Sport and TV stars share their favourite Australian memories

TODD WOODBRIDGE

I’ve got a connection to Alexandra in Victoria, where the bushfires hit earlier this month.

You saw the CFA volunteers out there, putting everything on the line for their community.

We saw it with Bondi shootings as well, when we really needed to pull together.

We as Australians have this unique ability to front up for one another when it’s needed most.

I think that quality separates Australia from every other nation.

I’ve lived overseas for long periods of my life. All that time away makes you appreciate more what you have at home.

When elsewhere, people often come up to me and say, “Hey Todd, I’m Australian”, and you have this instant connection to home. It’s always been that way.

When Australians travel, whether it’s for sport or a Contiki tour, they go together and they experience the world together.

They have this deep connection in their pride for our country – the land, the sea, the surf, and the way that we are able to live.

I’ve always loved that element of being Australian. You get a special feeling every time you get on a plane and you’re about to go home.

Our kids were born in Orlando, Florida, and it was obviously very important that we brought them home to grow up and have that connection.

They’ve started to travel the world themselves, but they have this appreciation for the advantages of, say, our education and health systems, or the pathways to pursuing a career in elite sport.

A lot of people forget how successful Australia is at doing things. We invent so many things that the world embraces.

Or take tennis. When I first went overseas to a major, the Australian Open was the poor grand slam.

We were just hanging on.

When I was 16, in 1988, I won the first ever match at the then new National Tennis Centre on what was then Court 10, before giving a very earnest interview to a young Eddie McGuire.

Now we lead the way with grand slams. And we drove the change, such as rooved stadiums and bigger footprints so that more people can come and enjoy the sport.

The tournament showcases Australia to the world and I think that probably gets lost sometimes on people at home.

It gets more eyeballs than any other event around the world at this particular time of year. And we’ve been able to bring that Australian culture into it, those summer touchstones such as coming together, the heat and the sweat.

The Australian Open is so Australian. The way that people come in, the way that they enjoy it, the way they get behind players.

It’s just another great reason to celebrate our unique culture.

Todd Woodbridge is a Channel 9 commentator who won 22 tennis grand slam titles over his playing career.

KATE CEBERANO

I love Australia because this is the country where my dad, Tino Ceberano, immigrated from Hawaii to be with his South Australian wife, Cherie, and their three children.

Because of the freedoms we have here, my dad was able to make a living doing what he truly loved — and was exceptional at — martial arts. At the time it was an uncommon artform, and his contemporaries were Bruce Lee and Chuck Norris.

Through dedication and passion, he excelled in his discipline, built schools all around the country, and headed up groups of black belts who went on to represent his style of karate. He appeared regularly on morning television, espousing the virtues of physical health, self-respect, and self-discipline.

He quelled gang wars between skinheads and bikers, reformed many angry adolescents, and may have prevented them from further crime — certainly keeping many out of prison.

My mum was able to flourish in her field too, as a counsellor and life coach. She managed people and artists (including myself), helping them realise their aspirations in their chosen fields, and continues to do this today at the age of 80.

In my lifetime, we have not suffered the oppressions of war, nor lived under communist or fascist regimes that strip away liberty. As Australians, we can travel freely — and we seem to enjoy this almost pathologically. We feel the space of this country in our bones and can sometimes be unaware of just how lucky we are.

This country has given me a life in music — a culture where I can ramble across vast distances, playing live shows, hopping from town to town and doing it all again and again. It is a privilege.

Australia is a melting pot of people — of race, colour, and creed — and we respect and honour the First Nations people of this land. Recent wake-up calls have prompted us to be more aware of our similarities, our shared humanity, our sense of community, and our responsibility to sustain one another.

We will have to work hard to keep this country free. Freedom is never a given; it requires intelligent governance, strong leadership, and like-minded individuals willing to uphold it. I can’t be sure we always have all of these things. At times, we are too easily influenced, or we lose focus and energy on small fires.

I hope we have the imagination to see ourselves in the future — and to begin preparing, today, the Australia we want for tomorrow. For our sons and daughters, and for the generations to come.

Kate Cebrano is a singer and actress.

PETA CREDLIN

To me, Australia remains the best place in the world. But right now, we’re drifting backwards as a nation unsure of who we are and what we stand for.

The Bondi massacre has crystallised a problem that’s been brewing ever since Gough Whitlam’s immigration minister, Al Grassby, started talking about multiculturalism rather than integration and assimilation. Because the problem with multiculturalism isn’t the varied mix of people who choose to make their home here in Australia, but the ever-increasing view of elites that we have no culture of our own to encourage them to join, that we don’t have a culture of our own worth celebrating and defending.

And we do.

Indeed, that’s why so many want to build a life here with us.

The genius of modern Australia, since 1788, has been that successive waves of newcomers have mucked in together with the existing inhabitants to make the most of a country that’s reflected the best of the British Isles and of Western culture more broadly.

First, the English, the Irish, the Scots and the Welsh – dropping their ancient differences to build a country in an ancient land that, within scarcely a century of the first settlement at Sydney Cove, was not just a democratic pioneer in giving the vote to people of both sexes and all races; but also had the late 19th century world’s highest standard of living.

