{"id":145567,"date":"2026-02-26T02:00:44","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/145567\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T02:00:44","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:00:44","slug":"tim-minchin-talks-australian-secrets-his-love-for-london-and-why-manhattan-will-never-be-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/145567\/","title":{"rendered":"Tim Minchin talks Australian secrets, his love for London and why Manhattan will never be home"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where in the world have you felt happiest?<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m most at peace at our place in Kangaroo Valley, a couple of hours south of Sydney<\/a> \u2013 we have 12 acres of native Australian semi-rainforest. If I\u2019m five hours into a day of trying to get rid of the weeds from a copse of trees, I\u2019m pretty fucking happy, especially if my kids and my wife are helping me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Name a place that lived up to the hype<\/p>\n

\u201cUluru. Most Australians don\u2019t go, but we went, finally, a couple of years ago. It\u2019s hard not to think: It\u2019s a big rock, we\u2019ve seen a squillion photos, how good can it be? But it\u2019s really beautiful. I\u2019m one of the world\u2019s least spiritual people, but I do have a very profound sense of story, continuity of narrative and the tales that humans tell themselves to generate meaning in a meaningless universe. That\u2019s my life\u2019s work. And so, as an Australian, hearing those ancient stories about Uluru is transcendent.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Image<\/p>\n

Perth, Australia<\/p>\n

Matt Deakin<\/p>\n

And where didn\u2019t live up to the hype?<\/p>\n

\u201cI struggle with Midtown Manhattan. I feel overwhelmed by the grotesquerie of the virus of humankind. Standing in Times Square, I don\u2019t go, Yay, I\u2019m in Times Square. I go, No, this is filthy and obscene. This is the sort of city that would generate a man like Donald Trump. It is so shameless in its commercialism. There\u2019s a field of study about how where you live affects your psychology. What I can\u2019t bear about New York<\/a> is you can never see infinity. You\u2019re always in a tunnel, and you can\u2019t see the stars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Describe a travel memory from childhood<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen my sister was only seven months old, my parents decided that we would drive across Australia to Melbourne<\/a> from Perth, then drive some of the way back, and put the car on the train back across the desert. So we went for a month in a seven-seater Mitsubishi van. Dad had screwed in an oscillating fan and wired it to the battery. Three of us kids slept across the top bunk of the trailer, Mum and Dad in the trailer tent, and my sister in a fold-out cot. Absolutely bonkers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where did you go on your first holiday without your parents?<\/p>\n

\u201cMy older brother, Dan, took me and my friends Winston and Ben camping and surfing at Smiths Beach, south of Perth. We got up every morning and hit the waves.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Where in the world have you felt happiest? \u201cI\u2019m most at peace at our place in Kangaroo Valley,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145568,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[4582,5886,4043,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,61056],"class_list":{"0":"post-145567","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-london","11":"tag-manhattan","12":"tag-manhattan-headlines","13":"tag-manhattan-news","14":"tag-new-york","15":"tag-new-york-city","16":"tag-news","17":"tag-nyc","18":"tag-style-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145567","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145567"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145567\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}