You know, when my dad was a racing fan in Australia he would follow Jack Brabham and sometimes only hear if he won two days after a race – when the result finally appeared in his newspaper. These days I can tweet something and it’s all over the world in seconds.
A lady passed me a note in Australia one time that said, ‘My daughter gets bullied at school because she has two moms, and you know, we told her just to tell them to watch ‘Modern Family.’
When I went to high school in Australia, I was exposed to textbooks that outlined evolutionary ideas – such as ape-like creatures turning into people. I recognized the conflict between evolutionary ideas and a literal reading of the book of Genesis.
I was lucky enough to grow up in Western Australia and know that the Australian Outback is vast and spell-binding and heart-stoppingly beautiful, and the characters that inhabit it are unique and hilarious and tough and cheeky.
I certainly have no regret living in the U.S. The quality of life in Australia is good, but it is bloody good here as well.
During my youth, the idea of moving from Lebanon was unthinkable. Then I began to realise I might have to go, like my grandfather, uncles and others who left for America, Egypt, Australia, Cuba.
Australia has the British way of life – and great weather. I could live there.
I guess in Australia every film is sort of an indie film because there are no studios.
The Open Skies issue is something that’s ongoing and we understand that there are issues in Australia that need to be sorted out. It’s something that I think over time there’s an opportunity for us and we’ll work on that in a progressive way.
I always wanted to play ice hockey back in Australia, I’m not sure why, but we didn’t have any ice where I lived. It was very hot – a coastal town.
I still have my agent back in Australia keeping an eye on things there, and we are trying to find the right job which will bring me home to shoot.
Now, perfectly ordinary people will give each other hugs. I mean, it used to be that a hug was reserved for if you came back from Australia – you know, back in the ’40s and ’50s.
In 1958, we decided to go to Australia. We were there for six months, and all the shows went well.
I tend to not think about the kind of movie things I want to be doing, because I’ve worked in all sorts of different places, and I’ve spent all sorts of time in England, and I’d still do things in Australia and in America.
It’s always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.
Since I’ve been in Playboy myself in Australia, I love it, and I think it’s really empowering and positive towards women, which is not a view that many women hold.
I got a promo of ‘Nichts Muss’ in what would have been 2002 or 2003 and fell totally in love with it after listening to it on an airplane that took me to Australia via Taipei and Kuala Lumpur.
Australia’s a place I’ve always wanted to visit because of the beautiful beaches. I am surprised by how cosmopolitan the cities are; it wasn’t what I expected.
Australia’s a big part of my life.
I studied writing at university, and I actually majored in screenwriting. Then I went to work as a bookseller and then as a sales rep and publicist and then various editorial jobs until I ended up with HarperCollins in Australia.
People think that South Africa and Australia are culturally similar but, having worked in both environments, I found that theory to be untrue.
It has nothing to do with money. We don’t play for Australia to get paid. We play for the pride of our country and the opportunity to create history and be the best team in the world.
Whether you go to Turkey or Mexico, China or Australia, find time to involve yourself with the people you’re dealing with.
I was elected by the people of Australia as Prime Minister of Australia. I was elected to do a job, I intend to continue doing that job. I intend to continue doing it to the absolute best of my ability. Part of that job has been to steer this country through the worst economic crisis the world has seen in 75 years.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand have apologised for their treatment of native peoples.
My point is this, the Government made this decision to ban totally beef exports into Indonesia, even to compliant abattoirs and this will have enormous consequences for the beef cattle industry across Australia.
I love the fans here in Australia.
‘Rolling Stone,’ my first single, was only a hit in Portugal, but when we recorded my second single, ‘Can The Can,’ I got that hair-on-the-back-of-the-neck feeling, and I knew it would be huge. It topped the charts in the U.K. and Australia in 1973, and I got my first gold disc.
Well Australia’s been in Afghanistan from the get go, way back in 2001, but we have been resolute throughout and with support from both sides of Australian politics.
I go to Australia probably once every two years. It’s wide-open spaces there, so I just rent a motorcycle and ride out to the middle of the continent. For hours, you don’t see anybody.
They knew who I was in Australia in 2006, but not to a great extent. Now, with the momentum of a second World Cup, it has gone crazy.
People forget that a huge proportion of our jobs still depend on agricultural production in Australia so of course there are exports. That’s easily overlooked.
I have spent a lot of time out in Australia, and so I have a good little fan base out there.
When one travels around the world, one notices to what an extraordinary degree human nature is the same, whether in India or America, in Europe or Australia.
I kind of left everyone behind in Australia – all my friends and my family and I had to break up with my boyfriend.
I went to a lot of different high schools. I had quite a sporadic schooling experience. I went to school in England briefly, to boarding school, and I went to a few different ones in Australia as well. I’m really lucky! I have friends in most countries.
The English probably do that wordplay kind of humour and whimsy better than anyone, and I’ve always felt that my writing goes more to that than what I did when I came to Australia.
And living in Australia I am relatively well off.
Yes. I do about 70 shows a year, in the past year I’ve been to Italy, Australia, Japan, China, just about everywhere. I do it because I love singing. The money is a bonus.
Vilification on the grounds of race or religion is always wrong. There’s no place for inciting hatred within our Australia society.
It is devastating that jail is seen as a rite of passage for many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, part of the natural order of things. It is an outrage that there is an attitude that this is normal. This is not normal. We can’t shrug our shoulders and say this is just a ‘fact of life’ in remote Australia.
What happened was, in my final year of university in Australia, there was a campus comedy competition, and I felt like it was something I could do. I won that competition, and I kept doing it, and I couldn’t get a job in law. So I just kept doing comedy.
It so happened that I was on a German sailing vessel on the way to Australia when the ship was captured, and on the high seas I was made prisoner by the French.
I was 16. I went, auditioned, and then they called me and they were like ‘can you fly to Korea within two months?’ And then my whole life changed. In Australia, I dropped out of school. I had never even imagined myself living apart from my family. I hadn’t even slept more than two weeks out of home.
But in practice Australia – the pluralism of Australia – sorry the sectarianism to an extent stopped at the time you took your uniform off after coming home from school.
I thank all of those who weren’t born in this country for coming here and making a contribution to Australia. We are the least discriminatory country in the world, in my view.
I want to give my compliments to Australia. Ever since your government paid a few million dollars for a Jackson Pollack painting, I figure that it must be a marvellous country.
I’ve been arguing this for months. This is not our war. This is not a war we should be in. Australia’s better spending its time negotiating with North Korea.
My long-term plans are just to get as much experience as I can in Australia and try to make my own films.
Let me give you a little Mendelsohn 101: I came up in television in the early- to mid- 1980s in Australia.
Australia has a very big history of incarceration. What does that mean to us? What does it mean that we came over to a country that’s not necessarily ours and filled it with white prisoners?
We shouldn’t be put out to pasture just because we’ve reached somebody’s idea of retirement, which was certainly happening in Australia, and I think elsewhere as well.
In the past, when we toured countries like Australia or South Africa, we struggled, but we also got to learn a lot, and we learnt to cope with pressure.
I was born in New Zealand, and I was raised in Australia, and I’m very proud of that.
You need to be mentally and physically very strong to go and perform in Australia.
I’ve been to Australia several times, and I just like the earthiness; it’s part of the culture. That’s a really good vibe to be around.
In Australia, a deaf person attending an interview must take their own interpreter at their own expense, or ask the employer to provide one. Believe me, nothing says ‘I’m the best person for this job’ quite like asking an employer to pay to interview you.
