The inner west’s most influential living legends #30-#21
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Welcome to the Inner West Courier’s list of our area’s 30 most influential living legends in 2018. Our region is full of Sydney’s movers and shakers: from business leaders and influential sports stars and actors to politicians and pioneering academics. Through the week we will be counting down the top 30. Here are the first 10 to get your started, counting down from 30. On Thursday we will count down from 20 to 10 and on Friday we will reveal the top 10.
POSITIONS 30-20
#30 - BRUCE BERESFORD: Australian film director
Academy-Award winning director Bruce Beresford has more than 30 feature films under his belt, including the acclaimed Breaker Morant, Driving Miss Daisy and Mao’s Last Dancer. He was nominated for an Academy Award for the script of Breaker Morant and the direction of Tender Mercies. While Driving Miss Daisy won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1990 and was nominated for nine Oscars. Mao’s Last Dancer was nominated for nine AFI awards, including best director. Beresford, who lives in Birchgrove, studied at Sydney University and was a member of the intellectual libertarian movement, Sydney Push, in the 1960s. Away from film another great love is opera. He has directed a number of operas, including Rigoletto for Los Angeles Opera, The Crucible for Washington Opera and A Streetcar Named Desire for Opera Australia.
#29 - ADRIANO ZUMBO: Australian pâtissier and chef
Adriano Zumbo is one of Australia’s most celebrated patissiers but it all started in 2007 when he opened his first Balmain shop front. With long queues often snaking out of the door of his Darling St store, the Zumbo empire has continued to grow and please sweet-lovers Australia-wide. An appearance on the first series of MasterChef Australia helped introduce the croquembouche to an even wider audience and made Zumbo – and macarons – a household name. But he named the V8 Diesel cake, made instantly famous on MasterChef, as one of his quirkiest and most original creations. His other creations, which feature in his third book The Zumbo Files, include the zonut, (Zumbo’s version of the cronut), chouxmacas and, of course, his signature Zumbarons, presented in a range of new colours and flavours.
#28- THE BREWSTER BROS: renowned songwriters and guitarists
The Brewster Brothers, John and Rick, were two of the founding members of Aussie rock band The Angels. The Angels have been cited by Guns N’ Roses and Seattle grunge bands Pearl Jam and Nirvana, as having influenced their music. John and Rick have been inducted into both the ARIA Hall of Fame and the Australian Songwriters Hall of Fame. John said he knew the band was big when he could hear the album being played at backyard BBQs all over his inner west neighbourhood. “I lived in Concord when we released Face To Face. We had done the David Bowie tour and that took the whole thing through the roof,” Brewster told news.com.au. “It was just coming up to summer and you could walk out your front yard on a clear night with no wind and hear Face To Face blaring out of almost every house or backyard BBQs.”
#27 - JESSICA PRATT: operatic soprano
OPERA sensation Jessica Pratt — described as Australia’s next Joan Sutherland — has wowed audiences around the world and now in Sydney. Pratt made her debut with Opera Australia last month, playing the lead role in Lucia di Lammermore. The former Ashfield resident, 39, has come a long way since she worked at Officeworks in Glebe as a 19-year-old while studying music. Her parents Phil and Ronnie Pratt, who both teach at Summer Hill’s Trinity Grammar School, were in the audience on opening night. Her Sydney debut has caused so much excitement there is even a Maggie Beer-designed trifle named after her being served at Aria Sydney during the Lucia di Lammermoor Sydney season.
#26 - MICHELLE DE KRETSER: MILES FRANKLIN-WINNING AUTHOR
Miles Franklin Award-winning author Michelle de Kretser, from Dulwich Hill, has shone a literary spotlight on the inner west. De Kretser has been short-listed for the prestigious Miles Franklin Literary Award again for The Life to Come. The novel follows a cast of characters all connected in some way and explores intimacy, loneliness, our often incomplete perception of other people — and ourselves. Spanning Paris, Sri Lanka and Sydney, The Life To Come also features familiar local spots in Marrickville, Glebe, Summer Hill and St Peters. So many works of art, film and literature make legends of cities, “In my very tiny way I wanted to do that for the inner west,” de Kretser said. In 2013 she took out the Miles Franklin award for her fourth novel, Questions of Travel, a double narrative that looks at travel in the Internet age and the plight of asylum seekers.
#25- BEN EGGLETON: NANO PROFESSOR
Ben Eggleton, director of University of Sydney’s world-leading Nano Institute, says the next giant leap will be seriously small. The award-winning physicist is charged with harnessing the smallest scales of matter — the nanoscale — to tackle the “grand challenges” facing humanity. Prof Eggleton was elected a fellow of the prestigious Australian Academy of Science in 2016 in recognition of his “significant advances in nonlinear optics, waveguides, soliton physics, and fundamentals and applications of slow light” as well as the creation of a photonic chip to reduce power consumption and maximize reception range for future mobile communications.
#24 -TONY ALBERT: INDIGENOUS ARTIST
Tony Albert , the Indigenous artist who has elevated the phrase Aboriginal kitch, uses art to provoke conversations about stereotypical representations of Aboriginal people and our colonial history. Albert, who was a finalist in last year’s Archibald Prize with a self-portrait featuring himself, is known for his colourful and confronting works with political or social punch.
#23 - RON ALLUM: ENGINEER & CAVE DIVER
Oscar winning Hollywood heavyweight James Cameron, famous for directing blockbusters including Titantic and Terminator, asked Ron Allum to design and build a small submarine to take him to the crushing depths of the Pacific Ocean for his documentary Deepsea Challenge.
Allum, a cameraman, engineer and record-breaking cave diver, was awarded an Australian Geographic Lifetime of Adventure award in 2016 to acknowledge his work. Allum designed the Deepsea Challenger, the vehicle Cameron piloted to the bottom of the Marianas Trench in 2012, and he was a member of Cameron’s Titanic expedition team in 2001. “Ron is a bona fide genius,” Cameron says. “I always said, if I had to go to Mars and I could only take one person with me, I’d want to take Ron.”
#22 - RACHEL WARD: ACTRESS, DIRECTOR
Actress Rachel Ward has been part of the fabric of Australia’s stage and screen worlds for more than 30 years but she has also proved she is not one to shy away from a social or environmental cause. In January she spoke out about the battle of Beersheba, on its 100th anniversary, describing it as “a mad, brave act that ended in victory, turned the tide for the Allies”. She also took the opportunity to shine a light on the plight of Jock Palfreeman, the former Sydney schoolboy in a Bulgarian prison for murder, and Australian filmmaker James Ricketson, who was arrested after he flew a drone above an opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party rally a day before local commune elections. Ward is best known for Sharky’s Machine (1981), Against All Odds (1984) and The Thorn Birds (1983).
#21 - JAMIE PARKER - GREENS MP
Jamie Parker, a former Leichhardt Council mayor, made history in 2011 by becoming the first Greens MP in the lower house of NSW Parliament. Mr Parker won the seat of Balmain for the Greens with a 2PP vote of 53.5 per cent. He went on to enjoy a swing of 4.4 per cent in 2015 to further strengthen his grip on the former Labor heartland seat. The battle for Callan Park helped mobilise the Green vote for Mr Parker, whose parents immigrated to Australia in the mid-1960s from England, where his father was a merchant sailor. At a local level he says he is also passionate about the heritage streetscapes, citing the destruction of many buildings as one of the reasons he entered local politics.