Like every Australian daughter of the 80s, I worshipped Olivia Newton-John. I’d spend hours in my bedroom wearing a Physical-style headband and legwarmers, listening to the cassette of her greatest hits and singing Magic into my hairbrush.

On weekend trips to Video Ezy, I’d make a beeline for the VHS musicals and hire Grease and Xanadu on alternate weekends. I’d watch until the tape went funny or my brother had a tantrum about being denied access to the VCR to watch Return of the Jedi.

Olivia Newton-John pictured in 1978 at a press conference to promote Grease.Credit:Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Then during the week at primary school, we’d act out the scenes.

Parents were pretty loose about what their kids watched back then. None of us understood, but still dutifully enacted, Kenickie’s reference to his “25 cent insurance policy” during a steamy back-seat romp with Rizzo. We’d chant the “lousy with virginity” song at the top of our voices.

Journalist Jordan Baker with Olivia Newton-John.

But Olivia was the only one we cared about.

That voice, which gives me shivers even now. That face. And that accent, which she kept, and which showed girls in suburban Australia – always at least six months behind the rest of the world in everything back then – that one of us could make it over there.

We all wanted to be her. Countless backyard baby pools had to be emptied after a young girl in a white nightdress dunked pieces of paper in it, and peered into an imaginary photo of Danny singing Hopelessly Devoted to You.

Our ardent renditions of Summer Nights burst eardrums, both in the 1980s and at retro nightclubs in the decades since. And then there was the old smooching trick, when you’d face the wall, cross your arms, put your hands behind your back and wriggle like you were pashing Danny at Rydell High.

We weren’t the only ones who knew Olivia was an angel. The producers of Xanadu cast her as one; a roller skating, celluloid muse of Olympus, who danced with Gene Kelly and flew down slippery dips in a film that may have been a flop with critics and audiences, but was an enormous hit with little girls.

As an adult, my dream of meeting Olivia came true when I flew to Las Vegas to profile her for a magazine. There, I learnt that Australian kids were not the only ones who grew up idolising her. Olivia-worship had no borders.

The passport guy was envious of my mission. The American photographer asked her to record a message saying, “Hi Steve” for a fan. The Steve was Aerosmith’s Steve Tyler. A few weeks earlier, comedian Kristen Wiig had been in the audience at one of her shows.

Bono once did a sweeping bow in front of her. “You are the queen of Australia,” he said.

Meeting one’s idols is usually a bad idea, but Olivia was exactly as I had imagined her. She was funny, kind and generous, and wore her fame lightly. Beneath the Las Vegas sequins, there was an Aussie girl who loved nothing more than being surrounded by animals on her farm.

Farewell and thank you to the queen of Australia, the angel of our childhoods, and the voice of a generation.

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