DEBBIE BYRNE & NEIL MELVILLE - Burke's Backyard (1992)
Debbie Byrne & Neil Melville - Burke's Backyard (1992)
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00:00Our pretty gardener is Debbie Byrne.
00:03Do you remember, oh, about 20 years ago, the Queen of Pop,
00:07the woman that every man in Australia had a crush on, Debbie Byrne?
00:11Well, she now lives at Apollo Bay in Victoria.
00:14Beautiful, idyllic spot on top of a mountain.
00:17OK, Deb, get me a bit of soil in there.
00:21Would help you.
00:23All right, Dom, we're ready for that big rock now.
00:26You make me earn my keep today.
00:29There you go.
00:31Good man.
00:32This is looking rather good.
00:34Have you done most of the work around the place yourselves?
00:36Absolutely. I've built the house myself and the garden.
00:38This is the wall.
00:40It's very good.
00:41It's called the wall.
00:42What's the wall going to be?
00:43Well, it's going to be a wall,
00:45and then we're going to backfill it with lots of newer and soil
00:49and chuck some roses in, all icebergs, in fact, around here.
00:53And have a barbecue, right?
00:54Is she useful or useless?
00:56Very useful.
00:57Is she?
00:58Now your turn.
00:59Is he good?
01:00He's fantastic.
01:01He's very useful.
01:02I'm actually very useful, depending on if I like the job.
01:05I'm extremely useful if I think I can handle it.
01:08Totally useless with big rocks.
01:10And the house is your own sort of handiwork?
01:13Neil's handiwork.
01:14Yeah, mudbrick house.
01:15Do you want to have a look?
01:16Yeah.
01:17I'd love to.
01:18So this is escape for both of you?
01:39Oh, yeah, absolutely.
01:41Well, do you escape here?
01:43I escape here a lot.
01:44You escape here a lot.
01:45Did he escape?
01:47Always is the magnificent, the ultimate escape, I think.
01:49It certainly is.
01:50And then you met in Les Mis?
01:52Yeah.
01:53In fact, Neil had just finished building this home.
01:56And it was for a bachelor.
01:59And it was designed that way.
02:01And then met me and my two children.
02:03So we came home and built more rooms.
02:05We got stuck with three of them.
02:07Oh, no, not just three.
02:08And the dogs.
02:09I'm surrounded by women.
02:10What did you first think when you met Neil?
02:13First thought.
02:14I thought he looked absolutely ridiculous in his ex-girlfriend's tights.
02:18That's what I thought.
02:19So I knew one of his girlfriends, Nadia.
02:22And he was wearing her ballet gear to rehearse in.
02:25And I thought, what?
02:27But what did you think of him?
02:29That he's an extremely good actor.
02:30And I really enjoyed working with him.
02:32And I knew that we'd get along.
02:34What was your reverse reaction?
02:37My reverse reaction to Deb.
02:39See, I didn't know a lot about Debbie Byrne before.
02:43When I did go to see Cat, she wasn't on that night.
02:46And so I missed that performance.
02:50And when I met Deb in Les Mis, I mean, I'd gone to do Les Mis, the musical.
02:56As Deb said, I'd finished the house.
02:58In the very early stages of rehearsal, she just stood out as an unbelievable talent.
03:03I dreamed a dream in time gone by.
03:10When hope was high and life was near.
03:17I dreamed that love would never die.
03:25Do you enjoy singing?
03:27I don't think it's enjoy.
03:30It's like eating and like sleeping.
03:33It's not even enjoy.
03:35I can't do without it.
03:39I mean, I love it.
03:40Debbie's music.
03:41If I stood in front of an audience like that, I'd feel an absolute idiot.
03:45You've never felt stupid?
03:46Yes.
03:47Yes, I do feel stupid.
03:49And I get very nervous before I go on.
03:51But I feel more at home singing in front of an audience than I think doing anything else.
03:59It's the thing that feels most natural to me.
04:02And it's the thing I know better than anything else.
04:15These posts here are going to be like a framework over here because we hate this wall.
04:23What's wrong with the wall?
04:24Well, it's falling apart.
04:26It's a bit of an experiment, Don.
04:28It's the West Wall.
04:29It gets a lot of sun and rain.
04:30It gets a lot of variation quickly.
04:32So it's weathering.
04:34These two mud brick houses can wash away.
04:37I love your colours.
04:38You're a person with a lovely sense of colour.
04:40Neil.
04:41Well, let's...
04:42Hang on, I just realised.
04:43Look at this.
04:47That's the natural clay.
04:48That's the clay we're making the bricks with.
04:50Siltier version.
04:51I chose these.
04:52I chose the colour of the paving stones.
04:54Very nice.
04:55Yes, I thought so too.
04:56Oh, this is pretty.
04:58This is Deb's retreat.
04:59This is the first place Deb goes when she comes home from the pressures.
05:02I'm fine.
05:03I don't have to come here as often now.
05:04I mean, I can watch it and look at it, but I don't actually tend it as much now because
05:08I made a lot of mistakes in the beginning.
05:10I was growing things that needed a lot of work.
05:12Pretty ordinary view.
05:13Yeah, it's pretty boring.
05:15It never changes.
05:16It does.
05:17It changes so much.
05:18It's fantastic.
05:19And where do you own to?
05:21We've got...
05:22Three days' ride.
05:25A lot of work.
05:26The tree hill's there, Don, and we've got the flats down the bottom.
05:29Right.
05:30So there's a lot of lawn tonight.
05:44You've obviously in the past had your moments where the press have picked on you.
05:48How do you feel about Charles and Di at the moment?
05:50The situation?
05:51Oh, I think it's pathetic.
05:53I think it's just so obvious that greed has so much more to do with it than anything else.
05:59Greed of money.
06:01Really, I'm really not interested, and I just think that it's silly.
06:06It's just silly.
06:07They talk about tabloid journalism.
06:09Is there a need for the print medium to really take a good look at itself?
06:14Absolutely.
06:15I think it's disgusting what they do.
06:16I mean, there's a lot of topics in the past that I have wanted to talk about that I thought
06:21would be helpful and informative, and I have just steered away from them because I know
06:25exactly the headlines will be.
06:27I know that it will not be treated with the responsibility that you would want it to be
06:31so that you can do the service that you feel you could do.
06:36I don't believe that the Australian public want to read that sort of thing all the time.
06:45It just probably takes less imagination to write.
06:49You could end up in the tabloids again.
06:51I think it's easy.
06:52It's so easy to criticise, and it's so easy to write dirt about people.
06:57It's much harder to praise, and you have to actually look at what it is you're talking
07:03about and know something about what it is you're talking about to praise it.
07:07We're real hard knockers.
07:09What are we doing?
07:10Really fast.
07:11Yes, you can go.
07:12Yes, we can.
07:13Ready, steady, go.
07:14I can't stop.
07:15I feel like each day is where I'm quite happy being, and if I treat that day well, the next
07:22day will just follow after.
07:25I really want to just be singing and acting and enjoy my family.
07:29You have to start off not so fast.
07:31Sure, but...
07:32All right.
07:33All right.
07:34Go.
07:35Go.
07:36I'm just looking at Ed's face.
07:37I know.
07:38I'm looking at the camera.
07:39I know.
07:40I'm doing it all wrong.
07:41I'm sorry.
07:42Yes, we can.
07:44I never felt like I fitted in anywhere, and it's difficult to find relationships and hold
07:50onto them like that, and I'm very happy.