BORN LEGACY
The Packer women’s bond goes beyond kinship, it’s also in their shared commitment to helping others.
The Packer women’s bond goes beyond kinship: it’s also in their shared commitment to helping others.
Many years ago when Francesca Packer Barham was still a child, three generations of Packers got together for one of their regular family dinners, this time at an Italian restaurant in Bondi. The group – younger brothers Benjamin and William, and Francesca’s mother Gretel and grandmother Roslyn – were trying out suggestions for an appropriate grandmotherly nickname, when the dessert arrived.
“She’s too cool to be a ‘granny’, she just doesn’t fit it,” explains Francesca. “She wears blue mascara, and wears it really, really well! We were eating the most amazing chocolate dessert, and it was called Nonna Dolce. And we all looked at it and suddenly said: ‘ Nonna – perfect.’ And it stuck and we love it.”
The snapshot into the lives of these three Packer women is revealing in many ways. That get-together may have been years ago and plenty has happened since – not least of which was the death on Boxing Day 2005 of the family patriarch Kerry Packer – but the fierce closeness these three women share has only deepened. And as Francesca begins to forge her own way and take ownership of that prominent surname, it is clear she does so with the knowledge she has strong female role models guiding her. The Packer name may have been made famous by three generations of men, but make no mistake, the females of this family hold their own, and with unmistakable style and grace.
Despite the family ties that bind, the trio lead independent lives. On the day we meet, Francesca has just flown back to Sydney following a month volunteering with the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation in Vietnam. The decision to go was made after meeting Noble while visiting her father in London, after expressing a desire to do some volunteering. Before she knew it she was living in a friend’s Ho Chi Minh City apartment, a 10-minute walk from the orphanage where Francesca and another friend would spend the day caring for and playing with 30 orphans aged six months to six.
“It was really exciting, really special,” she says. “They were all unwell and all orphans, but what was so interesting was they were happy. They’d be playing with a Tupperware box or a cup and they were completely content with it. And they loved having people there, so they’d clutch us like little koalas.”
This wasn’t the first time the 21-year-old had performed volunteer work. Growing up at the private Ascham School in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Francesca took part in a school-based volunteer program working with disadvantaged children and continues to work with the Red Cross Young Mothers Program, a safe place where teenage mothers can reside and make use of the childcare while continuing school; and she sits on the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute’s young appeals committee.
Whatever your opinion of the Packer family, and most Australians have one, philanthropy and volunteering is one trait that runs through all generations. On the 10th anniversary of Kerry’s death last December, Francesca posted one of her favourite images of Poppy, as she called her grandfather, with the following message: “Ten years ago today, a very special man left this world for another. I had the privilege of calling him Poppy – and although many people knew him, I would like to think the relationship and bond we shared was unique. Not a day goes by that I do not miss him, and he will forever be in my heart. Whether he changed this world is for others to decide, but I know that he definitely changed mine. I love you Poppy; now and forever.”
Not only did the image attract more than 6,000 likes, but some of the comments left from people Francesca had never met astounded her. “The most random stories about things he’d done, people who had met him, it’s amazing to see how someone can have an impact on your life in three minutes,” she says. “It’s really special for me to realise I’m a part of that. I think people are very grateful for whatever help they get, wherever it comes from; and it’s nice to see that trickle down.”
For Gretel, the older of Kerry and Roslyn’s two children, the culture of giving back was instilled from a young age. “We saw Mum volunteer her time on boards our entire life. And when she volunteered, she’d be there for years.” Since the 1970s Roslyn has donated to, or become a director on, the boards of numerous arts and medical companies, including the Sydney Festival, St Vincent’s Hospital, the National Gallery of Australia, the Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute and St Vincent’s Private Hospital among others, her years on various boards clocking up more than half a century.
Her extraordinarily generous contributions were recently acknowledged when she was made a Companion in the Order of Australia for services to the community as a benefactor and patron; while the Sydney Theatre Company (STC) renamed one of its theatres the Roslyn Packer Theatre in 2015 in recognition of “a lifetime’s unassuming, unstinting and inspirational philanthropic leadership”.
