Winner of the 2012 Qantas Australian Women of the Year in the UK Award, Liz Koops told Australian Times that if young Aussies want to get ahead in London, they need to pull the plug on Facebook and learn the value of hard work.

IF THERE is any expat Aussie living in London who knows the meaning of hard work, it’s Liz Koops. Queen of the theatrical production scene after 20 years of international musical and comedic hits, Liz is the first to admit that she is only where she is now after a lot of hard grafting. Australian Times had a quick chat to this year’s Australian UK Woman of the Year, to suss out some of her secrets of success.As managing director of the musical theatre production company Back Row, Liz is best known for making a name for Aussie shows in the UK – two of the most famous being Tap Dogs and Priscilla: Queen of the Desert.

In her low and distinctly theatrical voice, Liz dispensed some of her pearls of wisdom in an exclusive interview with Australian Times after picking up the 2012 Qantas Australian Woman of the Year in the UK Award.

We asked this highly successful business woman what advice she would give young women – and young Australian women in particular – who are trying to build their careers in the UK. After a lengthy pause, Liz narrowed her eyes, lowered her voice and replied in a husky whisper: “Kids need to get off the internet.”

She went on to explain that in her opinion, young people’s reliance on the internet and social networking sites such as Facebook, encourages laziness and an unwillingness to get out into the real world and get their hands dirty. She said that just because the youth of today are able to easily access information, doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to use it, and that this is a skill not learnt hunching over your computer screen, but out in the field.

Liz maintained that only through hard work, perseverance and undying passion is success assured. And she added that if the prolonged hours you put into your labour of love means you find yourself sleeping on someone else’s floor (like she did in the early days) then you are, hopefully, on the right track.

However Liz admitted that she “wouldn’t be the same person if I hadn’t grown up in the country”, explaining that her Aussie bush childhood in rural NSW taught her the true value of hard work.

She recounted one particularly entertaining story from her youth spent in the sleepy rural town of Werris Creek, in north-west NSW. Liz told of how her mother made the momentous decision to send her to school in neighbouring Tamworth, 40 kilometres further away than the local school down the road, and how consequently, she and her faithful dog Rex needed to trudge the three kilometre road from her doorstep to the bus stop every morning.

She threw her head back and laughed outright as she told of the many times her and her dog ran furtively after the school bus, eventually needing to resort to hitch hiking her way to school most days. And she smiled as she remembered the dumbfounded look on her classmates’ faces as she sped past the school bus in some stranger’s car.

While Liz concedes our younger generations do need to ‘get off the net’, the buxom Aussie did stress that she does like to collaborate with youths and that her company offers many internships and scholarships for young people eager to enter the industry.