Scientists, sports stars and entertainment greats saluted in Queen’s Birthday honours
MORE than 700 great Australians will be saluted by the nation in today’s Queen’s Birthday honours.
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AN Olympic swimming legend, a scientist and a film editor behind some of the most-loved films of the past 25 years are among 778 great Australians recognised in today’s Queen’s Birthday honours.
Dawn Fraser, who won four Olympic gold medals including three 100m freestyle titles, is among just 10 recipients of the nation’s highest honour, the Companion of the Order of Australia (AC).
Others to receive the top award are 89-year-old neurobiologist Professor Geoffrey Burnstock,who won the prestige Macfarlane Burnet Medal last year.
A career editing popular movies such as Muriel’s Wedding, Strictly Ballroom and Romeo + Juliet has earned Jill Bilcock an AC honour. The Swinburne graduate also worked on Moulin Rouge!, Red Dog and The Dressmaker.
Victoria’s other AC recipient is Monash University polymer chemist Professor San Thang. Prof Thang, 64, came to Australia as a Vietnamese refugee in 1979 and was considered for a Nobel Prize in 2014.
Triple Brownlow medallist Bob Skilton, who will be immortalised with a statue at Lakeside Oval, has been awarded a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).
The same honour has been conferred upon 3AW radio veteran Philip Brady.
Former Australian netball captain Kathryn Harby-Williams and arts executive Susan Provan have been honoured for their careers with the AO honour.
For the first time, women outnumber men, by six to four, in the AC honours list.
Overall, 489 men and 289 women were named.
Cricket champion Neil Harvey, now 89 and the last surviving member of Don Bradman’s 1948 “Invincibles” team, received an OAM.
Business Council of Australia chief executive Jennifer Westacott is among many industry leaders saluted for their contributions.
Grassroots campaigners were also acknowledged for their service to the community.
Good Friday Appeal deputy director Emoke Bakacs received an OAM, as did Channel 7’s appeal veteran Gordon Bennett.
Governor-General Sir Peter Cosgrove said the list recognised a range of high achievers, including defence and emergency services personnel.
“Today’s recipients now join the company of many women and men whose meritorious and brave actions have enriched our community and our lives,’’ he said.
THE NUMBERS: 778 in the general division of the Order of Australia; 10 Companions (AC); 68 Officers (AO); 186 Members (AM); 509 Medals (OAM); 229 Meritorious and military awards.
ANOTHER GOLDEN MOMENT FOR DAWN
Matthew Benns
SWIMMING champion Dawn Fraser feels like a golden girl all over again.
Fraser, 80, has been awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in recognition of her “eminent service to sport, through ambassadorial, mentoring and non-executive roles with a range of organisations at all levels, and to the community through roles in conservation and motoring associations’’.
Fraser said she was thrilled with the AC that follows her Officer of the order of Australia (AO), awarded in 1998, and member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in 1967.
“When I opened the letter, the feeling was amazing,” she said.
“It was like winning my first gold medal. I’m so grateful and it’s a great pleasure and honour.’’
Fraser, who won eight Olympic medals at three successive games, has championed a range of groups, including disabled sportspeople and female athletes.
THIS SHOULD MAKE THEM PAY ATTENTION
Colin Vickery
LAUGHTER is the best medicine for Tom Gleisner.
The Have You Been Paying Attention? host has been instrumental in helping to create some of Australia’s best-loved film and television comedies.
Gleisner, part of the Working Dog team alongside Rob Sitch, Jane Kennedy and Santo Cilauro, has been a driving force behind hit films The Castle and The Dish as well as TV shows Frontline, The D-Generation, The Panel, Thank God You’re Here and Utopia — as writer, producer, actor and presenter.
“I’m really surprised and honoured. All these decades on I’m still getting to work with my friends and do something I love. That is a reward in itself,” he said.
“My work always involves comedy. I can’t imagine doing anything else. I get a lot of people saying that Have You Been Paying Attention? is a great opportunity to sit down at the start of the week and have a laugh.”
Gleisner also has a passionate commitment to charity work. He has been the chairman of Challenge, for children and families living with cancer or a life-threatening blood disorder, since 1993. Gleisner co-founded the Learning for Life Autism Centre, which provides early intervention programs for children with autism, in 2004.
“I lost my mother, Rosemary, to cancer when she was quite young,” he said. “To see it impact on kids seems the ultimate cruelty.
