Australia tourist information on accommodation, tours, cheap flights and car hire. Accommodation | International Flights | Domestic Flights | Tours | Travel Insurance | Car Hire | Visas | Shopping | Dating | Humour
follow Amazing Australia on Facebook

Amazing Australian Entrepeneurs

A lot of Aussies just do their job from Monday to Friday and then blow it all in the pub on the weekend.
However, some are a bit smarter and manage to save a few bucks, invest, and turn it in to a bit more.
Below are a few Aussies who did a bit better than the average bloke....

Alan Bond

English born signwriter who formed Bond Corporation in 1959 that started making money with land speculation around Perth. Later in the 1980s expanded into brewing (Swan brewery), television (Channel 9), radio, property development and oil exploration. Made himself very popular with the Australian public when he funded the Australia II, a well designed sailing boat that won the America's Cup , so called because the Yanks would win it every single year, until Alan stepped in that is.
At the height of things in the 1980s he was estimated to be worth around $400 million and he lived a free spending life style buying things like a village in England and $54 million of Van Gogh paintings.
Unfortunately the stockmarket crash of '87 brought a reversal of this trend and his fortunes began to spiral downwards with Bond Corp recording a $980 million loss, which was unheard of in those days.
Receivers moved in to recover assets, sell off what was left and to search for hidden off-shore funds in countries like Switzerland, pretty well all unsuccesful.
In 1992 Bond was charged with criminal dishonesty and spent a few years serving a prison sentence in Casuarina Prison, Western Australia. From there he called on Christopher Skase to stop being a wimp and come home from Spain to face the music and do his time but to no avail.

Ansett

Reginald Myles Ansett (later Sir Reginald Ansett), began a passenger car service between Hamilton and Ballarat, Victoria in 1931, using a second-hand Studebaker. The service, Ansett Roadways, eventually connected Hamilton, Maryborough, Ballarat and Melbourne. With the money this brought in he was able to purchase a DH Gipsy Moth in which he learned to fly. After he bought a second car and employed a driver the Victorian Government saw the Ansett road operation as competition to the railways and passed legislation which ended the road freight operation. Ansett's response was to register Ansett Airways and on February 17th 1936, a Fokker F.XI Universal delivered eight passengers from the small field at Hamilton to Essendon, and by 1969 the airline was Australia's largest domestic airline and in the financial year 1988-89 it reported a profit of AUS$67.33m. Unfortunately things then, kicked off by the pilot dispute, started going down hill and in the 1990-91 financial year Ansett's losses were estimated at AUS$50m.
On the 5th of March 2002 Capt. Geoff McDonald piloting the midnight "red-eye" flight from Perth to Sydney, touched down at Sydney at 6.42 a.m.and Ansett Airlines abruptly ceased operations after 66 years. Staff showed up for work to find the doors closed, passengers with valid tickets weren't going anywhere and many Australians who had been clocking up frequent flyer points to get freebies suddenly lost the whole lot. An Ansett levy was introduced by the Government on all domestic flights to raise funds to pay the employees their entitlements. For travelers it was lucky that Richard Branson had just started Virgin Blue.

Chris Corrigan

Chris Corrigan was Australia's youngest CEO at the age of 29 at BT Australia, and made Patrick Corporation from a relatively small business into a transport and infrastructure giant whose share price ballooned from $0.40 to $6.70. He's also trying to take over Virgin Blue and at the time of writing has 62% ownership. He is a man who likes to win, in 1998 when Australia's port facilities were paralyzed in a long running union strike he tried to break the strike by sending workers out to Arabia to be trained in unloading ships , the Aussie unions were furious!

Christopher Skase

In the 1980s this former television station owner and manager of the failed Qintex Group ran a booming empire, of which the results can still be seen in towns like Port Douglas, North Queensland, where he built the Sheraton hotel that kicked off the building boom in the town. Things turned sour however and after a bit of trouble with the bank he ended up skipping the country leaving many millions of dollars in debts behind. The Australian government tried to get him extradited from Spain but at every court appearance Skase arrived in a wheel chair breathing from an oxygen mask and managed to convince the Spanish judge that he was too sick to fly home. The Australian government then offered to arrange passage on a ship but he was too sick for this too. Alan Bond ( another famous character who had built an empire that left millions of dollars in debts) publicly called on Skase to come home and do his time in jail like he had done. In the end Skase ended up dying in Spain without ever having returned to Australia to face the music. The whole scenarion inspired a movie 'Let's get Skase' which told the story of frustrated creditors hiring a bounty hunter to kidnap Skase and transport him back to Australia. The movie was like a combination of 'Stripes' and James Bond and did not win any Oscars or other prizes and became somewhat irrelevant when Skase actually died before the movie was released.

