The 10 Most Important Australians
February 8th 2008 01:03
In 2003, political journalist Craig McGregor devised a list of the top 10 most important Australians. Lists like this are obviously incredibly subjective but it is nonetheless a very interesting selection of personalities.
Our minds run wild when thinking of important Americans, Britains and Europeans but who are the people who have had the most profound influence on Australia?
McGregor states in the lists preface, ‘These Australians, whatever you may think of them, have had an enormous impact upon this nation. That's why they are important and why they comprise the top 10.’ Here is McGregor’s top 10 – who would you have in yours?
1. Ned Kelly
You've got to start with Ned. He's the great, iconic figure of Australia - a tragic, confused but brave-hearted man who, in many ways, sums up the history of this contradictory continent.
2. Sir Donald Bradman
The Don. The greatest batsman ever, probably the greatest cricketer ever. What more do you need?
3. Germaine Greer
A heroine. A pretty strange one: idiosyncratic, a deliberate controversialist, as likely to hit you with a distorted exaggeration as a profound insight. But she is also highly intelligent, radical, irreverent, sexual ... an in-your-face Public Intellectual. Maybe she's what public intellectuals should be like.
4. Rupert Murdoch
Love him or hate him, he bestrides global media like a colossus. After the US president, he is probably the most powerful man in the world - and even the president depends upon him to manipulate the masses in his favour.
5. Cathy Freeman
What a triumph! Not because she is a great athlete - which she is - but because of what she surmounted in her personal life: born to a struggling Aboriginal family, confronting the endemic racism of a Queensland coastal town, lacking anything in her background that might have given her confidence to take on the entire world.
6. Barry Humphries
Australia's greatest living satirist. Also, possibly, our greatest living misogynist? Or even our greatest living misanthrope?
7. Emily Kame Kngwarreye
A dignified desert-dweller who was born in 1910 in Alhalkere country, near Utopia, and didn't even begin painting on canvas until she was an old woman.
What astonished the art world, however, is that in subsequent years she produced work in radically differing genres, which virtually reimagined some of the major movements of the 20th century: pointillism, abstract expressionism, colourfield and even op-art.
8. Slim Dusty
A national treasure.
9. Bruce Petty
Cartoonist, filmmaker, animator, installation artist, illustrator, writer - there isn't much Bruce Petty hasn't done.
10. John Howard
A bit of a surprise, perhaps. But prime ministers are important; he may be the most reactionary and divisive prime minister Australia has had, but Howard has also had an enormous impact on Australian society.
Our minds run wild when thinking of important Americans, Britains and Europeans but who are the people who have had the most profound influence on Australia?
McGregor states in the lists preface, ‘These Australians, whatever you may think of them, have had an enormous impact upon this nation. That's why they are important and why they comprise the top 10.’ Here is McGregor’s top 10 – who would you have in yours?
1. Ned Kelly
You've got to start with Ned. He's the great, iconic figure of Australia - a tragic, confused but brave-hearted man who, in many ways, sums up the history of this contradictory continent.
The no.1 Australian
2. Sir Donald Bradman
The Don. The greatest batsman ever, probably the greatest cricketer ever. What more do you need?
3. Germaine Greer
A heroine. A pretty strange one: idiosyncratic, a deliberate controversialist, as likely to hit you with a distorted exaggeration as a profound insight. But she is also highly intelligent, radical, irreverent, sexual ... an in-your-face Public Intellectual. Maybe she's what public intellectuals should be like.
4. Rupert Murdoch
Love him or hate him, he bestrides global media like a colossus. After the US president, he is probably the most powerful man in the world - and even the president depends upon him to manipulate the masses in his favour.
5. Cathy Freeman
What a triumph! Not because she is a great athlete - which she is - but because of what she surmounted in her personal life: born to a struggling Aboriginal family, confronting the endemic racism of a Queensland coastal town, lacking anything in her background that might have given her confidence to take on the entire world.
6. Barry Humphries
Australia's greatest living satirist. Also, possibly, our greatest living misogynist? Or even our greatest living misanthrope?
7. Emily Kame Kngwarreye
A dignified desert-dweller who was born in 1910 in Alhalkere country, near Utopia, and didn't even begin painting on canvas until she was an old woman.
What astonished the art world, however, is that in subsequent years she produced work in radically differing genres, which virtually reimagined some of the major movements of the 20th century: pointillism, abstract expressionism, colourfield and even op-art.
8. Slim Dusty
A national treasure.
9. Bruce Petty
Cartoonist, filmmaker, animator, installation artist, illustrator, writer - there isn't much Bruce Petty hasn't done.
10. John Howard
A bit of a surprise, perhaps. But prime ministers are important; he may be the most reactionary and divisive prime minister Australia has had, but Howard has also had an enormous impact on Australian society.
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