When I think about the hard life my ancestors experienced arriving in 1854 as early settlers to Victoria, I am incredibly proud of their determination, resilience and grit to build a life in the desolate plains of the Mallee. They knew hardship and tragedy on an epic scale and yet they succeeded. And this is why I refuse to allow their contribution to this country to be diminished by those who want to demonise our colonial past.

Never forget that the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia made us one of the only nations ever to emerge, not thorough war or revolution, but through a process of negotiation, compromise and ultimately, a people’s vote.

Watching the shambles last week, as all sides played politics in Canberra, was a reminder of how the current generation of Australian leaders are comparative pygmies against our federation fathers, plus the likes of Curtin, Chifley, Menzies, Hawke and Howard – the latter two, especially, giving us a quarter century of good government that now looks like a ‘golden age’. I can’t be alone in worrying that leaders like them are a thing of the past and I hope I am wrong.

As well as taking pride in all our country has achieved, this Australia Day, we must commit ourselves to protecting and preserving what’s best in our way of life.

If Australia is to flourish far into the future as a free, fair, prosperous, and harmonious society, our racially non-discriminatory immigration policy must do more to take our values into account. Everyone is welcome, provided they join Team Australia and pull their weight, rather than simply expect to live in Hotel Australia, taking advantage of the facilities but not contributing.

This Australia Day, let’s drop the nonsense of flying three flags not one; and pretending that the country belongs to some of us, rather than equally to all of us. After all, to succeed we all need to believe we have an equal stake in the future and come together as one people.

Peta Credlin hosts her own TV show called Credlin on Sky News.

JESSICA FOX

Sport has taken me to incredible places, highs and lows, but there’s no place like home. Home is the best flat whites, incredible coastlines, and the feeling that this is the best place in the world to dream big and chase it. It’s also the great people – resilient, hard‑working, and always ready for a laugh.

As an athlete, to wear the green and gold at an Olympics or Paralympics is the greatest honour. I can’t wait to cheer on our Winter team over the next few weeks. I’m one of 4554 Australian Olympians, including 66 Indigenous Olympians whose culture and connection to land and water remind us where we stand. Wearing the green and gold, we represent you. It’s a pledge to show that grit, mateship and down‑to‑earth spirit that people always recognise as Aussie.

Mateship is more than a word; in sport it means standing by your teammates, and in life it’s sharing the load and looking out for those around you. We saw that with Bondi, we’ve seen it through bushfires, and floods, when people come together and support each other through heartbreak.

I came to Australia from France when I was four. I remember how much more we played here. Getting sunburnt, the hot concrete barefoot, ice blocks melting too fast, riding bikes on wide roads, running between neighbours’ houses to jump in the pool. It felt free. It felt safe. Life outdoors felt like the Aussie way … backyard BBQs, sport after school, the beach on the weekend. As I grew up, I came to appreciate the beauty and richness of our landscape, and the opportunities for a healthy life here.

That’s Australia to me: a beautiful land, a fair go, great people, and a shared jersey – the green and gold – that unites us all.

Jessica Fox is an Olympic and world champion slalom canoeist.

WARREN BROWN

As a rule of thumb Melbourne Cup Day and Australia Day bookend the best time of the year when parliament shuts down, where people go on holidays, spend time with family, eat and drink way too much, make resolutions and then return to work and school for the new year.

But as we know, tomorrow – Australia Day 2026 – will be like no other.

That catastrophic December evening which saw the violent deaths of 15 innocent people has affected Australia in a surprisingly unexpected way, somehow in the wake of gunshots, confusion and terror, a bereaved and increasingly disparate nation suddenly galvanised to become a single voice.

This voice became so loud, so deafening, nobody could escape it, certainly startling an evasive Prime Minister into a kind of hapless, decision-making paralysis, painted into a corner from which there was no escape except to eventually back-flip his way out of there.

In an Australia that for decades has sleepwalked its way into a quagmire of ideologies where we’ve become confused and lost about our national identity, where the waters have been deliberately muddied for Australians as to who we are, the actions of two terrorists that Sunday suddenly clarified the realisation as to who we are not.

We are not an angry people. We are not a country consumed by hate. We are not about vengeance. We are not about a disrespect for human life.

Instead, we Australians are the revellers at the Chanukah celebration in Bondi, we are the Lifeguards and Lifesavers who risked their lives, we are the mourners who grieve for those killed.

We are the Syrian-born Muslim hero Australian Ahmed al Ahmed.

And tomorrow, Australia Day, is the moment we should celebrate this.

Australia Day can be the all-important pressure-valve for a community that has been consumed and constrained by unthinkable grief – it’s the time where we should embrace each other and celebrate how great it is to be Australians living in this remarkable, sprawling continent that is the envy of so many nations around the world.

But an encouraging recent report by the Institute of Public Affairs found young Australians aged between 18-24 are now increasingly expressing a strong desire to celebrate Australia Day, suggesting a resurgence and willingness to engage with the nation’s history and achievements.

Many Australians, especially those in the regions, find Australia Day as the one time of the year everyone comes to town to get together.

Indeed, this is the time where we can celebrate the long-held, hardwired Australian tradition of looking out for one another – and that has to be one of the great take away lessons from Bondi.

Happy Australia Day!

Warren Brown is an adventurer and cartoonist with News Corp Australia.