Kerry too, was a philanthropist, albeit in his own way. “Kerry gave generous amounts quite anonymously to many people who he felt needed help,” says Roslyn. “I think you could say that as a family we have been lucky and that we feel it is important to be able to give back to the community.” Kerry Packer long supported a scholarship to Ascham and established the Packer House in Cambridge, providing Australian postgraduates with accommodation while they studied at the prestigious university. “The difference was with Mum it was a huge commitment of her time, energy, wisdom and finances; with Dad it was financial, but it was always private,” Gretel says.
Roslyn also shared with Gretel and her son James her appreciation for arts and culture, regularly taking them, and later her grandchildren, to see the Australian Ballet perform at the Sydney Opera House. All three generations of women now make an occasion of attending the ballet together; while Francesca was so taken with the company she became a member of the Ballet Ambassador Program, an initiative of former deputy chairman, Sarah Murdoch. “It’s about getting more young people involved; it doesn’t have to be something you only do when you’re older. I recently took a friend to his first ballet, Swan Lake, and he absolutely loved it. It was really special to share that,” Francesca says with enthusiasm.
In July 2014, Gretel took a deep breath and stepped into the media spotlight to launch the $200 million National Philanthropic Fund (NPF), a joint initiative of the Crown Resorts Foundation and the Packer Family Foundation, which Gretel chairs. The announcement marked a 10-year commitment from one of Australia’s largest philanthropic foundations to organisations that support the arts and Indigenous education. At the time James acknowledged Gretel as being the driving force behind the fund’s establishment. “He’s just being nice,” protests Gretel. “She’s just being modest,” shoots back Francesca.
The exchange is telling. For many years Gretel was the Packer we knew very little about, beyond the fact of her marriage to British financier Nick Barham, the father of Francesca and Benjamin; and her divorce and subsequent marriage to Shane
Murray, father of William. Google Gretel Packer and aside from learning she is now among Australia’s 50 richest people, you’ll find the phrases that come up time and again are “famously private” and “publicity-shy”.
“I’m always called shy. I think more than shy I’m private,” muses Gretel. “Growing up, my father didn’t seek the public eye, publicity sought him, and it was often very harsh and unfair and unkind. So really, why would I have made myself available? So I just didn’t. Some people may want to learn more but you can’t do anything about that. So you just live your life. I gave up reading [gossip columns] 25 years ago and think life is more peaceful as a result. You can get so hurt because people can write really nasty things. But I have to say my three children have always been off-limits, and it’s not as if anyone has ever been asked not to write about them: they’ve just been given that privacy. And I’m grateful for that.”
Now Gretel has surrendered that privacy in her role as chair overseeing the numerous arts organisations the NPF supports, from the STC to Sydney Dance Company and Bangarra Dance Theatre. Like her mother, also a director of the NPF, Gretel sits on numerous boards including the Taronga Zoo Foundation, the STC, Art Gallery NSW (AGNSW) board of trustees and AGNSW Sydney Modern project capital campaign committee.
Gretel is a warm, gentle and understated presence, but her demeanour changes as she discusses the work the NPF is doing helping refugee mothers through the foundation’s $30 million Western Sydney arts initiative; or the Melbourne Theatre Company program assisting disadvantaged students experience live theatre for the first time.
“We’ve all been very lucky to experience exposure to the arts quite early [and] believe strongly that the arts are extremely important for developing empathy, for enjoyment, for creativity. There’s scientific documentation to show that is the case, plus it builds intelligence,” she says emphatically. “A lot of schools around the country are no longer able to support the arts in the curriculum. It’s unfortunate but there’s no point casting stones, because that’s the situation. I think sometimes it’s easy to put too much expectation on government … we live in a very complex society and the world is only becoming more complex, so if you stand on the sidelines and expect someone else to do things, it’s not really helpful.”
She is equally passionate when responding to sceptics, who posit that Packer generosity is a ploy to distract from James’s controversial casino investments. “That’s not the reason we’re doing it. That’s incorrect, that’s incorrect,” she implores. “If that’s what people believe they’re in error. But saying that isn’t necessarily going to change their minds. Everyone’s entitled to work out their view on the world, so that’s that.”
Gretel’s views on privacy are a generation apart from Francesca’s. An avid user of Instagram, Francesca has 230,000 followers and her posts offer a glimpse into another world. They might take you on a journey from Californian music festival Coachella to holiday snaps in the Mediterranean on uncle James’s icebreaker Arctic P, her arm slung around actor Robert De Niro; Continued on page 308.