From Sydney to the Scroll: How Gabriella Brooks Became the Planet’s Favorite Photogenic Metaphor

Gabriella Brooks and the Global Art of Being Photographed Next to Liam Hemsworth
By R. S. Delgado, International Correspondent

Sydney to São Paulo, Stockholm to Seoul: if you’ve glanced at a screen in the last four years you’ve probably seen Gabriella Brooks standing next to a Hemsworth brother with the serene expression of someone who has read the terms and conditions and still clicked “accept.” On the surface she is a 28-year-old Australian model whose résumé includes Vogue Scandinavia, Calvin Klein, and—more pivotally—lunch at Byron Bay’s most paparazzi-friendly café. Below that surface, however, Brooks has become an accidental case study in how a planet oversaturated with celebrity metabolizes romance, branding, and the eternal hope that an attractive couple might save us from ourselves.

Zoom out and the optics are almost touching. In Sweden, Greta Thunberg is still begging governments to delete their carbon footprint, while in Australia, Brooks’ footprint—more accurately, her sandal-print—gets diagrammed by tabloids after a single beach stroll. Climate anxiety and celebrity voyeurism now share a split-screen: one half shows glacial melt, the other Gabriella in a crochet bikini the color of a dying coral reef. The irony is so thick you could spread it on toast and sell it at an overpriced Copenhagen brunch spot.

The international significance, dear reader, lies precisely in this frictionless glide between substance and spectacle. The French call it “la dérive”: the drift. One moment Brooks is photographed hugging Hemsworth’s rescue dog, the next moment that image is being dissected by German media psychologists who specialize in parasocial relationships. Meanwhile, a 17-year-old in Lagos, hustling on a cracked Android, reposts the picture because, well, the dog is cute and hope is portable. Global inequality has never looked so aesthetically curated.

Brooks’ own career, measured in square inches of glossy magazine real estate, has ballooned in parallel to her proximity to Hollywood royalty. This is not an accusation; it is merely a statement of planetary physics. In South Korea, the term “hallyu” describes the Korean wave; in Australia, we might coin “hem-swell” for the way any object—human, canine, takeaway salad—bobs higher once caught in the Hemsworth current. The phenomenon is studied, if we can use that word loosely, by marketing firms from Mumbai to Mexico City who sell the dream that love and market share can be simultaneously optimized.

Yet Gabriella herself remains maddeningly well-adjusted, which is perhaps the darkest joke of all. In interviews she speaks about reef preservation, her zoology degree, a childhood spent rescuing wombats. Each earnest syllable is immediately flattened into SEO-friendly headlines: “Model with a Conscience!”—as if conscience were an optional accessory, like bucket hats in 2021. Somewhere in Brussels, an exhausted policy adviser trying to draft marine-protection legislation sees the headline and sighs so deeply the lights flicker in the EU parliament. The algorithm, unblinking, registers the sigh as engagement.

Examine the supply chain: a photogenic couple surfaces in Australia; within minutes drones in Silicon Valley throttle server farms to deliver that pixelated affection to teenagers in Jakarta, retirees in Toronto, and bots in Minsk pretending to be teenagers. The carbon cost is rarely itemized on the invoice. Meanwhile, Brooks and Hemsworth reportedly split in early 2023, proving that even renewable love has a shelf life. The breakup was, naturally, “mutual and amicable,” the press release equivalent of a diplomatic cable that translates to “we have nukes pointed at each other but promise not to press the button.”

Still, the world keeps spinning its gilded wheel. Gabriella has since walked for Milan Fashion Week wearing upcycled fishing nets—an outfit that cost more than the average Filipino fisherman earns in five years. In the front row, influencers live-streamed tears of joy, sponsored by a phone company that also underwrites deep-sea mining. Somewhere in this vortex of contradictions, Brooks continues to smile the small, knowing smile of someone who understands that if the planet is going down, it might as well be well-lit.

Conclusion: In the macro view, Gabriella Brooks is a blip, a photon bouncing between collapsing stars. In the micro view—your feed, your mood, your idle daydream at 2 a.m.—she is proof that the global economy now runs on managed intimacy and recycled hope. The joke, dear reader, is that we keep clicking, fully aware the battery icon is red. Brooks will keep booking jobs, the oceans will keep rising, and somewhere in between, a billion thumbs will keep scrolling, searching for the next image that promises love is real and maybe, just maybe, biodegradable.