Olivia Goes Wild
By Pat Bowring
Terror sent the blood racing through Olivia Newton-John’s veins as a boa constrictor wrapped itself around her torso. Off camera, daughter Chloe waited in barely contained fascination. Olivia was in San Francisco to make an episode of her new TV series, “Wild Life” with Olivia Newton-John, which deals with the relationship between humans and the environment.
The series will be coming soon to the Nine Network. For this episode, Olivia had brought Chloe with her to Marine World Africa not to see the boa constrictor but to play with one of the rarest animals on earth, the white Bengal tiger. “There are only about 500 white Bengal tigers left and I wanted Chloe to have the chance to hold one, so I flew her here,” Olivia said. “She wasn’t all that interested, really. She was more absorbed in watching me with the snakes.”
Olivia had her share of thrills and adventures while making the series. “Snakes. Heights. Light planes. I did all the things I swore I would never do,” Olivia said. “I went up in a crane, 50m into the roof canopy of a rainforest in Panama. I’m scared of heights and I had to fight off that feeling that I wanted to jump out and fly. Yes, I confronted a few fears on that trip.” Olivia spent two weeks in Central America. “Belize. Panama. Costa Rica. Yucatan [in eastern Mexico],” she rattled off the list of places she visited.
She was particularly saddened while making an episode on the smuggling of native parrots out of Mexico. Since the Mexican government banned the export of Mexico’s native Psittacines [parrots], the trade has gone underground. “They are bought for the equivalent of $5 from the local Indians. Those parrots which finally make it to their destinations are sold for up to $5000,” Olivia explained. “But so few make it that far. The conditions under which they are smuggled are appalling. Hopefully, when people see this story they will stop and think. In future, I hope they’ll ask where these beautiful birds have come from.”
A happier episode involved visiting actor Patrick Swayze on his Arabian horse stud in Texas. “He really loves his horses,” she said, smiling.