Hundreds of mourners gathered in Fremantle, Western Australia, on Friday, for the funeral of controversial businessman Alan Bond, whose tumultuous career made him both the most revered and one of the most hated public figures in Australia.
A boxing kangaroo flag snapped against the legs of one mourner as the 77-year-old entrepreneur, who died in hospital on 5 June following complications from heart surgery, was taken from St Patrick’s Basilica in Fremantle to Fremantle cemetery for a private burial.
The boxing kangaroo was the flag flown on the Australia II, the yacht that finally scored Bond the America’s Cup on his fourth try in 1983.
The winning skipper, John Bertrand, was among the mourners, as were a number of other members of the America’s Cup team. Members of the Royal Perth Yacht Club, marked by their white trousers and double-breasted jackets, peppered the crowd, which ranged from top tier Perth businessmen, sitting on plastic chairs at the back of the church, to unassuming men in jeans and windbreakers. One woman, a Fremantle tour guide, wore a shirt bearing the famous Dingo flour logo which, according to Alan Bond’s own mythology, he painted as a young signwriter in Fremantle in the 1950s. Whether he actually did is a different story. Like most legends, it’s long since ceased to matter if his story was true.
Bond’s legend lived on in speculation over who would attend his funeral (“Did you hear Russell Crowe is supposed to be here?”) and in the small mob of spectators , but it was largely a family affair. His children, John and Craig Bond and Jody Fewster, and a swarm of grandchildren, several of whom – Jeremy and Banjo Bond, and Dallas Fewster – spoke during the service.
Most notable among the business types was Dallas Dempster, founder of Perth’s Buswood Casino, who acted as pallbearer for his long-time friend. Dempster was caught up in the WA Inc scandal alongside Bond and then Labor premier Brian Burke.
However Bond’s vast political acquaintance was conspicuously absent.
Seated in a front row pew was Eileen Bond, Alan’s first wife and known around Perth as ‘Big Red’. Bond converted to Catholicism so he could marry her in this church in 1955, when they were just 17.
Eileen’s brother, Father Don Hughes, gave the service alongside Father Tony Maher, and her cousin, car dealer John Hughes, delivered the eulogy.
Hughes, who sold Bond one of his first luxury items, a Chevrolet that he later lent to his apprentice to celebrate his 18th birthday, said Bond’s mercantile nature was interested in “the thrill of the chase, not the possession. The acquisition of the asset rather than the use to which the asset was put.”
His enthusiasm for art – Bond famously purchased Van Gogh’s Irises for US $53.9m before returning it, bill still unpaid, to Sotherby’s two years later –suffered similar post-purchase lapses. Hughes recalled being shown Bond’s art collection in Bond Tower, on St Georges Terrace, where Bond confidently told him that the painting he’d been admiring was a Monet.
“I went up and looked at it and said, ‘Alan, it’s not a Monet, that’s a Manet,’” Hughes said, and then mimicked Bond’s shrug. “He said, ‘Monet, Manet …’”
Bond would later be charged with fraud over the sale of a Manet, prompting the 1994 court case that was famously dismissed because of Bond’s sudden memory loss. Two years later he was charged with defrauding $1.2bn from Bell Resources to shore up the Bond Corporation, the largest corporate crime in Australia’s history.
But Hughes, who said Bond was “unequivocally and absolutely” the most unforgettable person he had ever met, steered away from the more notorious events of Bond’s life.
Instead, Hughes spoke of Bond’s deal to acquire Chile’s telecommunications assets (“General Pinochet and his team said, ‘what experience do you have running a telecommunications company?’ And Alan said, ‘Oh, enormous experience.’”) and the time Bond sacked him from the board of Channel Nine because he complained about staying late to discuss buying an airship for the company (“I said, we need this blimp like we need a hole in the head, put me down as a no, I’m going home. Two weeks later, I was not on the board of Channel Nine.”)
“Alan had tremendous self confidence and fantastic self-belief,” Hughes said. “He used to say, ‘get me inside any board room in Europe, and I’ll get them’.”
“He was totally focused, unshakeable in purpose, (and) tenacious. I can only speculate ... with his tremendous personal ability, in a more controlled financial environment, or a more disciplined business structure, just how far he would have gone.”
