Julie Anthony: The gal from Galga looks back on her life

To many, Julie Anthony is the voice of Australia, and her rousing version of Advance Australia Fair is the gold standard.

During a storied career, Julie sang our national anthem at the 2000 Sydney Olympics, became lead singer of the Seekers, worked with entertainment royalty and sang for actual royalty.

Yet Julie Moncrieff Anthony AM OBE started her life in South Australia’s Mallee, and she still sees herself as the Gal from Galga.

As a young child, Julie had no idea of the exciting musical career that awaited her.

And when she and her family moved from Lameroo to Galga, her world shrank – which she was okay with.

“Lameroo, from a kid’s point of view, had a very big area school – there was 43 in my class,” she says.

“Going to Galga, there was five in my class... it was a terrific place to grow up.

"Everyone had sort of plenty of nothing, but it was a very happy place,” she said.

Her happiness was due in part to her close-knit family, with Julie and elder brother Steven pitching in on her parents’ sheep and wheat farm.

“I did what I could,” she says, “helping Dad driving tractors and being the shed hand while he shore the sheep, classing the wool and all that stuff that he taught me.”

Julie never imagined herself not being on a farm.

Singing was for road trips.

“Everybody sings in my family,” she says.

“We were the von Trapps before the von Trapps were ever heard of.

"If anybody came in a car with us to drive to Adelaide, we all sang automatically.

"We didn’t know we were... people would just look at us with alarm.”

Then it was Julie’s turn to look alarmed.

One day, while chatting to a band whose singer had returned to Adelaide, Julie’s dad suggested his daughter could probably help out and sing a couple of songs.

She agreed, and the experience was more excruciating than exhilarating.

“I looked at the floor, sang two songs and fled,” she says.

“And I thought that would be me, thank you. Because I was a fairly shy country kid, really.”

Luckily for the world of entertainment, fate had other ideas and didn’t let Julie and singing part ways.

She began singing with a band in the Riverland on weekends.

Someone then put her name forward for Adelaide’s first TV talent quest, a segment on a late 60s show called Here’s Parry.

She ended up winning.

Part of the so-called prize involved Julie doing a floorshow at Hobart’s Wrest Point Casino, which was a game changer.

“The MC introduced me one night and said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to welcome to the stage Julie Lush.’"

"The place was full of American tourists, and they screeched with laughter, because ‘lush’ to them is not a good connotation – it’s a drunk and a loose woman type of thing."

“And when I went to Sydney to audition for an agent, he said, ‘I really think you’d do really well over here in clubs... but for your own sake, you need to change your name.’"

"And so that was it, my agent’s name was Tony Brady, Anthony Brady and I thought, I’ll name me after you.”

The only problem with Julie Anthony’s freshly minted name is that it was too similar to that of the British singer and actor Julie Andrews.

It hasn’t helped the situation that both women have starred in versions of The Sound of Music and have a similar look and dignified bearing.

“Oh, general mayhem reigns,” Julie (Anthony) says.

“There are people in this country who swear black and blue they saw me working at Wollongong RSL and that it was Julie Andrews."

Although Julie Anthony never crossed paths with Julie Andrews, the former did work with some of the biggies in entertainment.

She appeared on Graham Kennedy’s TV shows and became a regular on Bert Newton’s shows.

Newton told her, ‘You make my job easier by being able to talk, have a bit of fun and then sing.’

“I worked with a few people that were luminaries, so to speak,” Julie adds.

“But the higher up you supposedly went, the nicer they are.”

Where to get your copy of Murraylands Life magazine

The summer edition of Murraylands Life magazine will be available at more than 110 newsagents, supermarkets, hotels, service stations, accommodation providers and other outlets around the region from this Friday, December 6.

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