STORY - CHARLES WOOLEY: It's spring time in Melbourne.

BELINDA EMMETT: It's just a little bit unpredictable, a little bit temperamental

CHARLES WOOLEY: We can tell you come from warmer climates.

BELINDA EMMETT: I know.

CHARLES WOOLEY: On this wet, cold day, Belinda Emmett, who's hardly recognisable as the blonde beach chick from a much sunnier place called Summer Bay…

BELINDA EMMETT: I've dyed my hair since I was about 15, so it has always been blonde while I've been in the public eye, but it fell out - not all of it, but most of it - and, you know, anything on your head, green moss, will do. You know, some on your head.

CHARLES WOOLEY: So you like it down there?
At 28, this determined young woman is fighting for her life, confronting a second and serious returned bout with cancer. But she will allow nothing to dampen her spirits. Up, umbrellas.

BELINDA EMMETT: I don't like to think of it as a disease or cancer, or whatever. It's a health challenge. There's days where you do lose it. There's days where you just want to just give up, you know, but you don't, you know? The fighting spirit kicks back in and then you are okay again.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Belinda was just 24 when she was first diagnosed with cancer in 1998. It was breast cancer and the news made headlines around Australia.

BELINDA EMMETT: I found a lump in my breast and that had been there for a couple of years, but I thought I was too young.

CHARLES WOOLEY: You'd noticed it two years previously?

BELINDA EMMETT: I can't remember the specific time or day or anything like that, but it would have been two years prior to that I noticed it.

CHARLES WOOLEY: This is exactly what you're told not to do, not to ignore things.

BELINDA EMMETT: Absolutely. At the time the awareness wasn't there with, you know, women in their early 20s. I was being fairly complacent about the whole thing because I really didn't think there would be anything wrong with me, but, you know, obviously there was. But I was okay. I don't know, I did everything I needed to do, had the operation and then afterwards the radiation therapy, it was a contained tumour, things were looking really good. I was sent off on my merry way and the odds were pretty good it would never come back again. I want to be a living, breathing example of the fact that cancer need not be a death sentence and - sorry - and that life after breast cancer can be really beautiful. I just went back into my life and carried on as I had before really, not really thinking about it too much. Phew, you know, that was lucky.

CHARLES WOOLEY: For some years Belinda's life after breast cancer was all positive. She was in remission. Her career starring in All Saints was back on track and by her side a new partner, Rove McManus. The odds of the cancer returning, she was told, were only five percent. Then, last year, Belinda got the break every young soap star hopes for, a movie role in the Australian film The Nugget, alongside Eric Bana. It was on the set of the movie that Belinda began to experience intense back pain. A local GP sent her to Sydney for further tests.

BELINDA EMMETT: The prognosis wasn't so great. The prognosis wasn't good. It wasn't so much if, it was when. It had spread and it wasn't looking good. So that was, yeah, that was the sort of situation I was faced with at that point.

CHARLES WOOLEY: This must have tried your natural optimism.

BELINDA EMMETT: Yeah. I mean, I try to find positive situations, something positive in every situation. This was a tricky one. I was really, really struggling to find anything positive in this at all.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Belinda began four months of chemotherapy. The diagnosis was that the cancer had spread to her bones. The prognosis, the probable outcome with this kind of cancer in her age group doesn't offer much hope. Her life expectancy measured in years, not decades.

BELINDA EMMETT: I accepted the diagnosis, but not the prognosis. The prognosis to me was crap, basically, you know? It's a guess. I think that if you really take that prognosis seriously, then that will be your fate. If you're told you've got five years to live, you'll probably die five years to that day.

CHARLES WOOLEY: When you told that doctor this was how you felt, the reaction was?

BELINDA EMMETT: Well, I think they probably mistook my positive attitude for denial and for ignorance and I was kind of told, "Well, don't you realise the seriousness of your situation and what's going to happen to you?" and all the this kind of thing, "You're going to be bombarded with all different sorts of chemo for the rest of your life", all these sorts of things. And I just just walked away and that probably made me even more determined to find other methods to heal myself, to get well.

CHARLES WOOLEY: The difficulty is finding an oncologist, a cancer doctor, who is going to go along with these things.

BELINDA EMMETT: I now have a very broad-minded oncologist who's aware that I'm doing lots of other alternative therapies, natural therapies, and she's great about it. She's very supportive and quite patient.

CHARLES WOOLEY: This is the biggest section in publishing, isn't it, self-help?

BELINDA EMMETT: I think it is, yeah.

CHARLES WOOLEY: For those whom conventional medicine doesn't seem to have the answers, there's a huge and growing industry called alternative medicine.

BELINDA EMMETT: Sometimes all you have to do is know that somebody else has done it, you know, and that gives you enough hope to say, "Well, if they can do it, I can do it."

CHARLES WOOLEY: I think a lot of doctors who are more open-minded on these matters would still worry about the idea that this wealth of literature might be holding out false hope to people.

BELINDA EMMETT: Yeah, well, you know, look, some of it probably is a crock. Some of it is probably just… I don't know, it's probably not going to be of any benefit to anybody. But there's some stuff out there that's really worthwhile. I honestly believe that. I don't believe it gives people false hope. It gives people hope in hopeless situations, you know. Where other people have given up on them, it offers other alternatives. And you just have to have something like that in these sorts of situations.

