On Wonder World

Amanda Keller's first job in television was on Simon Townsend's show. In 1983 she joined Wonder World as a researcher, the person who found the stories, checked the facts and worked out how to make a complicated subject clear enough for a ten year old. It was the unglamorous end of the business, and she has often said it taught her how television actually gets made.

Townsend liked researchers who could think on their feet, and he handed young people real responsibility early. Keller was soon working in front of the camera elsewhere, but the grounding was Wonder World.

After Wonder World

From Wonder World she went to Good Morning Australia, then to Ray Martin's Midday show, where she began appearing on camera. Her break came on the science series Beyond 2000, which sold around the world and won her a United Nations Media Peace Award in 1989. She made science clear and funny, which is much harder than it looks.

From there she built one of the most durable careers in Australian media: a long partnership with Andrew Denton on radio and television, her own pop culture program Mondo Thingo, more than a decade hosting the lifestyle show The Living Room, and, since 2003, the long-running Jonesy and Amanda show on Sydney radio with Brendan Jones. She has hosted Dancing with the Stars, captained teams on quiz shows, and in 2025 fronted the first Australian series of The Piano.

She was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia in 2016, and in 2017 she became the first woman on air inducted into the Australian Commercial Radio Hall of Fame.