Wild And Woolly, Wild Life!
Pausing in her frantic schedule to promote her new environmental series, Wild Life, Olivia Newton-John has her eyes fixed firmly on the clock. “Chloe’s performing in a play at school,” Olivia says, like any proud mum from the suburbs. “I really will be in trouble if I miss it.” Nothing is going to stand in the way of Olivia missing her seven-year-old’s big moment in the school pageant. “I’ll just stay positive and I’m sure I’ll make it,” she says airily.
For the time being, Olivia and family have settled again in the madness that is Los Angeles. Chloe’s at school, fitness fanatic hubby Matt is off on some mammoth two-month bike ride, and Olivia has hurled herself on to the promotional merry-go-round to launch her latest album, Gaia, simultaneously in the U.S. and Europe. In between, she promotes Wild Life, which starts on the Nine Network on February 2.
She may be living in L.A, but Olivia’s attitude is still very much Byron Bay. Her philosophy, as she sings on Gaia, is that whatever life dishes up can be dealt with head-on by smothering it in love. “It’s not always easy,” she says, “but that is what I always try to do. It is a philosophy Matt and I adhere to, and one we have tried to teach Chloe.” This love-conquers-all approach, Olivia maintains, has turned her life around. It proved a source of healing when, in the past couple of years, she was knocked about by breast cancer, the death of her father and the collapse of her Koala Blue empire. “I have always been a positive person,” she says. “but going through what I went through, I realised that a very important function of healing is to try not to dwell on the negative. I think positive energy creates more positive energy.”
Olivia’s beliefs go further than just being a new-age hippie, burning some essential oils and hoping for the best. She describes her life now as something spiritual. “It is something I work on,” she says. “I meditate, I keep the positive attitude and I want to promote good. I did the album, Gaia, for myself, but it turns out it’s helped other people, and I’m hoping Wild Life will do some good too. The great thing about Wild Life is that, while it is primarily entertainment, it will also educate people and cause viewers to get involved with the environment. This has been a satisfying project. You actually feel like you are doing something, you know?”
“Beyond Productions are planning a second series,” she says. “And they want to go to even more remote places, such as Russia and Mongolia. I don’t know if I’ll be included in those particular trips, but I will be involved in the show.” In the first series, Olivia can be seen freeing bald eagles back into the wild, feeding rare white tigers and having a particularly close encounter with some wild bears! “There is always a danger when you are working close to wild animals,” she says. “We were surprised by some bears while filming. They were right on us, we were in danger, and they are just so huge. We were told to stay very still, but you can see our fear our eyes grew very big!”
For the time being Olivia, Matt and Chloe will remain in Los Angeles. “Promoting my album is keeping me here,” she says. “Once that is over, it will be back to Byron Bay.”