Paula Fox throws charitable support behind cutting-edge cancer care project
Paula Fox never thought she’d see her name on a building. Now she is thrilled that she can afford to support a new project that is very close to her heart.
Paula Fox is still pinching herself. “I can’t believe it has my name on it,” says the beaming matriarch of the billionaire Fox family, headed by her transport magnate husband Lindsay.
Fox gazes across the scaffolding at the Paula Fox Melanoma and Cancer Centre that is rapidly taking shape on bustling St Kilda Road alongside Melbourne’s CBD.
“I didn’t want my name on the building, but my family insisted,” she says. “I have just had incredible support from them. And the Premier [Daniel Andrews] said ‘You have to have your name on it’ too.”
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It is only 10 days before Christmas, two days before her grandson’s wedding is to take place on the front lawn of the Fox family’s Toorak mansion and the 84-year-old is doing a special tour of the cancer centre site, which links directly to the Alfred Hospital.
“Initially we were going to do this new building in The Alfred, but Andrew [her son, who runs the Fox family’s Linfox Property Group] intervened to say it would be best done on a separate bit of land,” she says. “Lindsay actually owned the land about 30 years ago when it had a block of flats on it, but we sold it.”
The name of the $152.4 million specialist facility was revealed last June during an event at the site attended by Paula, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Victorian Premier. The five-storey centre will have the capacity to care for close to 300 patients a day and is set to be completed in early-2024, thanks to support from the Victorian and Commonwealth Governments, the Fox Family, billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Minderoo Foundation and Monash University. All the floors will be erected by March this year before the interior fit-out commences.
“This front entrance as you come in, Mum – it’s going to be amazing,’’ says Andrew Fox, who has joined us for today’s tour.
“It is going to be amazing Andy,” Paula replies. “I can’t believe how much they have done and how quickly.” Her son then quips in reply, with a wide grin: “You mean how slow they are going – never tell them they are going fast Mum because that gives them a window to slow down!”
The Fox family have long been among Melbourne’s most generous philanthropists, and their donation to The Alfred follows a $100 million gift in April last year to the National Gallery of Victoria for the construction of the NGV Contemporary as part of the new $1.7 billion Melbourne Arts Precinct.
It was the largest cultural gift for a capital program made to an Australian art museum by a living donor. The new project will be named The Fox: NGV Contemporary.
At the time, Lindsay Fox claimed it was Paula – who is a director on the NGV Foundation board – who was responsible for his decision to donate. “She’s been on the board for a while; she’s heavily involved, she loves it and we’ve been married for 63 years, so after you’ve been involved for that long, you go along with things,” he said.
The Fox Family Foundation, which manages the family’s charitable donations and activities, is the responsibility of Lindsay and Paula’s daughters, Melbourne-based Katrina Fox and Lisa Fox, who lives in New York. “We have always taught the children the most important thing in life is to give back to our community,” Paula says.
But her gift to The Alfred is also deeply personal. She had every one of her six children – four boys and two girls – at the hospital.
“When I had them it was a private maternity ward,” she says. “Any time any of the children had a problem, especially with four boys, they always took good care of us.” Tragically, in 1991 she lost her 23-year-old son Michael when he took his own life. Fox’s granddaughter Bella, Andrew’s daughter, is now an intensive care nurse at The Alfred.
Seven years ago, Dr Frank Bruscino-Raiola, now the director of the Plastics and Reconstructive Unit at Alfred Health and one of the leading surgeons in the nation for melanoma surgery, removed a cancerous growth on Paula’s back. It required two operations and 45 stitches. “I never asked the doctors how bad it was; I was too nervous,” she says.
Since the surgery she has remained cancer free, and that has driven her passion for providing financial support for the new cancer centre.
“I thought if other people can have the treatment I have had and recover, that is one of the reasons I wanted to do this donation,” she says.
Fox also had emergency heart surgery at The Alfred in 2020, and was admitted there last year when she contracted Covid-19.
