Hello, my name is Sam Neill

In his hilarious and candid memoir Sam Neill talks about arriving in Australia, trying to kiss Judy Davis and, with his new friend the divine Meryl Streep, meeting a bolshy Bob Hawke.

- Bob Hawke

SLEEPING Dogs had some kind of a release in Australia. I was sent over to do publicity for it. I’d never done anything like this before in my life, and I found myself, at one point, on Australia’s most-watched current affairs program, talking to Mike Willesee. Boy, was I out of my depth. This was in Melbourne, and it was here that the distributors called a press conference. I imagined myself being grilled and photographed by a raft of eager journalists. Alas, no. Only one journo turned up, and he had made a mistake. He was a sports reporter. We abandoned the idea altogether, and he and I got half-cut at the bar.

I’d never been to Australia before, and like many New Zealanders I had strange ideas about our much bigger cousin across the water. I’d never had any interest in going there, none at all. It looked boring, arid, hot and full of people I wouldn’t like. The one thing that intrigued me was the nascent New Wave Australian cinema. I’d seen some new Australian films in Wellington: Newsfront, The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, Walkabout and so on. These films were good, they had something to say, and were not a little encouraging to up-and-coming filmmakers from New Zealand.

Finished with Melbourne, I took a train, a sleeper, to spend a few days with my friend Alan Galbraith in Sydney. I love sleeper trains. I feel like an infant being rocked to sleep as we go. I woke early and pulled up the blind beside my bed. That simple action changed my life. I could not believe how beautiful, how different, this land was. Green gum trees receding towards gentle blue mountains, a radiant cobalt sky, strange animals lolloping past, unknown to someone from across the ditch. Simply breathtaking. Unimaginable. I fell in love with Australia then and there.