Next generation: Family dynasties of Sydney and their lasting legacy
Whether through money, sporting talent, artistic skill or just good publicity, certain families seem to outshine others. We talk to some of Australia’s most impressive family dynasties — from the Mundines to the Laundys — about how they got to where they are, and how they keep getting it done.
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The Sunday Telegraph speaks to five families who have been keeping their family legacy alive, following in the footsteps of their ancestors in their chosen careers.
Here’s how each generation continues to succeed in the family business be it art, hotels, fashion, modelling or sport.
THE LAUNDYS
Hoteliers
Arthur Senior, Arthur, Craig, Stu, Charlie and Sophie, Analiese Laundy (Four generations)
They may be one of Sydney’s wealthiest hotelier families but the rags-to-riches tale behind the Laundy empire – now reaching into its fourth generation – reads like something pulled straight from a Hollywood screenplay.
It begins with Arthur Laundy Sr – father of Arthur and grandfather of brothers Craig and Stu Laundy – who was sent into care at the age of two in 1915 with three other brothers, with all four raised at wards of the state at Parramatta’s Burnside orphanage.
Emerging 13 years later with just a suitcase, a then-15 year-old began a self-made journey that would eventually lead him to purchasing his first hotel lease – the Sackville Hotel in Rosella – in what would be the start of an empire estimated today to be worth around $500 million.
But Laundy Sr would only see so much of its rise, with a light plane crash killing the family patriarch – aged just 57 – and three other passengers in 1969.
His son Arthur would eventually take over but that hard-as-nails, depression-era work ethic would be the ongoing theme of the operation which is still based out of one of the family’s original working class pubs, the Twin Willows in Bass Hill.
“If there’s one thing I have tried to instil in my kids, it’s that nothing should be taken for granted,” says Laundy, whose four children, former Federal MP Craig, Stu, Justine and Danielle and are all heavily involved in the running of the business.
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Craig attests to the family legacy of making every cent count, recalling Friday nights as a kid spent unfurling receipt rolls from the pub tills and rolling them back up reverse-ways so that they could be re-used and printed on both sides.
“My brother and sisters would sit around watching the footy doing this,” laughs Craig, whose own three children Charlie, 22, Sophie, 20, and Analiese, 18, are also now getting their start in the family business, working behind the bar and in the bistro of the family-owned Woolwich Pier Hotel.
“I am trying, with my kids, to replicate what dad with us as best as I possibly can.
“They don’t get pocket money. Any money they get they have to make in the pubs. Picking up glasses, cleaning ashtrays … all the things that we did.
“And they may or may not decide they want to enter the family business of course. And that would certainly be their choice.”
THE MUNDINES
Sport
Tony, Anthony, CJ and Anthony Mundine Jr. (Three generations)
In terms of sporting legacies, for CJ and Anthony Mundine Jr, they don’t get much bigger.
Not only do both budding athletes have looming presence of their legendary boxing grandfather Tony to aspire to, they also have the shadow of their father – retired league-turned-boxing phenom Anthony – to contend with.
“It can be a bit intimidating,” says C.J, currently playing five-eight for South Sydney Rabbitohs.
His brother Anthony, meanwhile, is currently playing state open representative basketball at age 15.
“You look at the other players and they don’t have quite the same expectations but I just keep focused on my game (and) occasionally get a few pointers from dad.”
Ironically C.J says it was Dragons legend Mark Gasnier who first shaped as his favourite player as a junior.
“Because dad was boxing by that stage … so I wasn’t really aware of how good he was,” he says.
“But then I think I was about 10 or 11 that I understood what everyone was talking about.”
Far from being a helicopter, pitch-side parent Anthony – who has four children in total – says he has adopted a similar fathering style to that which he learnt from his own father Tony.
“That is … I don’t tell them what to do. I just support them completely,” he says, adding that when he first informed his father he was walking away from a $700,000 league contract back in 2000 to make his high-profile switch to boxing his dad was initially sceptical.
“He told me I was off my head,” Mundine laughs.
“But he also said; “Okay if that’s what you want to do I will support you’. And that’s what I do with my kids.
“I just support them and help them in any way I can. Because at the end of the day if they don’t have the will to do it on their own, they will never make it.”
THE KEMPS
Modelling
Robyn and Lucy Kemp (Two generations)
It’s easy to imagine a powerhouse mother-daughter modelling duo trod a well-orchestrated path to continuing their career legacy, with mum Robyn using some sway to help smooth the path for an aspiring up-and-comer.
The reality, they say, couldn’t have been further removed.