CHARLES WOOLEY: From books and meditation and alternative healing, from traditional herbs and potions and old-fashioned vegies organically grown, Belinda has been shopping for ideas and hope.

BELINDA EMMETT: There's something really nice about having … just eating food that you know hasn't been tampered with, that you know all the antioxidants, all the enzymes, all the good stuff, the nutrients are still there and they'll be working in your body.

CHARLES WOOLEY: You could do commercials for this stuff.

BELINDA EMMETT: I could, couldn't I? Listen to me. These people will love me.

CHARLES WOOLEY: What you're looking for is a certification of being organic: beautiful, camouflaged little green caterpillars.

BELINDA EMMETT: You often get that with organic food. Usually you take home a couple of friends with you, let's face it. Over the last 12 months I've studied this. I think I know everything there is to know about cancer and know absolutely nothing about cancer, because there's just still that mystery factor, I think. So, you know, I guess that's why you really just have to kind of look at everything and sort of leave no rock unturned, I suppose, you know, and just try and get everything in perfect balance so that you are healthy and that way .. I don't believe that cancer can exist in a healthy body and I honestly believe, given the right environment, your body knows how to heal itself.

CHARLES WOOLEY: And you're giving it the right environment now?

BELINDA EMMETT: God, yeah, I'm doing my damnedest.

RICHARD WILKINS: How are you doing?

BELINDA EMMETT: Well, very well. Yep. Fighting fit.

ROVE McMANUS: I'll help you out if you need anything.

BELINDA EMMETT: You can carry me if I need it.

ROVE McMANUS: Piggyback.

BELINDA EMMETT: Rove's fantastic. He doesn't flinch. He doesn't flinch. He's incredible, absolutely incredible. Honestly, I don't think I could have gotten through this the way that I have, if I hadn't had him there for support.

CHARLES WOOLEY: It's not something you can do alone?

BELINDA EMMETT: Oh, it is, but it would be a lot harder to do on your own.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Is Rove as optimistic about it as you are?

BELINDA EMMETT: Oh, absolutely, yeah. We're very similar in that respect. And absolutely.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Do you really write his material?

BELINDA EMMETT: Where did you hear that?

CHARLES WOOLEY: I just heard around the traps.

BELINDA EMMETT: Some of it. I'm funnier than he is, you know that, don't you? It's just a bit of a myth that he's the comical genius of the partnership, but … no, I don't really write his material. I'm just making it up.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Indeed, Rove has been so supportive as to even take on Belinda's diet, although it's not all mung beans and tofu.

BELINDA EMMETT: Oh, that's so nice. See, who said that healthy living had to be boring?

CHARLES WOOLEY: Certainly I'm a convert.

BELINDA EMMETT: Yeah? You'll be a changed man by the time you are finished with me, Charlie, don't you worry.

CHARLES WOOLEY: I'll need a new suit of clothes. One of the things your heart desires is kids at some stage, isn't it?

BELINDA EMMETT: Oh, yeah, always. That's very important.

CHARLES WOOLEY: I half suspect it's part of the reason why you've taken the treatment course that you have, because repeated radiation treatment could mean that children were really out of the question.

BELINDA EMMETT: And chemotherapy as well, yeah, absolutely, so, yeah, that's just an added advantage of doing it this way, I think, is the fact that I'm trying to keep everything intact, you know. So, yeah, hopefully down the track, look, I can't see why that can't be possible.

CHARLES WOOLEY: And probing into your personal life, does Rove share this passion for children?

BELINDA EMMETT; Yes, yes, he does. I'm not going to say any more about it, but, yes, he does. I'm very passionate about raising funds for research so that one day my children, or maybe grandchildren, won't have to fear breast cancer or any kind of cancer.

CHARLES WOOLEY: Belinda now lends her time and celebrity to the cause of cancer awareness. Her focus is on healing herself. Her life is all about beating the cancer.

BELINDA EMMETT: You know, like the past 10 months I guess has been such a learning experience for me and I'm at the point now where I'm getting better. I'm actually getting better. I'm doing really, really well.

CHARLES WOOLEY: What evidence do you have for this?

BELINDA EMMETT: Scans and things like that. I have regular scans and check-ups and stuff.

CHARLES WOOLEY: This is back in mainstream conventional medicine?

BELINDA EMMETT: Yeah, I'm not anti-conventional medicine at all. That's the whole thing, I think, to be sensible, to be sensible about the whole thing, but also just to, as I said, look outside the square a little bit as well, and knowledge is power, just to research and to just investigate things a little bit more.

CHARLES WOOLEY: To know your enemy?

BELINDA EMMETT: Yeah, absolutely, I guess to face it. I think people underestimate the power that they have within themselves, I really do, and I think these kinds of challenges, they force you to look that little bit deeper and see what you're really made of.

CHARLES WOOLEY: You're stronger than you realised you were, aren't you?

BELINDA EMMETT: Yeah, I am. I always knew I was pretty strong. I've always been pretty gutsy and pretty ballsy, but I think I surprised myself this time around.

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