Ellen
Degeneres and Portia de Rossi feed the giraffes at Taronga Zoo in Sydney for
her TV talkshow in the US. Picture: Adam Taylor Source:
News Limited
Simon Black, Holly Byrnes and Alice Coote, The
Daily Telegraph, report
In comedy, as in politics, timing is
everything. Even accounting for her delayed arrival, Ellen DeGeneres was
undoubtedly the most popular woman in Australia yesterday, given the kind of
public reception PM Julia Gillard can only dream about.
Such is the TV favourite's appeal, DeGeneres and her Aussie posse,
including Geelong-born wife Portia and mum Betty, was mobbed from the moment
she danced her way through Sydney Airport's arrivals hall to her first brush
with our wildlife on the tourism trail.
Shaking off jet lag and the lurgy which forced her first visit to Sydney
and Melbourne to be postponed by a week, the 55-year-old hit the ground
running. She shunned a secret VIP arrival and chose instead to stroll down the
public entrance into Sydney Airport, holding hands with Portia.
The Emmy-winner was welcomed by thousands of fans and the Qantas choir,
who set the tone for the celebratory trip ahead, which DeGeneres will use to
acquaint herself with her wife's home country and those devoted to her brand of
positivity and fun.
Instead of a luxury yacht or speed boat for a trip to Taronga Zoo, the
Ellen show boarded the Borrowdale - a 1985 steel twin catamaran owned and
operated by Sydney Ferries Corporation.
With no time to waste, on a schedule abbreviated after her illness last
week, the Harbour cruise doubled as a cultural lesson for the American
visitors, treated to a traditional welcome to country ceremony by indigenous
deckhand Tracy Keys.
At the zoo, Ellen headed to the koala enclosure before excited fans caught another glimpse of the star as she fed the zoo's four giraffes.
The group of 40 Ellen fans, who had won a competition run by Destination NSW and The Sunday Telegraph to spend the day touring Sydney on the official fan bus, joined up with the star at the zoo. Not missing her chance to hitch her wagon to a brighter star, PM Gillard also got in on the act, tweeting: "Welcome to Australia @TheEllenShow. Hope you get to see as much as possible of our beautiful country."
DeGeneres picked up the local lingo quickly, tweeting her mock take on Sydney's coffee addiction: "I'm learning Australian. For coffee, you can get a flat white, a long black or a bad bad Leroy Brown. OK, maybe not the last one."
Local fans first got their opportunity to play an official part in Ellen's TV adventure on Saturday during filming of an abridged version of her chat show on the edge of Sydney's Botanic Gardens.
A makeshift stage, purpose-built for the new season of the opera Carmen, was converted overnight to accommodate the production.
Destination NSW chief Sandra Chipchase said The Ellen Show's diverse audience (not to mention her global Twitter following of 17.7 million fans) had the potential to deliver better outcomes than the Oprah experience, which failed to convert exposure into visitors.
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