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My parents were drawn to the idea that there was space and opportunity in Australia. For the meagre sum of £10, you could sail your entire family out to Australia, so that's what my father chose to do.

When I was 13, I won a scholarship to boarding school. My parents let me choose whether to go, and I decided I wanted to. Afterwards, I went to Cambridge to study law - in a way, I was carrying the academic hopes of my family, as Mum and Dad left school at 14.

I moved from New Zealand to Melbourne when I was 17. I'd planned to go to university to study French, but I was offered a contract to write and record an album that was too good to pass up. Looking back now I think that was pretty young but, at the time, I was ready to have an adventure.

As much as my parents were worried about me moving to London at 17, they could see that I was hungry to find my path. And it probably helped that they saw me succeeding at it, slowly but surely.

I went to Australia from England when I was right at that age when you learn to read. It's a very confronting thing, traveling halfway around the world and having a mother who was deeply unhappy at ending up in Australia, so you look for some way to find comfort, I guess, and I found it in books.

When I left school I went on trip around the world - I only got as far as Australia, but like a bloody fool I cut it short because of a girl. It's probably one of my big regrets in life.

I had a place in England and was commuting from England to Australia, which is pretty stupid, but after two years I sort of knew what I wanted to do, more or less.

Although my father is English, I was brought up in Australia.

In my life, my parents wanted me to be a musician, I was supposed to go to Vienna to study piano. But this train wanted to go in another direction.

When I was young, it was difficult to imagine entering a world where my parents succeeded so much and I could have risked failing. It would have felt much harder.