The once ‘strange’ child now saving a go-to Sydney nightlife venue

Asked what she was like as a young child, Beau Neilson responds without hesitation: “Strange.”

“I think I was in fairyland a little bit of the time,” she says. “I loved drawing. I loved animals, I loved music and plants and rocks and things.”

The adult Neilson has clearly retained that childlike fascination with art, music and the natural world.

In person, she has a disarming, intense earnestness as we freewheel through a collection of topics, including her work in the not-for-profit sector, the Sydney arts scene, philanthropy and her unshakeable belief in the power of community.

Beau Neilson at the Eveleigh Hotel, which her sister, Paris, has acquired.Credit: Janie Barrett

Neilson is the younger daughter of South-African-born businessman Kerr Neilson and arts philanthropist Judith Neilson, originally from Zimbabwe. Kerr co-founded Platinum Asset Management in 1994.

Meanwhile, Kerr’s former wife Judith (they divorced in 2015) owns the White Rabbit Gallery in Chippendale, which houses one of the world’s most important collections of contemporary Chinese art. Last year, Forbes magazine estimated Kerr’s wealth at approximately $1.4 billion.

In short, the Neilson family – and by extension, Beau – are very wealthy indeed. However, that is a long way from being the most interesting thing about her.

For lunch, she has chosen the Eveleigh Hotel, adjacent to Redfern’s historic Block precinct. It’s an atmospheric, old-school venue with a strong community vibe and an unfinished charm. It was also recently bought by Neilson’s elder sister, Paris.

However, there is little evidence that the historic hotel has a new owner, apart maybe from the menu, which has a number of welcome surprises beyond standard pub fare. My pick is the grilled halloumi salad, while Neilson plumps for the Ev Bowl with salmon. Her lunch is washed down by a negroni, mine a glass of the house pinot grigio.

Expanding on the legacy of her unusual younger self, Neilson says she has grown up to be a sensitive adult, which she describes as both a gift and a challenge.

The Eveleigh Hotel’s grilled halloumi.Credit: Janie Barrett

She feels “people’s misfortunes and the mood of people around me and sights, sounds, smells – everything”.

“I’m convinced we all have very different inputs,” she adds. “We live in very different worlds, one person to the next, the way we hear, the way we see, the way we interpret information. You’ve got slightly different hearing, slightly different sight, slightly different colour sensitivity. Your taste may be slightly adjusted.

“Then all of this just from a physical sense laid upon your different childhood experiences. It’s amazing anyone gets along at all.”

After attending St Andrew’s Cathedral School in the CBD, Neilson studied law. She didn’t go on to practise, but the experience was far from wasted.

“It’s a good foundation to understand the world,” she says. “I think it’s the framework that underpins so many interactions and those skills are very, very useful.”

Judith Neilson at the White Rabbit Gallery, which houses her vast collection of Chinese art.Credit: James Brickwood

After university, she spent nearly six years working for Anti-Slavery Australia. Based out of UTS, the group provides legal assistance and advocacy on behalf of victims of human trafficking, forced marriage and other human rights abuses.

I wonder whether she took on the work out of a sense of obligation.

“I didn’t feel it was obligation,” Neilson says. “I think it was hearing these people’s stories of how they had come into these situations, that they lost control of their lives. It was startling [but] there were … legal avenues to support them.

“Without access to those legal avenues, they’d have been in a very, very different position. I saw the power of that to help them, even though it was a very long road. It was a very powerful and important time.”

When asked whether she felt she made a difference, she is quick to credit the work of colleagues and downplay her own contribution. “Individually, maybe we can do a little bit, but it’s actually only in teams and in communities that we really move things properly, move the dial,” she says.

