After horrific destruction of the Amazon rainforest we need to plant as many trees as we can
health retreat, Gaia – a 25-acre spread in Byron Bay – has also had fires break out nearby.
“It’s very scary,” she says. “I think climate change is pretty obvious. Whether you believe we caused it or it’s just a natural phenomenon, it’s still happening. Let’s just be real about it.”
Olivia is so passionate about the natural world she has planted 10,000 trees in the grounds of one of her Australian properties alone.
She is the joint founder of the One Tree per Child campaign whose aim is for every child to plant a tree or shrub before they leave school. Bristol was the first British city to become involved, with children having planted more than 57,000 trees and another 6,000 planned
Pictures: MICHELLE DAY this winter. “We’re in many countries and our dream is to get every primary school student to plant a tree so they can watch it grow,” she says.
“It’s really incredible to learn most children in the inner city schools have never seen a forest. It’s a wonderful way to reconnect them with the earth.”
Olivia is talking to me in her husband’s study adorned with her Grammy awards.
She is such a bundle of energy and good humour, it’s hard to believe she is living with breast cancer.
Sipping a chilled glass of rosé as we chat, Olivia, 71, admits she’s been on a “difficult journey” but says she is doing well. Having beaten the disease twice, she was diagnosed for a third time in 2017 but shrank the tumour with natural and conventional therapies, including diet and radiotherapy.
But by 2018 the pain was becoming difficult to bear and she found out the cancer had spread to the base of her spine, causing a fracture. The actress even had to learn to walk again after being confined to a wheelchair.
“There was a lot of concern but I was like, ‘Yes, I’m going to do this’, she says. “It is hard and I still have one foot that will always, most likely, be a problem but there’s no complaining.
“Every day is a gift but you realise
OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN ON THREAT TO OUR WORLD that even more when you’ve been on a difficult journey.”
It is at her home that her husband John cultivates acres of cannabis, which he turns into drops Olivia takes to manage the pain.
“He makes me a mixture of 20 strains that he’s grown specifically for me and it’s really helped me. I mean I’m doing fantastic,” she says.
Ijust take it on my tongue and it works really well, taking about an hour to go through your system. You have to go very slowly because it’s a strong medicine, but John always says to me the feeling is the healing. So, I have to always remember that.
“But I’ve trained my body to accept more of it and it’s obviously working.”
Olivia is on cloud nine after an auction last weekend, which included the sale of her tight black trousers and leather jacket from the hit 1978 film Grease, pulled in more than £2million.
More than 500 items were for sale at Julien’s Auctions to help raise money for the performer’s cancer treatment centre in Australia.
The trousers worn for the You’re the One That I Want duet with John Travolta were so tight that she had to be sewn into them, and they were sold with a broken zip.
Those iconic trousers and leather jacket went for £300,000.
“They were stored in cardboard boxes in storage rooms for many, many years,” she says.
“And some of them I hadn’t seen for a really long time. It was such a surprise.”
It’s scary. Climate change is obvious. Let’s just be real about it
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