"The youngest convict," said our tour guide "was a six-year-old boy who stole a loaf of bread."
Today, Australia has a lot of bread, both the kinds you eat and spend. It produces the best milk, cheeses, wines and steaks in the world. And since it’s Oscar season, we might as well mention some names of Australia’s best exports – Mel Gibson, Nicole Kidman, Olivia Newton John, Russell Crowe and Naomi Watts.
Impossible was nothing to Ian Thorpe, the Australian champion swimmer who broke 22 world records at the age of 17 – and take note, he was allergic to chlorine.
Ian joins other Adidas endorsers who believe in the possibility of everything – super boxers Muhammad Ali and Laila Ali, basketball great Tracy McGrady, tennis star Justine Henin-Hardenne, football stars David Beckham and Zinedine Zidane, and Olympic sprint champ Maurice Greene.
It wasn’t impossible for Australians to transform a plain patch of land in Sydney into the Olympics 2000 site, a high-tech, architectural wonder that continues to draw tourists. In this event, Adidas was the official outfitter for the Austrlian Olympic delegation.
"Australia is one of our banner markets," says Angge Suiza, Adidas Philippine marketing manager. True enough, countless blokes and sheilas were garbed in Adidas stripes as we strolled on the streets of Sydney.
Feeling Olympic as we toured Sydney’s Olympic 2000 site, our Famous Voyage 6 group – shepherded by Keren Pascual in this country where there are more sheep than people – basked under the hot Australian sun (we were sun-protected by skincare products from Rustan’s Essenses courtesy of Rhoda Campos and Toni Abad), we wore our stripes proudly. Where will Famous Voyage 7 be? Greece, which will be Adidas country too, this August? Impossible is nothing.