In the basement of the new development will be a cutting-edge $US12 million high-tech scanner that has revolutionised cancer patient care in America by producing faster and higher-quality clinical whole-body scans compared with currently available scanners. It will be the first in any public hospital facility in Australia.
Paula was first told about the device over lunch in Melbourne with her good friend Larry Ruvo, the American drinks entrepreneur and philanthropist who started the Cleveland Clinic for Brain Health in Las Vegas in 2010.
“Larry raved about this machine,” she says. “He said it would do the work in two minutes where a normal scan can take up to 40 minutes, and it scans every part of the body and is so much safer. It is the new way forward.”
The Alfred Foundation director Patrick Baker says he began working closely with Paula and her family on the vision of the melanoma and cancer centre several years ago.
“The Fox Family has been involved with The Alfred in many ways for decades, including making major contributions to our ICU and trauma ward expansions,” he says. “With the family’s support, we have been able to continue delivering important health outcomes for those who are critically ill.
“What I admire most about the Fox family is their commitment to family and to ensuring the community benefits from their good fortune. Their values, in particular their generosity, have been passed through generations, and it is this spirit that allows us to continue providing the best care we can to the community.
“With their help we are able to consistently lift the bar on specialist and acute healthcare in this state – helping people when they most need it.”
Today Paula is walking with a crutch, the legacy of knee surgery only two months earlier. “They say it takes three months before you are 100 per cent and I’m eight weeks. So I’m going well,” she says, quietly reciting to herself the doctor’s mantra – “Bad leg first and then good” – as she navigates a few steps at the end of the tour.
Andrew Fox then picks up his mother in a white Mercedes SUV. As she settles herself into the passenger seat, before driving off he says to me with a proud smile: “She is amazing, this woman.”
Lindsay and Paula Fox have been married for nearly 64 years. They met as teenagers – Lindsay was 16 and Paula 15 – at the old St Moritz ice-skating rink in St Kilda. It was 12 months before the former acquired his first truck when he bought trucking company E.V. Timms in Collingwood.
Today, Linfox has more than 8000 trucks and employs 30,000 people in 12 countries. The Fox fortune is stated at $4.78 billion on this year’s edition of The List.
The couple’s other sons, Peter and David, are also in the family business, which owns Avalon Airport and the giant Essendon Fields development at Essendon Airport in Melbourne in partnership with property developer Max Beck.
Lindsay has long referred to his wife as his “one and only” and a “marvellous lady”. Last year she helped him celebrate his 85th birthday with a cruise on their 650-foot yacht from New York to Montreal, with the entire Fox family and a number of leading business people in tow. She herself will celebrate that milestone this year.
One of Paula’s favourite retreats is the Fox holiday home in Hawaii, which the family has owned for more than 45 years. On December 19 she flew out of Melbourne on the Fox’s private jet to spend another Christmas there.
But not before the wedding of her grandson Harry, one of Andrew’s sons. About 180 guests saw him marry his bride, Kristen Fowler, in a stunning ceremony followed by a gala reception at the State Library of Victoria, where former Channel 10 weatherman Mike Larkan was MC.
Guests – including Eddie McGuire, David Evans, Kevin Sheedy, and footballers Luke McDonald and Jack Billings, plus actor Krista Vendy and members of the Hachem and De Lutis families – were entertained by DJ Perri Lee and violinist Sally Cooper.
“They only ever wanted to get married on our lawn and they did, which was just wonderful,” Paula says. “Andrew’s other child, Bella, is getting married in a few weeks in the country, which will also be very special.”
She says it was “hard not to get emotional” seeing her name emblazoned on the top right-hand corner of the new cancer centre.
“It is the biggest thing I have done outside the gallery,” she says.
“It is so good we can afford to give back to things like this. There are so many people out there who need money. We have the highest rate in the world for cancer. I saw a friend the other day who has had all of his jaw removed because of a cancer and I can’t believe he is still here.
“Then you read about [singer] Olivia Newton John passing away. So that’s why it is so important to build this.”