Don't Stop Believin'

by Olivia Newton-John

  ‘I also need to raise major funds to open a cancer centre in Australia,’ I told him.

  As we sat with sweet hummingbirds singing in the background and a gentle breeze caressing my face, I knew that this was right – and I was in the perfect space and with the right person at my side. You always hear stories of how people connect and from that day forward, they’re together. I never believed that would happen to me.

  ‘I want health and happiness – and love,’ I said, finally telling him what I wanted for my own life.

  His affirmation was he wanted to get his herbs into millions of bodies and heal them. We had much in common.

  It was a beautiful thing to sit with someone so special and discuss our deepest hopes. ‘We fell deeply in love and committed to supporting each other,’ John recalls. ‘As I was seeing my next year, Olivia said, “Can I be a part of that?” I said, “Yes.” We looked at each other and then out at this big blue Andean sky. Although we were very far from home, we were home.’

  In the peace of the mountaintop, so far away from city noise and distractions, we just knew we were meant to be together. I fell in love with this incredibly smart and compassionate man who says yes to everything.

  He says yes to life.

  By the time we went back to our hotel, I knew that I wasn’t just falling in love with John. I had a flash that I didn’t share with him until much later.

  I knew we would be back here in a year to be married on that ledge.

  We had already started the beginning of our life together in the most sacred way – with shared hopes and dreams.

  Six months later, we were attending a conference in Arizona together where John was speaking. By this time, we were inseparable. It was Valentine’s Day and we had the entire day off. Joy! John kept taking me to these power places in the Red Rocks around Sedona. Each was interesting and included a church filled with people and a mountaintop with people hiking all around us. We stopped at a long trail by a stream and then went up cliffs to a towering bluff overlooking miles of canyon. He seemed a bit anxious. (He later admitted he was looking for the right spot to propose, but at each opportune moment someone would appear on the trail and interrupt.)

  Finally, we went to dinner and I kept waiting for something to happen because we had just spent the day at some pretty amazing proposal spots! We had also just returned from a romantic trip to Prague and I had a feeling that a proposal was the next step. I knew we were going to end up together.

  At dinner, we started some impromptu charades.

  First two words: WILL – YOU. Then he ran his hands through his hair.

  ‘Hairy?’ I said.

  He made the ‘sounds like’ motion.

  ‘Harry, dairy – marry,’ I said with a big smile.

  He pointed at me.

  I spoke the words ‘Will You Marry Me’ in charades.

  He laughed and pretended to be surprised.

  He always says I proposed to him, but he set it up!

  We didn’t have a ring, but he hollowed out the dinner roll and put it on my finger.

  It was absolutely perfect.

  It was us.

  Of course, the first person I told was my daughter, who gave us her blessing.

  ‘I just want you to be happy, Mum,’ she said.

  So much of my life had been lived out in public and we wanted to keep our relationship very private. It was precious to us, something we wanted to savour with each other, to enjoy without the rumours and the inevitable stories. For the wedding, I didn’t need a big song and dance. I wanted to do something private, sacred and special. I wanted our ceremony to reflect that it was just a beginning and we were vowing to make each day a celebration. I loved when John said that we had the rest of our lives to be on a honeymoon.

  A year later to the day, John was in Peru on an expedition with his good friend and photographer Gregg Woodward. I flew down and met him in Lima. John asked Gregg to stay on a few days to record something special. The next day, we were back up to Cuzco, the old Inca capital.

  We spent the night before the wedding wandering down cobblestone streets looking for treasures. John found an amazing formal wedding poncho and I found a pair of locally made boots with the thickest and warmest wool inside. I also discovered a marriage shawl that complemented my little white dress that had travelled with me. I couldn’t have planned it any better.

  I married John Easterling on the winter solstice, 21 June 2008, on that same Peruvian mountaintop where we had first sat. It was exactly one year since we were on this ledge, visioning our future. Our altar was our ledge. The ceremony took place on this sacred site at six in the morning as the full moon began to yield to the sun climbing the Andean peaks and brightening a new day and a new future.

