Jimmy Barnes’ secret love child is now HOMELESS and living in her car just a year after their high-profile reunion

Rock legend Jimmy Barnes’s long-lost daughter is homeless and living in her car, just 12 months after he welcomed her into his extended and ever-expanding clan.

Katy Lee Carroll was revealed as the Cold Chisel frontman’s child last December when Barnes introduced her as a ‘wonderful woman’ in an Instagram post.

Barnes released that statement two days before Christmas and just a few hours after the Daily Mail contacted his management about his latest secret offspring.

‘Christmas is all about family and we would like to introduce my daughter Katy Lee, who has been in our lives for the past five years,’ the 69-year-old wrote.

‘Katy is a wonderful woman and since discovering that I was her biological father, our family and extended family have loved getting to know her.’

Ms Carroll, 38, is Barnes’s second-youngest child – he has four children with his 67-year-old wife Jane, two other once-unknown daughters, and is the father of Today Extra host David Campbell.

Now, Ms Carroll has exclusively confirmed to the Daily Mail she was left homeless in August after having to leave the house she shared with her husband and their three young children.

Ms Carroll has spent months couch-surfing in family and friends’ homes and more recently has been sleeping in her car in bushland, after failing to secure emergency accommodation from housing support services.

Police took out an interim apprehended violence order to protect Ms Carroll from her husband, onetime rugby player Allan John ‘AJ’ Gilbert, in November. 

Ms Carroll, from Coffs Harbour on the NSW mid-north coast, said the couple’s children were staying with Gilbert until she could find secure accommodation for herself.

She has removed any reference to her marriage on her social media profiles.

It comes as Ms Carroll was also forced to step away from her much-loved job in real estate following the death of her sister earlier this year. 

She had been working as a sales associate at Stone Real Estate in Coffs Harbour since at least November 2024 and was described by the agency as a ‘compassionate, supportive and patient’ agent.

Records show Ms Carroll’s last sale was a three-bedroom home in March for around $885,000. 

In a post on social media, Ms Carroll described her sister’s death as a pain that was ‘permanently etched’ into her heart.

‘Not a single day in the past six months has gone by without tears, memories of your last moments, and regrets for every angry thought I held. My heart aches in ways I never thought possible,’ she wrote. 

‘The pain doesn’t get easier, we just learn to carry it with us.’

It’s believed Ms Carroll has been able to stay at her mother’s home, which is around an hour’s drive away from where she was living but she doesn’t like being far from her children.

As recently as October, Ms Carroll posted a series of pictures and videos to her social media, which appeared to celebrate her new chapter in life.

Two months earlier, she posted a video compilation of images showing the family’s life in Coffs Harbour to celebrate ‘settlement day’.

‘Here’s to new beginnings, memories, hard work, closing chapters, and a fresh start and the biggest thank you to my parents who helped us along the way. I love you so much,’ she posted.

Barnes first met Ms Carroll in February 2020 at Kingscliff, in the Northern Rivers region of NSW, the day before Cold Chisel opened at A Day on the Green festival in Mount Cotton.

Ms Carroll was born in 1987, six years after Barnes married Jane and the same year he released his first number-one solo single, Too Much Ain’t Enough Love.

When news of Ms Carroll and Barnes’s relationship broke last year, she said she was grateful for the love and care her recently acquired new family had shown her.

‘It has been an extraordinary gift to be welcomed into such a talented and kind family and I am thankful every day for their support,’ she said. 

‘This discovery, though exciting, has been approached with great thoughtfulness, not only for me, but also for my children and all of our extended families.’

Ms Carroll had spent the first 15 years of her life wrongly believing her mother’s husband was her father, only to discover after their divorce that he wasn’t.

She later hired a private investigator and was told by her mother on her 32nd birthday in September 2019 that she believed Barnes might be her father. 

Ms Carroll then wrote a deeply personal letter to Barnes and Jane, which she gave to the couple during their first meeting.

She was particularly concerned about Jane’s feelings, as she had been conceived during the Bangkok-born multilingual musician’s marriage to Barnes.

The letter expressed her fears of never really belonging anywhere and an ambition for her own children to grow up with more stability than she ever had. 

Earlier this year, Ms Carroll was described by a friend as a ‘beautiful and remarkable person.’

‘Katy has a very spectacular story and it should be brought to life as she is a lot like her father in a lot of ways,’ the friend told the Daily Mail.

‘Katy is very open about her childhood struggles and is very proud of that fact she was able to achieve the things she has, given the trajectory of her life could have been different.

‘She openly talks to many people and makes people feel comfortable and confident to talk about their struggles and traumas.’