MILLIE PHILLIPS: 1929 – 2021
At the height of her fame, on the back of the 1969 nickel boom Millie Phillips was branded as “the Nickel Queen” and lionised as the epitome of a “woman in a man’s world”. She was the first woman in Australian history to acquire mineral exploration areas and to float and chair public companies.
Millie Phillips receiving her PhD at Tel Aviv University, 2015.
Millie’s story is one of an indomitable spirit repeatedly overcoming seemingly insurmountable challenges. She was born on the cusp of the Great Depression in 1929 in Kazimierz Dolny in east-central Poland. Her parents, Chaskiel and Gela, married for love against the custom of arranged marriages and produced three children. Millie often painted a romantic picture of village life and the warmth and vibrancy of her community. This lightness was always held in stark contrast against the dark backdrop described in her memoir as the daily struggle against “harsh, grinding poverty and rabid anti-Semitism”.
In search of a life free from violence, prejudice and poverty, in 1938 the family sought to join an uncle and aunt in Sydney. Once established, they intended to raise funds to sponsor the remaining forty-strong extended family. For the rest of her life the mere memory of bidding farewell aged nine to those relatives would bring her to tears. All were consumed in the fires of concentration camps.
Millie Phillips with family on the ship, 1938.
On arrival Millie rapidly fell in love with Australia. Accompanying her father on the road as he lived the life of a hawker (travelling salesman) she was struck by the kindness she was shown. Taken in and fed at every stop she often remarked that when people saw her in Poland they saw a Jew. In Australia they saw a little girl.
By 15 she had dropped out of school to work as a waitress. At 16 she met Harold, a British naval officer stationed in Asia during the war, through joining the newly established socialist Zionist youth movement Habonim. To Millie, he seemed a more serious prospect than other schoolboy suitors, and she rapidly fell for the dashing uniformed man who seemed to share her dream to “help build a homeland for the remnants of our murdered and still-persecuted people”.
The young couple married in 1945 and after a brief stint living in Manchester with Harold’s family, returned to Sydney. They opened a shop and began selling her father’s excess sales goods. To move dead stock from the shop (mostly consisting of unfashionable underwear) Millie would head to Paddy’s Market and with some embarrassment call out “cheap knickers for sale” holding items aloft.
Despite what she recounted as considerable abuse and neglect, the marriage produced three children: Robert, Sharonne and Lynette (deceased). In 1960, just two years after the birth of her youngest daughter, she left the marriage. Immediately business was her salvation. Months before her separation she had negotiated a deal for a boarding house owned by the Ashfield Baptist Church, for a 12-month settlement and £3000 deposit.
Aside from the unique challenges of divorce and single motherhood in that era, her first business challenge was to secure a loan for the deposit. Her timing could not have been worse. In November 1960 treasurer Harold Holt authored the nation’s first credit squeeze (Holt’s Jolt) with the newly established Reserve Bank cutting lending overnight.
Worse still, as a woman lacking formal education she was barred from taking out a loan without a male guarantor. After some effort she convinced her father to lend her the deposit. Using her share of the marital assets as security she opened the Rochester boarding house. It was a moment of great personal triumph. She wrote recalling that “glorious day of freedom” at the very start of her career upon which she had then “vowed, one day, one day, [to] stop being the victim”.
Attracting regular patronage from bachelors and returned servicemen, she swiftly accumulated both funds and reputation to upgrade facilities and invest in new ventures. Within five years she was a millionaire.
By the late 1960s her empire included 16 ventures and 500 employees. Around this time one of her Sydney hotels had been frequented by George Crutchley, an Armidale-based member of a wealthy mineral exploration syndicate. They became friends and with his mentorship and backing as an equal business partner, she rapidly gained an understanding of geology, international metals trading, mining technologies and more.
From her first trip aboard a small Fokker Friendship plane flying over wild mountain range prospects she was hooked. As she declared in a Herald article in 1970: “To show how egotistical I was, I decided that mining was a blank page in this country across which one could write his name.”
The stage was set for the achievement that would catapult Millie Phillips to a household name. In 1969 she became the first woman in Australian history to issue an Initial Public Offering and later chair a company with her International Mining Corporation.
In contrast to her first enterprise, the timing was perfect. In early 1970 increased demand saw nickel prices peak. An overnight investor bubble in Australian nickel shares formed with the infamous Poseidon Nickel rising from $0.50 to $240 a share in mere months. IMC debuted at 10 times its private price. The run continued, with her paper worth peaking in the hundreds of millions.
But she never cashed out on this significant windfall and remained a purist dedicated to the long haul. Ever the traditional shtetl Jew she valued hard honest work and private dignity above all. She also abhorred the limelight.
Inspired by the reports of Millie’s fast-witted shareholder meetings and the legendary figure painted in the press, in 1971 Hollywood produced the Nickel Queen, starring Googie Withers. In classic unassuming Millie style, she avoided the premiere thereafter referring to the film as idiotic.
Her weekends were regularly spent hidden away in her weekender federation cottage haven, labouring to the sound of birdsong as she carefully tended her eight-hectare Blue Mountains garden.
Success saw her held up by the media as a feminist maverick. Speaking on the structural disadvantages faced by women to the Herald in a 1973 article titled “Room at the top, but it’s still a long haul” she noted: “In business the disadvantages of being a woman far outweigh the advantages.” She felt isolated from the boys’ clubs of the business world, stating: “I can’t rub elbows in the Menzies Bar” because “social pressures exclude me from these places”.
Over the decades she would travel the world as a member of Australian trade delegations. In old age she would regale rapt audiences with anecdotes from her travels to Soviet Russia and “Red China” in the 1970s and ’80s. She regularly socialised with entrepreneurs and politicians, lunching with leaders from Australia and Israel, and maintaining contact with fellow Jewish community moguls including Frank Lowy, Richard Pratt and Harry Triguboff, the latter of whom remained a steadfast friend until her final days.
Millie Phillips, director and chair of the International Mining Company, with Mount Coolon oil shale, 1980.
At the height of this golden period Millie would face her greatest tragedy. On October 2, 1978, Millie’s eldest daughter Lynette self-immolated at the Place des Nations on the steps of the UN in Geneva. Lyn had led a troubled life. She’d resorted first to drugs and then new age spiritualism as ill-fitting means of coping with the drama of the acrimonious, warlike divorce of her parents. Lyn’s story and the family’s tragedy made international headlines. This event cut a deep and indelible scar on Millie’s spirit and cast a looming shadow over the rest of her life.
Even this greatest of personal blows could not hobble Millie. After years out of the headlines, in 1986 she returned to form with the float of Milstern Healthcare – a conglomerate of her nursing and retirement villages that operates to this day.
Her later life revolved around philanthropy and her passion for Israel and the Jewish people in addition to her regular support for many wider community charities including Doctors Without Borders.
Supporting the Jewish community was an obligation that came as a direct result of having escaped the horror of the Holocaust. It was for these reasons she decided the legacy of her fortune would be donated to fighting anti-Semitism and supporting education.
In April 2018, she was struck down with a stroke that left her debilitated but she retained good-humour and compassion. In 2019 after a protracted legal affair her legacy was ultimately settled with her estate secured for the benefit of others.
Millie defied the odds. As she overcame her heavy migrant lilt by adopting a posh English affectation drawn from repeated viewings of Sir Laurence Olivier films, she always found a way to do exactly what she was not supposed to. Millie Phillips was, as she liked to joke, “Australia’s best investment”, and a woman well ahead of her time.
Anthony Small is Millie Phillips grandson.