Heskey spent two years in the Hunter after arriving in the A-League's heyday 2012/13 season which saw the ex-Liverpool legend sign on alongside other marquee stars Alessandro Del Piero and Shinji Ono.

While scoring five times from his first five starts for the Jets, Fox Sports dedicated their Red Button channel to HeskeyCam, locking onto him for every second of a game - much to the bemusement of the 62-cap England star.

In the new issue of FourFourTwo, he confesses he thought the idea was weird and added: "I was just hoping I didn't forget and pick my nose or something!

"I knew there were doing it beforehand but once I was busy playing the game, I didn't think about it.

"Other than that, I didn't get much attention over there. It was great...I could walk around on the streets and no one noticed me."

Heskey said he ended up in Newcastle when former Reds teammate Robbie Fowler asked if he'd be keen on a move Down Under after he was released by Aston Villa.

"I felt I'd done enough in the Premier League by that point," Heskey told the mag. "It had been 17 years and started to feel like a goldfish bowl. I wanted to sample something else and it was great.

"I didn't know what to expect there but everyone took to me - the fans and the other players were fantastic."

But Heskey, 40, was surprised by the laidback attitude to the sport in Australia.

"Aussies have such a different lifestyle that football is almost a sideshow," he said. "We'd train at 7.30am due to the heat before having the rest of the day to ourselves.

"One lad cut his foot open while surfing and was out for a month. I said. 'Mate! You can't do that. This is your livelihood!'"

Heskey was notorious among the Jets squad for dodging the beach as he was reportedly terrified of sharks, but he admitted there were plenty more fears haunting him in Australia.

"Living in the city meant you didn't really see anything except maybe the odd big spider," he said. "If you'd gone further north you'd definitely see everything - jellyfish, little spiders that can kill you, poisonous frogs...

"We trained on a university campus and the complex had loads of bushes filled with brown snakes and things like that.

"They're actually pretty dangerous... so it was best to just not think about it too much!"