  A local shaman named Odan officiated, accompanied by two musicians, one playing a conch shell and another on a Peruvian flute, the quena. The music was gorgeous, haunting and absolutely perfect. We thought about asking friends to make the trip, but decided we wanted this to be private. And anyway, we couldn’t fit any more people on the ledge! It was our moment.

  On the way up the mountain, I realised I hadn’t thought of a bouquet. I started picking wild flowers. By the time I got to the top, I had the most beautiful bouquet any bride could ever want.

  ‘It was an extraordinary, beautiful, wonderful thing,’ John remembers.

  We spent our honeymoon in Peru for a week. Afterwards, we returned to John’s home on Jupiter Island in Florida. Nine days later, we had a beachfront ceremony in Jupiter Island to make it legal, although to me the ceremony in Peru would always mark our real wedding. We were married by John’s dear friend Bill, an Episcopalian minister.

  We even kept that a secret for a few days and didn’t tell our friends until we surprised them with a celebration at a 4 July barbecue at our house in Malibu.

  Mum always said to me, ‘Darling, you need to marry a businessman.’ I used to say back to her, ‘A businessman? What on earth would I have in common with a businessman?’ She was so right, though. And John is so much more than just an amazing businessman. He’s incredibly compassionate, caring and kind, and a brilliant human being. He’s funny, and interested in the world and in healing it.

  I’m so lucky to have a wonderful, beautiful husband who is so loving, and who loves me for me. John is also very patient and calming, which is perfect for me because he’s someone who really thinks things through, whereas I can be impulsive. He helps me see the steps I need to take.

  We have so much in common, including our quest to stay healthy and our love of animals. He’ll greet our dog and cat, which is exactly what I do, the moment we step through the door. I could never be with someone who didn’t love animals.

  My husband has so many ways that he shows me love, including writing me beautiful poetry. I love his sensitivity and concern for his family, his brother Don and sister Nancy, and the respect he shows his father. John is very close to his family and his dad who just turned ninety-four. Sadly, I never met his mother.

  I always tell my friends that you’re never too old to find love. I found the love of my life at fifty-nine going on sixty.

  Lucky me.

  No one could believe that even after we were married, John still hadn’t seen Grease.

  Around this time, my good friend John Travolta invited my new husband and me to dinner at his home. John graciously sent a plane to pick us up and we landed in his backyard. It was always his dream to have planes at his home and to be able to take off and land on his property – and he made it come true. Even when we were filming Grease, he told me, ‘One day, I’ll have a house with a runway.’ I knew he would do it.

  So, my husband and I landed at the Travoltas’ beautiful home. John and his wonderful wife, Kelly, had an amazing dinner ready for us. Halfway through that dinner, John T said something about the movie Grease and my John told him, ‘Never seen it.’

  ‘Seriously?’ said John Travolta. ‘Were you living under a rock?’

/>   Everyone laughed.

  ‘No, I was in a canoe up in the Amazon when the film came out,’ my husband said with a smile.

  I could see the wheels turning in John T’s mind. When we left the dinner table, he suggested we have dessert on one of his planes, which had just come back from being refurbished. My husband is also a pilot and loves anything to do with aviation, so he said he would love to see the plane. We wandered over to this sleek, magnificent machine parked on John T’s very own runway and dessert was served. As we sat down, Grease starting playing on the television screens scattered about the cabin.

  Here we were watching Grease on a plane with John Travolta!

  It was such a fantastic night and when the film was over, my John said to us, ‘That was a really good movie. But one thing. Olivia looks better now.’

  Another reason to love him!

  And if I close my eyes to the wild silent ruin.

  Then I’m just like everyone else.