The Ev bowl with salmon at the Eveleigh Hotel.Credit: Janie Barrett

It’s a theme to which she often returns – the power and crucial importance of community. “I think it [community] is huge,” she says. “I think it’s the whole thing that’s lost. It’s what’s wrong with the world. We don’t have a sense of community. People are so isolated and feel trapped in their own little worlds, stuck on their phone looking through the banalities of cat videos and AI-generated, I don’t know, gel squishing or whatever. I think that’s really sad. Community is our salvation. We’ve lost that and it makes me very sad.”

A stint in Britain in the period leading up to COVID, working with a social enterprise helping underprivileged locals in South London, prompted Neilson to think about how much is lost when community – and trust – breaks down.

‘Does someone come to Sydney and think “you know what, we need another fish-and-chip shop”?’

Beau Neilson

“I think people are generally good,” she says. “I think a lot of people have been through things that they don’t understand or can’t explain or aren’t able to work through but that doesn’t make them bad people. That just makes all of us imperfect.

“The more disconnected you are the more you have to fear. We’re social animals and we need each other to survive. When you threaten that with fear you’ve taken away the very thing that is our primal need.”

In 2020, the COVID outbreak brought Neilson and her two children back to Sydney where her mother had recently opened Phoenix Central Park, a remarkable performance space in Chippendale. A short distance from the White Rabbit Gallery, Phoenix Central Park combines stunning architecture inside and out with brilliant acoustics.

Neilson took over as creative director at Phoenix and, despite the challenges of COVID, attracted an extraordinarily eclectic mix of emerging and established artists during her four-year tenure there.

Beau Neilson inside Phoenix Central Park.Credit: Steven Siewert

Names who have performed there include Sampa The Great, Genesis Owusu, Mike Nock and Courtney Barnett.

Two quirky aspects of the Phoenix introduced by Neilson were the fact performances maxed out at 45 minutes (“I do believe you can endure 45 minutes of anything”) and tickets were free under a ballot system. And, as often as not, Beau herself would be on the ticket desk welcoming patrons.

“You treat them like guests, much-loved guests,” she says. “And then, afterwards, people say, ‘We’ve never been treated so well. We had such a beautiful experience. Everyone was so kind and generous. Nothing was too much trouble. They thought about things before we had to ask. We felt respected and we felt like it was a good experience.’”

After four years, strains were showing in the mother/daughter working relationship (“We weren’t getting along, so she decided I should move on”) and last month she quit Phoenix.

Looking for her next project, Neilson heard the much-loved Vanguard music venue on King Street, Newtown, was on the market.

“Someone wanted to buy it to turn into a fish-and-chip shop, and it felt like physical pain,” she says. “I thought, are you serious? Does someone come to Sydney and think, ‘You know what, we need another fish-and-chip shop’?”

“How can we just discard these spaces that offer so much and how do we ever expect our Australian music scene to thrive if we don’t have places for people to play? Are we just going to ditch a whole generation of artists?”

Neilson’s vision for the refurbished Vanguard – she’s invested heavily in a new look for the venue and a state-of-the-art sound system – is for five nights of diverse acts, from burlesque to rock and from heavy metal to comedy.

“The most important thing to me is continuing that inclusive atmosphere,” she says. The new-look venue has already reopened to the public.

Away from the Sydney music scene, Neilson sits on the board of the Powerhouse Museum and is founder and president of the Chippendale Collective, a not-for-profit that aims to build community around the suburb where she has made her home for more than a decade.

The bill at the Eveleigh Hotel.

And, along with her sister and father, she is also on the gifting committee of the Neilson Foundation. Since 2007, they have given some $158 million to a wide portfolio of organisations with a focus on accessibility to the arts and helping people who are extremely disadvantaged.

Many of the organisations they support are far from the glamour of avant-garde performance or contemporary art, including groups that assist young Indigenous people in prison and provide legal aid to refugees.

I wonder if it might be exhausting at times, constantly considering where to allocate effort and resources and dealing with people and organisations continually looking for assistance.

“Not really,” she says. “It becomes pretty obvious when you meet people if they don’t care about other people in a meaningful way. And then I don’t have a lot of space for them.”

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