Don Macfarlane was never the establishment type. He may have been boss of packaging giant Amcor in the late 1990s, but he was also a lifelong arts enthusiast – an aspiring jazz drummer in his youth and accomplished painter in retirement.

The son of a former prisoner of war, Macfarlane had a tough working-class childhood in the Melbourne suburbs, and spent much of his career in regional paper mills, enmeshed in local communities.