Why Olivia Won't Call Australia Home

In the penthouse of a city hotel, in a room all marble and glass and soft pink curtains, Olivia Newton-John is as fresh and pretty as ever her hair as long, thick and blonde, her smile as dazzling. She still has the kind of looks you wished you had when you were 16. At times she still looks 16: let's face it, some 16-year-olds should be so lucky!

Still, as Olivia would be the first to point out, looks aren't everything and she is trying to teach her daughter Chloe, who is nearly four years old, that it's not how you look that counts, it's what you do. Anyone can be pretty, she says. It's what's inside that counts.

When The Weekly spoke to her, Olivia had just arrived back in Melbourne, her old home town, for one of her many flying visits. She was comfortable in her penthouse (complete with modelling dough pots belonging to a certain young lady), but you couldn't say she seemed at home. In her voice, there are hints of America. In the way she looks out the window on Melbourne, spread below, you feel there is affection left, but somehow she has moved on. Once, she thought she would want to bring her child up in Australia, now she is not so sure. America is my home now. That's where my husband's career is that's where my life is.

She also likes the way people seem less surprised by her in the US, and she laughs a bit: Maybe they are just a bit more blase about me over there. So, as a family, they are more easily able to do the things she and Matt and Chloe love doing to go fishing, walking, to picnic on the beach without strangers staring at them. Olivia likes being anonymous.

In Australia, on this visit, she was shocked to find a newspaper had taken a picture of her outside her Sydney flat without asking permission. By her standards, that was a dirty trick. And although Koala Blue, her multi-million-dollar chain of shops, takes up most of her time, even it is not as closely linked with Australia as you might imagine. At first, most of the clothes were made here. But there were problems. In the end, it seemed Americans were keener on the Koala Blue logo than the origin of the designs.

Now she and Pat Farrar, her partner in the venture, design and have the clothes made up wherever it suits them best. Olivia gives you the feeling that she'd give up showbusiness for designing tomorrow. And she seems shrewd about fashion. She asked me where our writer's jumper came from - and gave a wry laugh when she heard it was from China.

Now there are 32 Koala Blue shops in America and, by next March, Melbourne will probably have the first Australian Koala Blue. Later, Olivia will also have shops in Sydney and Surfers Paradise. The interesting thing about Olivia Newton-John is how unselfconscious she seems. She says she doesn't worry that her looks might fade, that her records won't be hits, that her shops won't keep selling millions of dollars worth of clothes.

Her mind seems to be on more serious matters. She is deeply concerned about the environment, though you suspect she was a greenie long before it became fashionable. Chloe already understands about chemicals she always asks whether the fruit she is about to eat has been washed. And her mum is one step ahead I usually peel fruit now, just to make sure. Olivia is a member of the American group Mothers Against Pesticides, whose spokeswoman is Meryl Streep.

In Australia, Olivia lent her voice to a successful protest by locals in northern New South Wales against a housing development planned near her country property. Soon, she will take Chloe to Brazil to see the rainforests for herself and to make a television program about their devastation. I want her to understand about trees and about nature and how we have got one chance to save the earth. I'm terribly worried that we will kill ourselves by killing the earth.

But the picture is not painted too blackly. Chloe is a normal little girl, who loves playing dress-ups and would rather be called Cinderella than Chloe. She loves her grandparents and her pet rabbit (named Dallas, from whence he came). Chloe's favourite foods are broccoli, chicken and pasta and she still wakes up once a night and comes in to mum and dad for a cuddle. Olivia looks vaguely guilty, I don't mind it though, in fact I kind of like it.

While she was in Australia this time, she made a recording of lullabies songs mothers would sing to their babies to send them to sleep. At the mention of babies she is reflective. Last year, she had a late miscarriage while carrying her second child. She finds it hard to talk about because it is so personal, but it's clear she would dearly love another child, despite recent rumours that her husband feels differently and leans towards adoption.

She waves away talk about the pain of childbirth and early days of baby blues. Childbirth is one day, one day of your life. It's nothing when you think about it. She enjoyed having Chloe and she breastfed her for a year. Last month she turned 41, an age when it wouldn't be so easy to have another child. Still, she is in love with her family. Her husband, Matt Lattanzi, is a fantastic father.

After two weeks with Chloe in Australia, she was happy to allow her to go home to the US to be with him. She missed her rabbit ... and her dad, she says and laughs at Chloe's order of preference. It's all a long way from the 16-year- old who won three gongs on the Kevin Dennis Talent Show all those years ago. Evie Hayes rang mum after the show and told her she would like to manage me and I guess it went from there.

But she hasn't performed in public for years and doesn't miss it. I never was one for the big concert. These days, she keeps fit through long walks. She doesn't do aerobics any more, but she watches her diet carefully. She and Matt are vegans they don't eat meat or dairy products. At first it was hard, when you finally clean out the fridge, but you learn gradually the way to cook without all the old things. She recommends soaking the beans so essential to vegan cooking overnight, otherwise they give you gas, she laughs.

While we are talking, she has a vaporiser boiling away in the room to stop the air-conditioner from drying out my skin. It gives the room a pleasant feeling, though it looks a bit like a Martian kettle, Olivia laughs at the thought. When she laughs, she looks even younger. She says, looking down at her pointy black cowboy boots and taking a bite of her (peeled) apple, I want to age gracefully. She smiles, If I can.