  Long before my marriage to John, I was driven to travel the world in the name of saving our creatures and environment. When I was asked to host a TV series called Human Nature in 1995, I said a quick yes because it was right up my alley. The idea was to explore the relationships between humans and animals around the globe. For fifteen glorious episodes, I travelled the world zeroing in on topics that were so close to my heart.

  One of my favourite episodes featured Margaret Owens, a wonderful woman who dedicated her life to helping save mountain lions and sea otters from extinction. I didn’t need to travel far to meet her in Monterey, California where she had a magnificent house on the cliffs. From the moment we first hugged, I felt like she was a mother figure for me. She was intuitive to the point where she would say ‘I knew you were going to call before the phone rang.’ It wasn’t long before I would tell her, ‘I want to be you when I grow up.’ I was in my forties when I said this! (And I’m still waiting to be like her when I grow up!)

  I respected Margaret’s commitment to saving animals and revelled in her life force. We became fast friends and soon I was staying at her house, built high on a cliff above the wild Pacific Ocean. From down below you could hear the seals barking. Her home also came with a story. She told me that a man wanted to marry her and told her so while they were sitting on a clifftop. ‘I told him, “I’ll marry you if you build me a house here,”’ she said. Then she turned to me and said, ‘You’re standing in that house.’

  She had other animal causes in addition to her work with the mountain lions. One day, she suggested that I go with her to a meeting with marine biologists from the local area. We arrived and suddenly Margaret said, ‘Liv, I’m not feeling well. Would you speak for me?’

  I knew very little about the underwater experiments involving sonars she was there to talk about. In the deepest parts of the ocean, scientists were experimenting with soundwaves and this was seriously affecting the hearing of dolphins and whales. It was horrific for those gorgeous creatures who depended upon sonar for survival. Margaret was there to explain why she was trying to put a moratorium on this type of ‘experiment’. Once she told me the basics, I stood up and spoke from my heart about the subject and how the dolphins and whales deserved to exist in peace. I can still remember the serious looks on the faces of all those marine biologists who thought that I had been an expert in this area for many years!

  Fooled ’em!

  For another episode of the series, I made the trek to Alaska to record the plight of eagles that were rescued and rehabilitated after the horrendous Exxon Valdez oil spill that occurred in Prince William Sound in Alaska. We landed by plane and then took a train and a boat to film a scene where I would release an injured eagle back into the wild.

  We arrived at a large bird rescue aviary where the former ‘patient’ was waiting to spread his wings again. We had to capture him from the air as he was practising flying back and forth with his newly healed wing. The bird expert helping me was holding a huge burlap bag, which he tossed in the air up over the eagle to bring him down. It worked – except the eagle landed right on the top of my head and dug those large claws into my scalp.

  ‘How fantastic,’ I said, wincing back the pain. ‘How many people can say they have an eagle scar on the top of their head?’ (I wasn’t badly hurt and consider this one of my life trophies.)

  Soon Matt, little Chloe and I were out on a boat in the middle of Prince William Sound where I would eventually release the bird on camera. I went down the stairs and so did Chloe, who put her hand out to steady herself and burned it on the stove. We were out in the middle of nowhere without medical help and the day was just beginning! I went into mum mode, bandaged my poor little girl’s hand and explained to her, ‘There is good and bad in everything. We just had some of the bad and now it’s time for the good.’ (I hoped!) I felt so badly for her because we couldn’t go back right away.

  We could only release the bird once, which meant we only had one camera take for this shot. ‘When you let him go, throw him upwards,’ I was told. Aiming the bird was going to be quite a trick. I was a little afraid of him since he was very heavy, extremely powerful and wild. He could also see the massive glacier in the distance and was feeling his freedom. It’s funny how creatures, human or not, refuse to be daunted when they can smell and taste possibility.

  As the time neared for the release, I stood closer to the bird, who was being held by a handler. All of a sudden, the moment was upon us and I was given this raptor. I held him firmly in my arms. I could hear our hearts pounding in tandem. I was reminded to throw him upwards and suddenly released him into the air. You could hear the rush of his feathers being taken by the wind as the sky became his home again.

