As an outsider, you don’t think of Australia as being old-fashioned – it’s only when you’ve been here for a period of time when you realise there are issues.
God bless America. God save the Queen. God defend New Zealand and thank Christ for Australia.
A lot of artists get famous overseas first. I don’t know what it is here. I have a large underground following in the U.S., but I don’t get the airplay as much as I do in, say, Australia. Over there, they can play whatever they like, it seems, but not so much here.
Residuals from Australia, from the Mission Magic show, saved my butt. So there is a reason for everything.
To be a member of the Labor Party is to be an optimist – optimistic about the future of Australia, optimistic about the ability of government to make a difference.
Australia will always be closer to the U.S. than she is to China because our values and political traditions are much closer.
Australia is a huge rest home, where no unwelcome news is ever wafted on to the pages of the worst newspapers in the world.
Disparity is Australia’s worst social problem. Thousands of lives are slowly being crushed, while billions are wasted on thousands of little initiatives trying to ‘close the gap.’
Australia is the same size as the U.S., but it’s much smaller in terms of population. I’ve been working in the States off and on since the ’80s, and the first time I played a lead here was in ’91, I think.
The death of Malcolm Fraser underwrites a great loss to Australia. Notwithstanding a controversial prime ministership, in later years he harboured one abiding and important idea about Australia – its need and its right to be a strategically independent country.
Even though I am signed to an American label, I want Australia to fall in love with my music because if it doesn’t work here, it won’t work anywhere.
So far, my trip in Australia has been absolutely lovely – wonderful country, wonderful people… And then there’s Melbourne.
Every time I step out there in the Octagon, I aim to do Australia proud. And this isn’t for popularity or a fan base; it has never been for that. It’s just because I love my country, and I want to show the world what we’re doing down here.
Australia lives with a strange contradiction – our national image of ourselves is one of the Outback, and yet nearly all us live in big cities. Move outside the coastal fringe, and Australia can feel like a foreign country.
There’s no doubt that ‘Lion’ is an audience pleaser. I mean, I went to a lot of research screenings all over, in London and America and Australia, and the results were ridiculous, and the crowds were… they just loved the movie, so for me, my job is done.
I’ve learnt a lot about Dad from going around the world and listening to other people. Whether I’ve been in Australia, the Caribbean, Leeds, Scarborough or London there’s always someone who’s got a story about him.
One of the most enjoyable things I do at Government House and when I travel around Australia is to talk with children. I tell them about our parliamentary democracy – and I often do that as I’m walking into an Executive Council meeting next door!
There are a lot of places that I know extremely well. Like, if I were to visit Sydney, Australia, I’d feel very comfortable there. I’m very comfortable in many, many cities.
When I was 23, I went backpacking around Australia for three months. I saved up a few grand, quit my job and flew to Sydney, then went to Melbourne and up the East Coast, which was an incredible experience. I remember running out of money and getting my mum to send me a few hundred quid, which helped me get by.
It may be that the carbon tax is the final chapter in the strange death of Labor Australia.
Tax can be structured in a way that actually encourages investment in infrastructure and encourages investment in Australia from overseas.
My father was a headmaster in England and then the dean of a college in Australia. We moved there when I was about five, so my education was in Australia, and I always felt I was Australian even though my passport was British.
I’m delighted to have been accepted into the U.S.A. with my fishing program after its success in Australia and throughout the U.K., Europe, and Asia.
I seem to have a soft spot in my heart for Australia and Australian actors. After having worked with one in ‘Cinderella’ and a multitude of them in ‘Cats,’ I’ve wanted the opportunity to actually perform ‘down under.’
My commitment to the forgotten families of Australia is to ease your cost of living pressure.
My father was in the navy and so while he was deployed soon after I was born we moved to Australia.
When I was a kid in Adelaide, I dreamed of becoming No. 1 in the world, winning a grand slam and the Davis Cup for Australia.
Coming from New Zealand and Australia is like a tough pre-school for Hollywood. And having been on ‘Neighbours,’ even though the agents I met with hadn’t seen it, they knew it’s where Russell Crowe and Guy Pearce had come from. It was a foot in the door.
I love Australia and loved growing up here, and that’s something I don’t want to deny our children, but it’s difficult sustaining a career in Australia.
I’ve been to Australia, Russia and many of places I wanted to see as a child. But I’ve never visited India. I’ve had many invitations to play there but it hasn’t worked out. People say it’s beautiful, but I think I’d react badly to the poverty.
Messi is the same player in Barcelona and Argentina, and it would be the same if he played with Australia.
I don’t think there’s been that many indigenous players in Australia.
If I can just play, it doesn’t matter where we are… Japan, Australia, or here in the neighborhood.
Southern people remind me a lot of Australia.
The raw materials that Australia has in abundance will always be critical to world growth.
I’ve been to India, Jordan, South Africa, Namibia, Senegal, Australia, Madagascar, Oman, The States, and a lot of countries in Europe, just to visit… I wanted to make music to connect all of these influences, and make a multicultural music with these experiences.
Wrestling in Australia is big, but it’s kind of underground.
I had learned what wealth was, and a great deal about production and exchange for myself in the early history of South Australia – of the value of machinery, of roads and bridges, and of ports for transport and export.
I grew up in Gothenburg, Sweden. I also lived in Ghana for four years and in Australia for one year. My dad was working abroad so we traveled with him. My mom is Indian and was adopted in Sweden.
Australia is fun, but completely exhausting and confusing because I never get on with the different time zone.
Even the Australians don’t know how beautiful their own country is. Particularly where we were shooting ‘The Straits.’ Most of my stuff was done on an aboriginal settlement on the south shore, opposite Cairns, which I believe was the site where the last person was eaten in Australia.
Every man’s got to find themselves, and I found myself in bloody Western Australia, of all places – there was as far away as I could.
You know when you go to Australia you will get sledged. That’s the fun of the game.
I think growing up in the States and Australia, we were exposed to a lot of different types of things. I used to go to Gilman to watch punk shows, and it’s a complete different environment – you were inspired by so many different things, whereas in Hong Kong, there is nothing for anybody.
We Europeans really have the picture of this very open-minded Australia.
Tender Mercies is a very low-budget film, but it was a huge budget compared to anything I had done in Australia. My fee for Tender Mercies was something like five times all of my Australian films combined.
Hey bands, you’re all welcome to fly me to some exotic location and I’ll record you there, Y’know that right? You don’t have to come to this God forsaken place. Hope I can visit you all in Australia one of these days that would be hot! We’ll talk again soon.
Coming to Australia, it was just really magical for me. It just had the wow factor of a different sort of place and, more so, just being with a family that wanted to love me and to have me, because I knew back then, before coming to Australia, there was no way of getting back home or finding my real family.
I started here in Australia, playing a lot of roles but never the lead guy in shows here. I always tended to play the rougher guy, the criminal who gets caught or shot by the cops. Or the boyfriend from the wrong side of the tracks.
I grew up on the beach and I grew up surfing and I grew up swimming in this very genuine beach town back in Australia, and it’s just something I really want to reflect in my lifestyle and in the way I am, the way I represent myself, the way I dress and the music that I make.
I have the greatest respect for Aborigine people, to whom I owe everything. The time I spent with members of the Pijantjatjara and Pintupi tribes in Australia was a transformative experience for me and one that has deeply and indelibly informed my entire life and art.
I still remember when I debuted for India in One-dayers and got out on zero against Australia only.
Australia is a nation of compassion. Courage and compassion. And the third of these great values: resilience.