“About 15 years ago, my wife, Mary, and I had a very good friend whose son, Jack, was diagnosed with autism. We saw that an intensive home-based therapy had extraordinary results. We wanted to help other families access that.”
The big question now is whether he will finally get some respect from Have You Been Paying Attention? panellist Sam Pang.
“I’d love to think that … but knowing Sam it will just be further ammunition,” Gleisner said with a laugh.
ONE MORE MEDAL FOR SKILTON’S COLLECTION
Glenn MacFarlane
FOOTY’S man of many medals is about to receive another.
Triple Brownlow medallist and nine-time Swans best-and-fairest winner Bob Skilton has been awarded the Order of Australia Medal for his services to Australian football in today’s Queen’s Birthday honours.
It caps a big week for the much-respected 79-year-old after the Herald Sun revealed on Tuesday he would be honoured with a statue at Lakeside Stadium next month.
Skilton is delighted to still be receiving accolades after a lifetime of achievement during his decorated VFL career — and long after it.
“You don’t expect these sort of things,” Skilton told the Herald Sun.
As a footballer, he was a superstar in a South Melbourne team that only played in one final in his time — in his penultimate season — but he selflessly gave to the team and never thought of leaving it.
He played 237 games for the Swans from 1956 to 1971, and 25 more times wearing the Big V jumper he adored.
As a man, he has always been a humble champion, giving his time to worthwhile causes, including time spent as an ambassador for the Royal Children’s Hospital Foundation, the Sporting Chance Foundation and EJ Whitten Prostate Career Foundation.
“The thing I love about football is that it is a team game,” Skilton said.
“I would be lying to say that I didn’t value the Brownlow Medals, but as a team sport, there is nothing like team success.”
MODESTY SHINES IN SPOTLIGHT
KURT Fearnley isn’t the type of bloke to talk himself up.
When Australia’s champion wheelchair racer crawled every inch of the gruelling Kokoda Track, he did it for the soldiers lost in World War II, for his family, charity, and all those Paralympians who came before him.
As he geared up to win April’s Commonwealth Games T54 marathon gold in his final race in green and gold, he ensured the spotlight was firmly on others living with disabilities — “the guys who don’t have the stage”.
And when Fearnley became the first para-athlete to carry the Australian flag at a Commonwealth Games closing ceremony, he even double-checked that he was the right person for the job, then relished what the magnitude of such statement could do for the pride of a young child in a wheelchair.
It’s perhaps in his very nature then that the humble 37-year-old from Carcoar in NSW would consider himself somehow unworthy of being appointed Officer of the Order of Australia (AO).
“I’m never someone to feel like I really deserve it — I race wheelchairs and I do this thing that I love,” Fearnley said.
“And you try and give purpose to the racing, to contribute to the community … and have conversations around disability.”
BRADY WILL SHARE GONG WITH MATE
BELOVED radio host Philip Brady will share his Order of Australia Medal with his former 3AW on-air partner, the late Bruce Mansfield.
“I think Bruce may have orchestrated this honour, and is pulling some strings from up above,” Brady said.
“In my heart, I’ll share it with Bruce.
“There was a famous year when Don Lane won a Logie, and Bert Newton was compering the awards. He told Bert: ‘Six months at my house, six months at yours.’ That’s how I feel about my award.”
Brady, who turns 79 next week, has been honoured for his service to broadcast media.
“Although Bruce and I won several national radio awards over the years, I’ve never won a Logie,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of trophies in my cabinet, so it’s nice to be recognised in my twilight years.”
He started his career at Channel 9: “I was hired as a temporary booth announcer on Easter Monday, 1958. It was originally a two-week engagement, and those two weeks became 13 years.”
Mansfield died two years ago, and Brady has continued hosting the show with Simon Owens.
NOD FOR LATE GUITARIST
ROCK guitarist Phil Emmanuel has been recognised just weeks after his death of an asthma attack.
Emmanuel, who died on May 24 at age 65, was appointed a member of the Order of Australia for his contributions to Australian music.
Starting with his family band, he would go on to tour and record on his own and with brother Tommy, gracing the world’s concert stages with his preternatural musicianship.
He was still performing until his death, with gigs booked in his home town of Parkes, NSW.
Emmanuel played with an enviable roll call of artists including Slim Dusty, Chet Atkins, Duane Eddy, America, Hank B. Marvin, John Farnham, Jimmy Barnes, Ian Moss, INXS, Dolly Parton and Willie Nelson.
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