  It was one of the most unusual, interesting and life-affirming moments I’ve ever experienced.

  My cameraman was thrilled because we got it all on tape in one incredible shot that became a defining moment of the series. And thank goodness Chloe’s hand wasn’t seriously burned. Phew!

  One of the most tragic pieces we filmed for Human Nature was on an assignment in Greece where we examined the plight of circus dancing bears. The sheer horror of it is something I will never be able to push out of my mind. The reasons that these bears lift their feet, or ‘dance’, is that they’re being tortured. They actually stand on electronic plates and are shocked into moving that way.

  It hurt my heart to find out that some of the shocked bears had to have operations to fix their feet after too many shocks. That some found this ‘entertaining’ made me sick to my stomach – and still does to this day. I couldn’t believe that creatures could be treated in such a cruel and inhumane way. But that was the most important part of the show. We could expose these kinds of injustices against animals and hope that decent human beings would find it outrageous and seek change.

  This series made sure that I couldn’t park my bags too long at home, and soon I was off to Russia with my crew. The assignment was to interview a professor who lived about a four-hour drive from Moscow. The crew members who were travelling with me included our director Jeff, photographer Michelle, my make-up and hair artist whose name was Madonna and our cameraman, Michael Jackson, an Australian man.

  No, you cannot make these things up! The same crew accompanied me during another shoot in Costa Rica and the hotel we were staying at went bananas because they thought the real Michael Jackson and Madonna were checking in with Olivia Newton-John! When we arrived, we were informed that the hotel was throwing a parade for us. I hope they weren’t too disappointed when our very tired and road-weary group rolled in with our suitcases and equipment.

  And now we were in Russia, but there was no parade. There was just some cold weather to contend with during a busy shoot that would also take us to Red Square. We wanted to explore the fact that they were losing a lot of falcons in Moscow for industrial and construction reasons. We were there to interview a naturalist who raised falcons to release back into the city.

  We were told to arrive in Red Square at si
x in the morning. I’ve been to a lot of cold places, but in Russia the temperatures chilled me to the bone and the winds ripped through even the puffiest parkas. It was still so gorgeous as the sun rose over the ornate buildings, though. I love to learn about the customs of new places and this trip didn’t disappoint. Soon a glass was put in front of me and someone brought out a bottle of Russian vodka.

  ‘It’s a little early,’ I begged off.

  My glass was filled to the brim.

  Now, I’m not the biggest drinker, but I didn’t want to insult anyone. It wouldn’t be the last time during this trip that I drank what was put in front of me. You could say I spent my whole time in Russia just a little bit tipsy!

  In retrospect, maybe this wasn’t such a bad thing because I was going through a divorce at the time.

  Back on the road, we had to drive to the professor’s house in an old van packed with our camera equipment, me, Madonna and Michael Jackson, plus Jeff and Michelle. None of us had been to Russia before or spoke the language, and certainly there weren’t any experts in the car when it came to navigating the back roads. This was in the days before GPS, and I’ll never forget all of us poring over a complicated map trying to find our way.

  As fate would have it, of course, our van broke down in the middle of the Russian countryside, which offered a vast landscape and not much else. We were forced to step outside into the tundra as panic began to set in. I stared at our ramshackle van, which had a flat tyre. A short walk later, we found help at a gypsy-like caravan that sold mostly . . . vodka! They agreed to change our tyre, but it took time to fix it, so we had a few sips to warm up.

  Like I said, it was a tipsy trip.

  Back in Moscow, I did revel in the cultural marvels of being in this foreign land. All I wanted to do was buy food and give it to people who didn’t have much. This was before Russia was more modernised, and its people were suffering from the political climate of the day. I remember going to a supermarket in Moscow, but it wasn’t like any shopping experience I’ve had anywhere else. Large men with machine guns stood at the door of the market, which was intimidating to say the least.