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Singer Kate Ceberano reflects on her four-decade career and announces the Australian Made encore tour, which began in London on August 8 and ends in Shepparton on November 20.
Singer Kate Ceberano has announced the Australian Made encore tour, which began in London on August 8 and will end in Shepparton, Victoria, on November 20.
The tour will take her to venues throughout regional Australia, as well as the Sydney Opera House on October 11 and Melbourne's Hamer Hall on October 23. It follows her 2025 21-date Australian Made tour. The original Australian Made of 1986-87 was a watershed moment in Australian music, showcasing local talent in major stadiums and acting as a precursor to festivals like the Big Day Out.
Australian Made Tour Origins
Ceberano was barely 20 that summer when, as lead singer of I'm Talking, she joined the stellar line-up of INXS, Jimmy Barnes, Divinyls, Models, The Saints and The Triffids. The idea for a 2025 tour and live album came after a discussion with her husband and manager Lee Rogers after the 2016 re-release of Richard Lowenstein's film.
We bemoaned the fact that almost all of the performers are now dead, she says, listing the tally of fallen fellow musos, from INXS' Michael Hutchence to Divinyls' Chrissy Amphlett, The Saints' Chris Bailey, Models' James Freud and now James Valentine. I was kind of like the last of the Mohicans, along with Jimmy Barnes and Sean Kelly from Models, she says.
She felt it was time to tell her old friends' stories to new audiences, or old ones keen for a dose of nostalgia. After more than four decades on stage and screen, Ceberano has few regrets. She has crafted 31 albums, 11 platinum and eight gold, won five ARIA awards and been inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame for her performances, which span rock, soul, jazz, pop and classical.
She was the first woman inducted into the Australian Songwriters Association Hall of Fame in 2014. In 2007 she won Dancing with the Stars, and portraits of her have been chosen as finalists in the Archibald three times, with two winning the Packing Room Prize, in 1994 and 2021.
From fronting the band I'm Talking in 1984 to her successful solo career, for which she was made a member of the Order of Australia in 2016, Ceberano is one of the best-known voices and faces of the Australian entertainment industry. I've come to an age where I can't be un-Kate Ceberano, she says. Like Chrissy, Renee, Kylie and Delta, we're all on a one-name basis with our audiences.
Career Achievements and Family Legacy
That's quite a rare and privileged place to get to in Australia and you only get there by being yourself. But there is one missed opportunity that hounds her still. It was during her serious flamenco phase, a dance form she took up at the age of 12 to understand more of her Filipina and Spanish origins. Her Filipino and Hawaiian father Tino was known as the father of Australian karate after his 1970s morning-TV appearances teaching self-defence.
My dad is the highest-ranked of his style in the world. He's not just a karate master, he's like Kung Fu Panda, she jokes. I first found out about fame and being in the public eye thanks to my dad. Her mother Cherie, whose ethnicity is Swedish and Welsh, was also one of the first women to hold a black belt in karate in Australia.
At our house, at any given time, there was anywhere between 50 to 100 black belts. The only reason I didn't do it was because I didn't love the sound of women sparring. I found it very unfeminine. Instead of karate, the youngest of three and only girl in her family took up singing and dancing.
Flamenco Films and Musical Influences
At about the age of 12 she joined a dance group with the Filipino Association, flamenco without the frilly dresses as she calls it, and became obsessed. So much so that a young filmmaker called Baz Luhrmann approached her in the early 1990s to become involved in a film he was making about ballroom dancing, Strictly Ballroom. I said no because I didn't know what the film was about.
I didn't understand that it was actually going to be exactly about the very thing that I was being a purist about, she says. I found ballroom's version of flamenco to be kind of like an aberrant version of flamenco because it wasn't the true ethnic flamenco that I was into. But as it turns out, that was a lost opportunity of the highest degree. When the film came out I just wanted to bite my arm off.
So since then she has said yes to everything, which is one of the main reasons she is headed back on tour. She also credits her peers, especially Amphlett, with shaping her approach. What she taught me was you need to be bold enough to be yourself, Ceberano says. I wasn't sidling up to any of my peers, like Renee Geyer or Chrissy Amphlett, for any badge of approval.
Jazz Roots and Oz-rock Legacy
But what they did teach me is that if you come too close to imitating or trying to become your idol, you have to pay the price. No one wants a poor imitation of another person. For a girl who left school at 15, whose band won the Victorian Battle of the Bands at 16 and who not long after opened for Vince Jones, jazz was a focus of her early career, thanks in part to Melbourne restaurateur Mietta O'Donnell.
She saw me as a sort of Josephine Baker singer and put me on her menu at Mietta's as a dessert, a warm chocolate tart. Ceberano also credits her love of singing back to a childhood illness. I got a very severe case of glandular fever around 13 and I sat and watched midday movies for about three months, and mostly they were musicals.
And then I reckon I just started sort of hallucinating with fever and imagining I was singing in musicals. Like it or not, she is best known as a rock singer whose name will be eternally linked to those giddy days of Oz-rock in the 1980s. Ceberano's name will be forever linked to the '80s rock scene but her repertoire spans rock, soul, jazz, pop and classical.
theage 
brisbanetimes:After an unforgettable career, Kate Ceberano has few regrets – but there is one big oneThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
Kate Ceberano Australian Music ARIA Awards Hall Of Fame Flamenco Australian Made Encore Tour ARIA Hall Of Fame Strictly Ballroom
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