They all came, the great and the good from mining, business, politics and science joined on Thursday at St John’s Anglican Church in Toorak for the memorial service for business giant Sir Rod Carnegie, the former head of mining company CRA, who died on July 14. He was 91.

There was John Ralph, who succeeded Carnegie as head of CRA; Leigh Clifford, the former chief executive of Rio Tinto, CRA’s former parent and Carnegie’s corporate nemesis; Bill Ferris, joint head of the Champ Private Equity group and Australia’s one-time innovation tsar; former Western Mining chairman Hugh Morgan; and Robin Chalmers, CRA’s former general counsel.