career started in July 1993, when she debuted for the Australian netball team in Wales; and since then, she has become one of Australia's most successful athletes.

Now, the 50-year-old has a new title to add to her long list of achievements, after being crowned the winner of season nine of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here! on Sunday night.

"Finally I’m a queen!" Liz said before she accepted her crown. "I will so lord this over everybody!"

The netballer beat out Aesha Scott, who placed third, and runner-up Harry Garside, to win $100,000 prize for her chosen charity, Share the Dignity, which works to make a real, on-the-ground difference in the lives of women and girls experiencing homelessness, fleeing domestic violence or doing it tough.

Watch Liz Ellis on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here. Post continues after video. 

In light of the news, here's a look back on Liz Ellis' life and how she became one of Australia's most loved sports stars.

Liz Ellis' start in netball. 

Ellis' love for netball began at a young age, and almost by accident. As a child, she'd watch her mother play, and eventually, she got the chance to try it herself.

"[My mum's friend] Sheila rang mum and said, 'Does Liz want to play?'" she recalled on Mamamia's No Filter podcast. 

"She said, 'Liz won't like netball. She's a bookworm. She's not particularly coordinated'. Sheila was not prepared to take no for an answer."

Ellis' family friend returned a week later, informing her mum that "98 per cent of kids who are charged as juvenile delinquents have never played a team sport".

Sure enough, within that same week, Ellis had set her bed alight with a set of matches. The decision was made for her then and there. 

"The timing was magnificent," Ellis said. 

"I loved [netball] from the first moment I stepped on the court. I loved the team aspect of it and loved being with my friends.

"But mum was right, I was uncoordinated," she continued. "I did like my books still, but I just loved the competitive nature of it and I'm a competitive beast."

At the time, the sport wasn't broadcasted like it is nowadays, so Ellis never considered it as an actual career.

"There wasn’t netball on TV to watch and aspire to, and I didn’t know that there was an Australian team to want to play for until I was in my late teens," she told Business Chicks. 

"I was academically talented and figured out midway through high school that I wanted to be a lawyer, mainly because it sounded glamorous."

Ellis practised law and worked as a solicitor for four years, telling Corrs she mainly worked in the property and infrastructure division in Sydney. 

She played netball on the side, dividing her time between her career and her favourite sport – until she hit a roadblock. 

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A post shared by Liz Ellis (@lizzylegsellis)

"I realised that I didn't have the passion, the same passion for the law, that I had for my netball career," she said on No Filter. 

"I would dot every 'I' and cross every 'T' for my training and my preparation, but I wasn't prepared to do the same for my legal career."

"And I knew that was something that I had to let go of," she added.

Ellis' family were "gutted" she wanted to step away from law – especially since she was earning far less to play netball. 

"But I was leaving to go to pursue my dream and to pursue my passion," she said.

Liz Ellis' relationship. 

Around the time Ellis switched careers, she married former businessman, Matthew Stocks.

The pair met in 1992 while they were both attending the University of England and working at the kids' summer sports camp together. He coached rugby union, while she coached netball. 

"I thought he was really nice, but I was in the middle of a two-year scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport and that was my absolute priority," she told 9Honey.

When Stocks asked for her number at the end of the camp, she said she would call him – but forgot, and didn't think about him again for 12 months. 

They met again a year later at the same camp, and this time, Stocks would not pass up on another opportunity.

"We’ve always pursued our own interests and our own careers and our own ideas," she said.

"I’d dated a few guys before I met him who were like, 'What are you doing with netball, it doesn’t pay you any money and you put too much into it'. 

"That was a good enough reason to give them the flick. Then I met this guy who was super supportive of my career."

The pair got engaged in 2000 and tied the knot in 2006.

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A post shared by Liz Ellis (@lizzylegsellis)

Ellis made the right decision following her gut.

During her 14-year netball career, the athlete won three World Championship gold medals, two Commonwealth Games gold medals and was named Australia’s Most Valuable Player on four occasions.

She became the captain of the Australian netball team in 2004 and remains the most capped player in Australian netball history.

Ellis also founded Liz Ellis Netball Clinics, where she has coached more than 30,000 young netballers.

Listen to this episode of No Filter with Liz Ellis. Post continues after audio. 

Liz Ellis' family and struggles with IVF. 

At the height of her sporting career in her late-20s and early-30s, the netballer wasn't considering starting a family.

"I didn't even allow myself to entertain thoughts of having children through that time," she told Mia Freedman. 

"And it was never a big thing for us. I was never desperate to become a mum. We talked about the fact that one day we might have kids but it was never a pressing concern for me."

As such, Ellis admittedly didn't "do anything to preserve my fertility".

"I didn't try to freeze any eggs or I could have frozen embryos," she said. 

"But it never occurred to us to do anything like that. We always thought, 'Look, if we have kids, we have kids, if we don't? Well, we don't.'"

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A post shared by Liz Ellis (@lizzylegsellis)

While the couple share two kids together now – Evelyn, 10, and Austin, six – Ellis struggled to conceive, as she explained on I'm A Celeb.

While in conversation with Aesha Scott, star of The Below Deck: Mediterranean and Below Deck: Down Under, Ellis told her about her struggle to conceive before she gave birth to Evelyn when she was 38. 

"When she was born, the obstetrician said 'You're old, if you want another one you've gotta start trying straight away' and it took us five years to fall pregnant," Ellis said.

"We did IVF, I had three miscarriages," she continued. 

"But it's okay because I got my baby. It's okay."

In an exclusive unaired clip shared with Mamamia last month, Ellis also spoke about undergoing five rounds of IVF before having her second child, Austin, in 2016.

"We did five rounds, and it was so expensive, and the little bastard came along naturally," she joked.

Earlier in the conversation, campmate Aesha asked Ellis about her dark moments, citing conversations with friends who were going through IVF who spoke about feeling like they were "outside of their bodies".

"I don't think I realised that it can be so emotionally draining," Scott said.

"Yes, it's so draining," Ellis reflected. "I didn't ever get to that point but it's so lonely. Because you don't ever want to tell people you're doing it because in case you don't fall pregnant, you don't want to pity."

Ellis said she learned through writing her books how to navigate the stresses that IVF can put on a relationship.

"Have the conversation about what it's going to be like before you start," she said. "Because when you're so hormonal it's really hard to say what you need. And so if you work out the words that you need beforehand – like, if I say to you 'I feel like sh*t', don't try to fix it."

She said "her thing" when she felt terrible was getting her husband to make her a cup of tea.

"I'd sit and have a cup of tea in silence and I'd feel so much better," she recalled.

Read more: 

• EXCLUSIVE: 'You don't have control of things.' Liz Ellis on her experience with IVF, infertility, and miscarriage.
• 'I don't want kids for ages.' The comment on I'm a Celebrity that brought Liz Ellis to tears.
• 'He was 23.' The stories behind why the I'm A Celeb stars chose their charities.

This article was originally published on April 15, 2023 and was updated on May 1, 2023.

Feature Image: Ten/Instagram @lizzylegsellis.

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