Patrice Newell

In 1986 Newell gave up a high-profile career with the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) and the Nine Network where she co-hosted Today, to live on the land and run a 4,000 hectare (40 km²) property, known as Elmswood, in the Hunter Region, New South Wales. She is an advocate for sustainable agriculture which she talks about in her books The Olive Grove, The River, Ten Thousand Acres - A Love Story, Tree to Table: Cooking with Australian Olive Oil and Who’s Minding the Farm? In this Climate Emergency, released via Penguin Random House in June 2019.

She is a founding member and president of the Hunter Olive Association.

Newell was the subject of A Place in the Country, the 4 October 2001 edition of the ABC-Television biography program, Australian Story.

In December 2006, she announced that she would be running for a seat on the New South Wales Legislative Council in the March 2007 New South Wales State election as an independent candidate, endorsed by the Climate Change Coalition. Her policy platform was to put pressure on the Government to acknowledge that climate change is "the greatest crisis in human history" and that it should be recognised and taken into account in all Government policy. Although she did not win a seat, Newell was the lead candidate on the New South Wales Senate group ticket for the Climate Change Coalition in the Australian federal election held on 24 November 2007.

In 2015 Newell earned a doctorate at the University of Newcastle in Environmental Science: A strategic assessment of the potential for a new pyrolysis industry in the Hunter Valley.

Newell is a regular speaker and advocate for climate change within the agriculture sector.

Newell is married to Phillip Adams and they have one daughter.

• A Place in the Country, Australian Story, 4 October 2001

• A Place in the Country
• The Olive Grove, (2000; written in the form of diary entries)
• A Place on Earth
• The River
• Ten Thousand Acres - A Love Story
• Who's Minding the Farm? In This Climate Emergency (2019)

With her partner Phillip Adams, she is the compiler of several books of jokes:

• The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes (1994)
• The Penguin Book of Jokes from Cyberspace (1995)
• The Penguin Book of More Australian Jokes (1996)
• The Penguin Book of Schoolyard Jokes (1997)