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

with visceral and immediate concern to hurt or discomfort in others. Those who knew him tell anecdotal tales of sudden and unexpected empathy coming from God knows where inside this big and brutal man.’

Stone goes on to suggest that this compassionate streak, which many saw extended to complete strangers, might be traceable to a childhood in which Packer experienced both sides of bullying.

Certainly, those who worked for him got to see these two sides—often within minutes of each other. ‘Loyalty’ is a word that cropped up often; respect was earned and returned.

In 1993, an ACP magazine editor was killed in a freak marine accident during a product launch event near Sydney. It was five days before Christmas. He left a wife and five young daughters. The editor had worked for Packer for no more than a few years, but he had been dedicated and was well-liked. In the days immediately after the accident Packer monitored the situation quietly but closely through the deceased man’s staff and fellow editors.

A friend and colleague who was directly involved says Packer was concerned that the funeral be a fitting and appropriate send-off; he did not need to mention that he would pay for it. A day or two later, Packer called the colleague to his office and handed him a condolence card for the widow. The colleague later learned that it had contained a personal cheque for ‘a substantial sum’, believed to have constituted a few years’ salary.

The colleague, to this day, is touched by the gesture—not for its scale, but for the sincerity he saw in KP.

That’s the Kerry Packer they knew in Scone, NSW, the township 70 kilometres south-east of the Packers’ Ellerston rural estate.

Sure, Packer most often travelled to Ellerston several thousand feet overhead, in his helicopter. But on the ground, the big bloke who got around in a flannelette shirt and moleskins or track-pants like everybody else, was well known for his random acts of kindness.

Packer donated televisions to the local hospital and was a supporter of the local Rural Fire Service. It was obviously prudent to be on the right side of both. But the scale of the Packers’ presence and their policy of supporting local businesses whenever possible had a huge ripple effect.

There was one, unusual story concerning an order from Ellerston for a dozen or more leather sofas. They were supposedly destined for the private cinema on the property.

When they arrived at Ellerston, it was discovered that they were vinyl. Albeit, very good vinyl. Packer took matters into his own hands, phoning the retailer in high dudgeon.

‘But Mister Packer,’ the man protested, ‘they’re the highest-quality vinyl, most people can’t tell the difference, and I realised I could save you a lot of money.’ Packer checked the invoice and found that it was true.

He ordered the same quantity again, in leather. Paying for the lot, he instructed the man to donate the vinyl sofas to charity. A dozen hard-up local families got brand new sofas.

On a Monday afternoon in March 2001, four-year-old Amelia ‘Millie’ Qwast went missing from her family’s homestead on the 39,000 hectare Glenrock Station property. There were fears that she may have fallen into the Schofields Creek, which runs through the property.

Glenrock Station is a neighbour to Ellerston, and when a full-scale search was mounted, around 100 Ellerston staff, including Packer’s personal medical team and two Packer helicopters, were mobilised, joining local SES, police and the Westpac helicopter. Ellerston also sent food and refreshments out to the searchers.

Thankfully, Millie was found in good health the following afternoon, 24 hours after the crisis had begun. She was eight kilometres from the homestead and, on realising she was lost, had curled up next to her dog, Dasha, and slept for the night.

Millie’s mother, writer Andrea Qwast, told The Sydney Morning Herald in 2005, ‘He [Packer] was an amazing man. He just dropped everything, just to look for our little girl.’

One who regularly saw this very caring side of Packer, and was witness to much of his unreported generosity, was Sister Anthea Groves, the patient liaison officer of St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. Sister Anthea was mentored by the almost-sainted Sister Bernice (Sister Mary Bernice Elphick), who died in 2008.

Packer’s largesse would extend to many hospitals, and late in his life he would entrust himself to Royal Prince Alfred in Sydney’s Inner West, where his father Sir Frank had spent his final days. But there was a sentimental attachment to St Vincent’s: Kerry’s grandfather, Herbert Henry Bullmore, had been a leading physician there from 1911 until his death in December 1937, when Kerry was 11 days old.

Sister Anthea, who completed her nursing training at St Vincent’s in 1960, worked with Kerry and Ros Packer on several fundraising projects. Among them was the 2004 launch of the David Hookes Foundation, raising awareness of organ donation after Hookes’ death.

In 1977, Hookes had been brought to the same building after that terrifying ride in the Packer Jag. Sister Anthea smiles as she recalls Packer’s actions. ‘Well, see, that’s Kerry—the spontaneous part of Kerry. And I think that’s why he was a lovable larrikin, in a way. He did care for people.’

Sister Anthea’s predecessor, Sister Bernice, managed the hospital from 1963 to 1997. Sister Bernice had a robustly entrepreneurial approach and drove the expansion of the hospital’s private and medical research facilities. Packer once described her as ‘the greatest fundraiser of all time.’

There was, Sister Anthea says, no end of respect between the apparently flint-hard businessman and the selfless, but no less persuasive Sister of Charity. “You might say she wheeled and dealed a bit, but it was always in the cause of our mission.”

Among the publicly-known examples of Packer’s slings to St Vincent’s were, in the aftermath of his first bout of heart trouble in 1983, the outfitting of the Intensive Care ward with new cardiac monitoring equipment.

According to Paul Barry’s telling in The Rise and Rise