Dick Smith

Started life as Richard Harold Smith on 18th March, 1944. Later studied electrical engineering at Sydney University and at a technical college but dropped out of both courses. He then worked on radios in the workshop of his grandfather and repaired and installed radios in taxis.
In 1968 he kicked things off with electronics store chain, Dick Smith Electronics, the shops can still be seen everywhere around the country but are now owned by Woolworths.
His real interests were in flying and he made his first solo helicopter flight around the world in 1983.
In 1986 he went back to work again and established Australian Geographic magazine that he later sold to Fairfax.
Now he had some time to pursue his real interests again and he made the first helicopter flight to the North Pole, and in 1988 he made the first round-the-world flight via both Poles. He also flew on the first manned balloon to cross the Australian continent and set the trans-Australia crossing record of 8.5 days for a solar-powered car in 1994.
In 1987 he was named Australian of the Year and in 1990 he became chairman of the Civil Aviation Authority but resigned later when disagreements arose with the industry. Also tried to help the Aussie economy by producing Dick Smith peanut butter, Dick Smith Vegemite and a whole range of other things and a website to help people choose Australian made and owned products.

 

Elle McPherson

Tall girl born on March 29, 1964 in Sydney as Ealanor Gow. who started off modelling swim suits which made her a legend as "The Body" with her measurements of 36-24-35, weight of 58 kg. and 6 ft height. Elle has appeared in all varieties of bikini for her own calendars, Victoria's Secret catalogs and Sports Illustrated. She has also appeared in movies 'Sirens', 'If Lucy Fell', 'Alice', 'Batman & Robin' and 'The Edge' - where she had a small part playing Anthony Hopkin's wife. Elle has her own calender, exercise video and lingerie line called Elle MacPherson Intimates which is Australia's #1 best selling lingerie line with a yearly turnover of $30 million.

click here

Founded The Fashion Café with fellow supermodels Claudia Schiffer, Naomi Campbell and Christy Turlington. She has graced the cover of Playboy and her face appears on the front of 8 Caribbean postage stamps. In 2000 she was estimated to be worth about $60 million. At 21 years old, she married Gilles Bensimon (French photographer and Elle magazine's creative director.) They split after Elle became a top supermodel. She has since dated Sean Penn and Tim Jeffries and has had a son, Flynn, with financer Arki Busson in 1998.

Greg Norman

Greg Norman, also known as the Great White Shark, is an Australian golf legend who plays the game that well that his personal fortune in 2006 was estimated around the $278 million! Pity that he is divorcing his wife Laura who might take 200 of the 278 with her. He owns his own Gulfstream helicopter with Great White Shark emblem on the side, a mansion in Florida and a 1200ha ranch with golfcourse in Colorado, Great White Shark Enterprises that owns and operates 40 golfcourses in 12 countries and a few other little investments that generate around $50 million annually.

