Dressed in feathers from head to toe, with a cockatoo's plume on her head, she began her concert at the Sydney Entertainment Centre with an overture of her best-known songs before whipping into the single "Better the Devil You Know".
The near sell-out crowd of 10,000 included parents with their children, teenyboppers, bohemians in black berets as well as a large contingent of gay men in pink hot pants and pink boa feathers who over the years have adopted Minogue as an icon.
Many of the women in the audience were blonde-haired, but few had adopted Minogue's post-chemotherapy short-crop.
After her bout with cancer, the diminutive singer has renamed her concert tour the "Showgirl Homecoming Tour", and has been forced to scale back on her previously lavish, high-octane musical spectaculars.
"I actually can't do the same things," Minogue told reporters in Sydney this week when she launched her own perfume called "Darling".
"I can't wear the same costumes. How can I do that a year-and-a-half later and feel that I'm meant to be replicating what that was, when I'm not the same person?"
The 38-year-old Minogue was diagnosed with breast cancer only days before she was to perform in Australia last year. She immediately cancelled her "Showgirl" world tour and underwent successful surgery in Melbourne in May, 2005.
Minogue, a darling of the paparazzi, then underwent a course of chemotherapy in Paris where her boyfriend, French actor Olivier Martinez, has a home. During her recovery she penned a children's book "The Showgirl Princess".