Celebrated actress Miriam Margolyes heads off on a two month trip around Australia to discover what the Australian dream is.
Margolyes shares her own experiences of coming to Australia for the first time in 1980, and how she fell in love with New South Wales southern highlands when she was filming the movie Babe. She built her dream home here, where she lives with Heather, her partner of 40 years.
A few years ago Margolyes became an Australian citizen, but she shares that she wants to find out more about the country she calls now calls her home. So she’s heading off in a camper van and travelling over 10,000 kilometres to meet people from all walks of life.
The first episode, which airs on Tuesday 19th May, sees the actor travel from the richest suburbs of Sydney to drought affected dust filled farms. The self-described ’78 year-old Jewish lesbian’ meets an wide variety of characters and doesn’t hold back in asking blunt questions to discover the real stories of people’s lives.
Margolyes meets immigrants who have arrived in Australia and worked hard from meager beginnings to become multi-millionaires, people who have decided to live off-grid and get out of the rat race, struggling farmers and indigenous Australians.
In Melbourne she heads to one of her favourite places, op-shop Good Sammy’s, where she meets Mojtaba (pictured), who arrived in Australia after fleeing Afghanistan. Having lost all his family in the war as a teenager, he traveled to Australia visa Indonesia before making it to Christmas Island, and is currently in Australia on a temporary protection visa.
In an emotional encounter he shares with Margolyes his dream of becoming an Australian, outlining that what makes him feel like he’s an Australian is his love of AFL.
The three episode series sees Margolyes travel thousands of kilometres, but the emotional journey she takes us on is immense.
Catch the three episode series from 8:30pm Tuesday 19th May.
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