The VIP opening of Brett Whiteley’s 1988 Birds exhibition at his Surry Hills studio in Sydney was, by all accounts, quite the party, attended, no less, by then Prime Minister Bob Hawke and his first wife, Hazel. Whiteley tried to sell Hawke a small painting, but the “silver bodgie” brushed it off. Greg Norman, the so-called Great White Shark and then the world's best golfer, was supposedly there too and, according to the Smith & Singer chairman Geoffrey Smith's just printed essay, "secured White Corella for his private collection and for many years the painting resided in his home in Florida".

Smith & Singer are selling Whiteley’s White Corella at their Sydney auction next Wednesday night, with a price tag of $600,000 to $800,000. It’s the company’s star lot, on the cover of the auction catalogue, branded as “Property Formerly from the Collection of Greg Norman AO”. It’s known that collectors sometimes pay a premium for glamorous provenance, and Norman is as big as they come. Problem is, Norman never owned the painting.