Sydney puts a spring in Ellen DeGeneres' step Ellen Degeneres and Portia de Rossi feed the giraffes at Taronga Zoo in Sydney for her TV talkshow in the US. IN comedy, as in politics, timing is everything. Even accounting for her delayed arrival, Ellen DeGeneres was undoubtedly the most popular woman in Australia yesterday, given the kind of public reception PM Julia Gillard can only dream about. Such is the TV favourite's appeal, DeGeneres and her Aussie posse, including Geelong-born wife Portia and mum Betty, was mobbed from the moment she danced her way through Sydney Airport's arrivals hall to her first brush with our wildlife on the tourism trail. Shaking off jet lag and the lurgy which forced her first visit to Sydney and Melbourne to be postponed by a week, the 55-year-old hit the ground running. She shunned a secret VIP arrival and chose instead to stroll down the public entrance into Sydney Airport, holding hands with Portia. The Emmy-winner was welcomed by thousands of fans and the Qantas choir, who set the tone for the celebratory trip ahead, which DeGeneres will use to acquaint herself with her wife's home country and those devoted to her brand of positivity and fun. Instead of a luxury yacht or speed boat for a trip to Taronga Zoo, the Ellen show boarded the Borrowdale - a 1985 steel twin catamaran owned and operated by Sydney Ferries Corporation. With no time to waste, on a schedule abbreviated after her illness last week, the Harbour cruise doubled as a cultural lesson for the American visitors, treated to a traditional welcome to country ceremony by indigenous deckhand Tracy Keys. Ellen DeGeneres watches the koalas at Taronga Zoo in Sydney. Picture: Ellen DeGeneres/Instagram Pictures: Ellen DeGeneres in Sydney Ellen DeGeneres may be taking Portia to Queensland Facebook campaign might mean Aaron mights idol Ellen DeGeneres At the zoo, Ellen headed to the koala enclosure before excited fans caught another glimpse of the star as she fed the zoo's four giraffes. Picture: Simon Black The group of 40 Ellen fans, who had won a competition run by Destination NSW and The Sunday Telegraph to spend the day touring Sydney on the official fan bus, joined up with the star at the zoo. Not missing her chance to hitch her wagon to a brighter star, PM Gillard also got in on the act, tweeting: "Welcome to Australia @TheEllenShow. DeGeneres picked up the local lingo quickly, tweeting her mock take on Sydney's coffee addiction: "I'm learning Australian. For coffee, you can get a flat white, a long black or a bad bad Leroy Brown. OK, maybe not the last one. Local fans will get their first opportunity to play an official part in Ellen's TV adventure from noon today during filming of an abridged version of her chat show on the edge of Sydney's Botanic Gardens. A makeshift stage, purpose-built for the new season of the opera Carmen, will be converted overnight to accommodate the production. Destination NSW chief Sandra Chipchase said The Ellen Show's diverse audience (not to mention her global Twitter following of 17.7 million fans) had the potential to deliver better outcomes than the Oprah experience, which failed to convert exposure into visitors. Ellen's trip Down Under a long, long time coming ELLEN DeGeneres finally made it into Sydney yesterday, six days later than expected and looking pale and peaked after a brush with the flu that left her housebound for 10 days. Her wife Portia was also looking wan as the pair touched down in Sydney at 8.30am although not so mother Betty, 82, who appears fit and hale and ready for an antipodean adventure. A week earlier, it seemed to those counting the days until Ellen's slated arrival - 18 months of days - that maybe, just maybe, the talkshow queen wasn't relishing the opportunity to travel to Australia. It clearly hasn't been high on her list of tourist destinations. Had it been, the 55-year-old would have found occasion before this to hop on a plane and buy a stuffed kangaroo and bottle of Penfolds. Falling in love with an Australian would, for many, be the only excuse required to plan an international trip. Is there a better reason to visit a new country than a new partner? To get to know them better, meet their kin and gain a sense of the culture that has shaped them? Not, it would seem, for DeGeneres (pictured) and her partner of nine years. In the end it took a couple of sponsors, Swisse Vitamins and Qantas, to come on board and offer up a few free first-class airline tickets and a business opportunity that will give the pair only one frantic week here. This writer suspects Portia has not exactly been pining for a return to home shores - so fed up was she with the critics who derided her constantly for changing her name from Amanda Rogers to something altogether more glamorous, Portia De Rossi, as a teenager. It's highly possible that Betty ends up having all the fun on this trip - though with any luck DeGeneres will see a little more of Australia than her production schedule currently allows.