Kerry Packer by Michael Stahl (i read books .txt) 📕

Jodhi Meares, married to James Packer from 1999–2002, recalled a situation that showed Kerry’s compassion for horses. The incident, which she related during interviews for the ABC TV’s Australian Story in 2014, occurred as the Packer clan was driving to Tullamarine airport after the running of the Melbourne Cup.

A horse float had jackknifed on the freeway, leaving one of the horses trapped in the upturned float and the other running terrified on the road.

‘We drove past exactly as this was happening and I was like “Oh, stop the car,” and, you know, just saw this horse running down the middle of traffic. So of course Kerry told his driver to stop the car and we all got out.

‘James went and caught the other horse and helped calm it down. And Kerry was dealing with the situation with the float that had been turned over and he called somebody and said “we need a hacksaw …”

‘I think it was 30 or 40 minutes and the whole situation had sort of been handled and he’d got the horse free. I didn’t see anyone else stopping, you know what I mean? They stopped, and it was just the right thing to do.’

Perhaps it was with horses at heart, then, that Packer decided his grand sporting passion would be polo. It’s understood that while still in London recuperating from the gall bladder and kidney surgery, he got on the phone to legendary Australian grazier and former 10-goal polo player, Sinclair Hill.

Hill is a larger-than-life figure in the Australian bush, known for his uncanny ability to ‘read’ rural property from the air and his forthright opinions on government and, well, anything. Yet Hill is far more than a gruff, one-dimensional cattleman: an old-school gentleman, he once coached a young Prince Charles in polo. Decades later, Prince Harry worked as a jackaroo on a Queensland cattle station owned by Hill’s son.

In 1986, Hill had been retired from polo for 11 years. He was 52 years old; Packer, 48. But Hill must have sensed that a sport Packer actually liked, one that might actually hold his attention and keep him coming back, could literally mean the difference between life and death. And so ‘Kerro’ had himself a polo coach.

Packer very quickly had everything imaginable to go with it. Within a year, his new recreational pursuit was accelerated by another once-in-a-lifetime experience: Alan Bond. Packer said to John D’Arcy of the Herald & Weekly Times, ‘I’m going to take three years off and get fit and then I’m going to come back and buy television stations for half the price their new owners just paid for them.’

With typical determination and a no-less-typical torrent of cash, he began to construct world-class polo estates at his Ellerston property in NSW, reportedly with more than 160 horses in air-conditioned stables. Equivalent facilities were established in England (Stedham, near his Fyning Hill estate), ‘Ellerstina’ in Argentina, and a smaller estate in France.

Biographer Paul Barry estimated that Packer burned through close to $150 million on this new obsession, which quickly extended to two teams: Ellerston Black and Ellerston White. Packer’s ongoing outlay didn’t only include the costs of breeding, keeping and transporting horses, but the no less testosterone-fuelled demands of professional Argentinian polo players, who would travel with Packer and James through the calendar of tournaments in Spain, France, England, Argentina and Australia.

Packer’s heart attack during the 1990 Australian Open Polo Championship in Sydney, covered in Chapter 10, did not dampen his enthusiasm for the game; he returned to Warwick Farm the very next weekend to watch James play. He continued to push himself to even higher levels, while equally channelling his efforts into the breeding of ponies and the development of his estates.

His Ellerstina venture near Buenos Aries, Argentina with polo patriarch Gonzalo Pieres was revolutionary in the manner and scale of its embryo programs and player training camps. Ellerstina has won Argentina’s prestigious Open six times, the first three of those in Packer’s lifetime (1994, 1997 and 1998).

The 38-hectare Great House Farm complex in Stedham, West Sussex was likewise a formidable, purpose-built polo complex. It was sold in 1999. The nearby Fyning Hill was sold in 1990 for £12 million to Russian businessman Roman Abramovich. This 178-hectare estate was said to include a seven-bedroom house, stables for 100 horses, two polo pitches and a go-kart track.

Packer watched his son James’s Ellerston Black team win the British Open Gold Cup in 1994, and he led his own Ellerston White team to victory in 1995 and 1998. Polo led to the rough diamond from down-under winning the Queen’s Cup, presented on more than one occasion by Queen Elizabeth II herself.

Daughter Gretel told the Australian Women’s Weekly after her father’s passing, ‘He loved that it’s like chess on horseback; a game of strategy and skill, and both an individual and a team game. He loved that he could be on the same field as the best in the world.’

John Bary, a former six-goal professional polo player, left no doubt of Packer’s polo legacy. After his retirement in 2011, Bary told Melbourne’s Herald Sun: ‘The big money is overseas in polo, but Mr Packer lifted the bar and did a lot of service to the sport in New Zealand and Australia.’

Ellerston’s polo facilities are said to be second to none in Australia. If it’s second to any in the southern hemisphere, it would only be Ellerstina in Argentina. It has as many as eight polo pitches, an oval racecourse, hi-tech stable facilities and an equine hospital.

Packer, aside from his commendable polo conquests, enjoyed playing golf, and in the mid-1970s was able to benefit from some pro lessons. This meant owning the course—The Australian, in Sydney—and picking up tips on swing and stance from Jack Nicklaus.

Packer would also get a good-sized glimpse of what it was to be a champion golfer. In 1992, he was invited to play in the AT&T Pro-Am tournament, the world’s most prestigious pro-am event,