“Lucy never had the ambition to follow in my footsteps,” says Robyn, no a 69-year-old mother of four who ruled Sydney’s modelling scene throughout the 70s and 80s.
“I really had nothing to do with it.
“She was always very much in control of her own career in that sense.”
Lucy, now 40, agrees that her own foray into the modelling world began independently with the then-15-year-old scouted at a bus stop back in 1995.
“Mum didn’t really want me to get into modelling but she was always supportive,” says Lucy, who deferred a journalism degree to fly to Paris for what was intended as a short working visit.
The trip, essentially, never ended with Lucy going on to move between Paris, London and finally New York where she signed with the once-high flying but now defunct agency Trump Models working alongside some of the industry’s biggest names.
“It was the best time of my adult life,” says Lucy, who spent 11 years in the Big Apple before finally returning home to Sydney to start a family.
“When I think about what kind of influence my mum had on my career … I would probably say that the main thing she gave me was her work ethic.
“She had done it all herself and had came through the industry at a time when models had to work so much harder. They would all do their own hair and make up and run around town with these giant bags filled with clothes and wigs and shoes … running from job to job.
“It’s nothing like that today obviously. But she did teach me a valuable lesson about getting to jobs on time, being professional, working hard and I think – more than anything – to look after my money and save as much as possible.
“Stay mindful of the back end. That was mum’s influence.”
THE HARTS
Painting
Pro Hart, David and Chloe Hart (Three generations)
Artistic dynasties don’t get any more iconic than that of David and Chloe Hart – son and granddaughter of legendary renegade painter Pro Hart.
Prior to his death in 2006, Hart – possibly most famously immortalised in the Stainmaster carpet advertisement which featured his iconic Dragonfly painting – Hart had defied the ‘serious critics’ to become one of the most acclaimed and commercially successful critics of his era.
Not surprisingly, it was quite the legacy to live up to.
“He certainly laid the foundations,” says David, also an accomplished painter based in Brisbane.
“I remember going out to his studio in Broken Hill and watching him in action.
“He would always say to me; ‘The minute you stop learning is the minute you check out’. And that I think was the thing I loved about him the most.
“I’d ring him to say hello and he would say something like; ‘Oh I just discovered this new thing. I’m painting upside down in rollerskates’ or something equally as outrageous.
“He never stopped experimenting and pushing the boundaries. And that’s what he taught me.”
It would be a trait that would inevitably be passed down to Chloe Hart, now a painter and gallery owner who would show glimmers of both her father and grandfather’s brilliance at 11 years of age when she would sell her first painting.
Now 25, the legacy of her legendary ‘poppy’ continues to loom large.
“I definitely have some lovely memories of him teaching me to paint,” she says, recalling seeing first-hand her grandfather’s signature ‘wild’ style.
“I remember being at his studio in Broken Hill and watching him shooting paint balls onto the canvas. That was him, he got incredibly involved with the paint and how it fell.
“Other times we would go out on day trips into the middle of nowhere and just sit and sketch the outback. It was always so beautiful. But in terms of influence, my dad has been very strict in making sure that I learn things and do things for myself.
“And not lean too much on him or my name. The lesson has always been very much that I be my own artist.”
THE ETTINGSHAUSENS
Fashion
Tiarne and Monique Ettingshausen (Two generations)
Life had a funny way of flipping on its head for Tiarne Ettingshausen, daughter of Cronulla league legend Andrew.
Following a sporting path in the shadow of her dad’s footballing legacy, Tiarne looked poised to make the leap from the junior tennis ranks on to the open tour when injuries forced an unexpected rethink.
“Tennis was my world,” says Tiarne, now 29.
“I was training six hours a day. I was travelling around and my dad would always be with me being really supportive.
“I don’t think there as a day when he wasn’t at the back of the court during a match. But it got to the point where my body just gave out.
“I had to make the decision that the sport wasn’t good for me anymore. And it was hard. Because I thought it would go on forever.”
It was, however, something of a serendipitous outcome of sorts, with a new career trajectory colliding with her mum Monique.
“My mother had a fashion boutique with her mum so we were always a very fashion-orientated family and one day were talking about business ideas and it kind of just snowballed from there.”
The mother-daughter team would eventually open Zahlia, a boutique specialising in ethically-manufactured leather which would eventually incorporate the remaining Ettingshausen daughters Shalea, 26, Matiese, 22, Sienna, 20.
“Dad also has his input,” laughs Tiarne.
“He will often pipe up and tell us what he thinks about certain looks. He is always on to us about starting a men’s label.”
The family dynamic, she says, leads to a better work environment.
“Because no one wants to let anyone else down. There’s definitely this sense that we are all in it together and are working toward the same goals.”