Deborra-lee Furness hosts 10th adoption awareness reception
WHEN Deborra-lee Furness flew to Sydney to host an event for National Adoption Awareness Week, she never expected she’d be adopting two more members into her family for the visit.
Confidential
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When Deborra-lee Furness flew to Sydney to host an event for National Adoption Awareness Week, she never expected she’d be adopting two more members into her family for the visit.
But Zac Efron and Zendaya, The Greatest Showman co-stars of husband Hugh Jackman, tagged along with them and their two children Oscar, 17, and Ava, 12.
Efron even followed the family to Bondi Beach straight after they landed in Sydney on Tuesday morning.
“We’ve adopted him for the week, he’s adorable,” Furness told Confidential. “He’s been here a lot, he told me today he loves Australia, he’s got Aussie buddies here, he’s thrilled.
“We also brought Zendaya, she’s loving it, but she got off the plane in a full coat and I’m like ‘it’s a little hot’.”
The Furness-Jackman family are also playing local tour guide to four New York families this Christmas.
“We’ve brought all of our New York friends here, we want to show them our country. They’ve been asking for years and I was like ‘OK, this year we’ll do it’. Hugh is Sydney and I’m Melbourne, so we do a bit of both.”
While Jackman was busy promoting his latest film, Furness had an important event of her own to celebrate on Tuesday night.
The founder and patron of Adopt Change hosted an invitation-only cocktail event at Kirribilli House to mark the 10th annual National Adoption Awareness Week.
“We’ve taken an issue that was in a dark, dusty cupboard for decades and we’ve put it back on the table,” she said at the event, which she founded in 2008.
“Because of that grunt work, a lot of kids are going to benefit.”
Almost 40,000 Australian children have been permanently removed from their birth families. Only 315 were adopted in Australia last year.
“I feel passionate about this … I’d love to see Australia leading the way with this issue. In the adoption world, we are on the bottom of the rung.
“We are known as not being good at adoption so I want to flip that.”
But Furness believes change is here.
“There’s a cultural shift. As a society, the way we treat our most vulnerable really says a lot about who we are.”