Kerry Packer

Kerry Packer passed away peacefully at home with his family at his bedside on Boxingday 2005 at the age of 68.
He was born on 17th December, 1937 as the son of publishing tycoon Sir Frank Packer and became Australia's richest man amassing an estimated worth of A$6.9 billion. He was also listed as the 94th richest man in the world, a pretty good effort for someone who was called "the family idiot" by his father and started working life as a printing press cleaner. When he reached the age of 65 still had no plans to retire despite frequent health scares, operations and hospital stays when he runs his empire that includes Channel Nine TV from his hospital bed. His business empire included magazines and television networks, diamond mines, petrochemicals, heavy engineering, rural properties, coalmines, ski resorts and casinos. Once his heart stopped beating for seven minutes but where some people awaken with stories of angels, white light and heavenly visions Kerry said: "I've been to the other side and there's nothing f...ing there". Over the years he survived several heart attacks and in 2000 he received a transplanted kidney donated by his helicopter pilot and friend Nicholas Ross.
He once was investigated in the 1980s by police and media and the Costigan royal commission as he attracted attention by carrying enough cash on him to buy your average Sydney waterfront house but nothing illegal was discovered, he just likes to gamble heavily and he is rich so that explained the cash, none of the suspected links to organized crime were found. Rumours say that once he won $6 million on the 1998 Melbourne Cup won by New Zealand horse, Jezabeel.
He has a son James that took control of one of his businesses late 1990s but after losing $300 million in the OneTel fiasco in only a couple of years Kerry took the reins back again.
His Channel Nine TV station was in Alan Bond's hands for a while but he repossesed it again three years later when Bondy couldn't meet repayments when things started going downhill a bit.
At a large memorial service attended by 1800 people at the Sydney Opera House, Prime Minister John Howard called him a great Australian, a larger than life character who in so many ways left his mark on the Australian community over a very long career in business. His son James made a moving speech, Russell Crowe read out a poem, and a choir and flag-waving schoolchildren belted out the cricket anthem Come on Aussie, come on. Kerry had loved sport and besides having revolutionised Australian television, he forever changed the way Australian television covered sport and the way the game of cricket was played.
His son James Packer has now taken control of his father's $11 billion media and gaming company Publishing & Broadcasting Ltd and hopefully will do better than he did with OneTel.
His son James Packer took over the role of being Australia's richest man with an estimated worth of A$7.25 billion, until West Australian mining entrepreneur Andrew "Twiggy" Forrest became the richest man in Australia after his shares in his Fortescue Metals Group jump 17 percent, he owns 1.023 billion shares in the company and this put his personal worth at about $8.66 billion. Of course this dropped again when the January 2008 stock market crash happened so as the share prices move they may have to take turns being Australia's richest man.

Rupert Murdoch

The biggest media mogul in the world today, born in Australian on March 11th, 1931, in Melbourne, and educated in Geelong. Now a U.S. citizen but many regard him as an Australian, he owns Fox Television and three quarters of the Australian news papers and has interests in many forms of communications and owned a large part of Ansett before this collapsed, his personal fortune is estimated at $US7 billion. His empire started with the Adelaide News that he inherited and his global media show now spans every continent, reaching some 2 billion persons.

 

Aussie Entrepreneurship:
How To Succeed in Business Down Under

Do you want to carve out a successful career for yourself in Australia? If you’re to achieve great things in your entrepreneurial endeavour Down Under, you’re going to need to follow the advice and guidance listed below. Doing so will help you to prepare for the challenges that you will be likely to face in this venture, and it will help you to take the right steps in your quest to climb up
your chosen career ladder.
Here are four vital things you must do to succeed in business in Australia:

Obtain a necessary visa
To start a business Down Under, you’re first going to need to obtain a necessary visa. This will grant you the legal right to work and trade in Australia, which means that you won’t find yourself accidentally breaking any laws when you chase your entrepreneurial dream in the country.
There are a number of different visas that will allow you to operate your own business in Australia, some of which include:
- Academy of Entrepreneurs Student visa
- Working Holidays visa
- Business Innovation and Investment visa

Paying taxes
Once your visa documents are in order, you then need to cover the crucial challenge of paying your taxes. To perform this task, you must obtain both an Australian Business Number (ABN) and a Tax File Number (TFN). With these numbers in place, you will be able to pay tax on the sales/transactions that you make under your business registry. This will help you to remain on the
right side of the Aussie law, which in turn will help you to lay solid foundations for your organisation going forward.

Get to grips with business travel
Australia is a vast, sprawling space. If you plan on expanding your enterprise across the length and breadth of the country, you’re going to need to get to grips with business travel pretty quickly.
Fortunately, you don’t have to perform this crucial task all by yourself. With Global Business Travel by your side, you will be able to enjoy optimised corporate travel management from a centralised platform. This web-based solution will provide you with the tools you need to streamline your booking process, which will allow you to focus more time and effort on sealing deals and making
money.

Where to base yourself
There is a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem based in Australia, most of which can be found concentrated in Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane. Should you move to any of these prospering cities, you will be sure to find yourself in close connection with an extensive network of professionals in your niche field.

 

 

You know of any amazing Australian entrepeneurs? ( Or are you one?) Then contact us!




Use of this website constitutes acceptance of the User Agreement for this website
Contact us | Advertise on this site | Link to this site |Add your photos or stories to this site | Webmasters | Affiliates