16 hours ago
Blast from the past: Controversial Aussie figure's jailhouse painting resurfaces at auction and goes for a tidy sum
An artwork painted by national hero turned disgraced tycoon Alan Bond while in jail for fraud has sold for $2196 at a recent auction, well over its estimated value.
Remembered alternatively as the man who bankrolled Australia's unlikely victory in the 1983 America's Cup, and as the man who oversaw one of the biggest corporate collapses in Australian history, Alan Bond lived an unusual life.
His mixed legacy resurfaced at Gibson's Australian, Maritime and Exploration auction on Monday where his jailhouse painting went under the hammer.
The closing price included a 22 per cent buyer's premium but exceeded its estimated value of $100 to $300 by an order of magnitude.
The crude painting was dubbed 'Australia II' after its subject - the yacht whose victory robbed the New York Yacht Club of its unbroken 132-year winning streak.
It was after that victory that Mr Hawke, then prime minister, famously said: 'Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum.'
Bond painted the work in 1999, two years into his four year jail stint for siphoning $1.2billion from the publicly listed Bell Resources to shore up the ailing Bond Corporation.
According to the Australian Financial Review, the work came to the auction courtesy of Bond's former lawyer Julian Burnside KC and his wife Kate Durham.
Ms Durham told the paper the painting had been hung in Mr Burnside's Melbourne chambers.
'It was a gift,' she said, adding Mr Burnside considered the late businessman to have been both 'good company and yet curiously over-optimistic'.
'To Julian with special thanks' is written on the back on the painting.
The one-time billionaire occupies a unique place in Australian history.
By the time of his death in 2015 following complications from heart surgery in a Perth hospital, Bond had made, lost and remade his fortune several times over.
He rose to prominence at the helm of Bond Corporation which began in property development before expanding into brewing, television and gold mining.
In 1987, he founded Australia's first private university, Bond University, which still exists to this day.
The tide of public opinion first turned against him in the early 1990s when he was declared bankrupt after failing to repay a $194million loan for a nickel mining project.
He was jailed the same year with reported debts exceeding $1.8billion.
Bond was released that same year following a successful retrial and, three years later, his family bought him out of bankruptcy.
In 1996, however, he found himself again behind bars for the secret, sweetheart sale of Manet's masterpiece from Bond Corporation to a private family-owned vehicle.
It was his illegal siphoning of cash from Bell Resources and subsequent jail sentence in 1997, however, that ultimately precipitated the collapse of Bond Corporation.
That same year, he was stripped of his Officer of the Order of Australia title, awarded for his role in the America's Cup victory.
In 2000, he was released from Karnet Prison Farm, a minimum-security facility in the Keysbrook State Forest in WA, four years into a seven year sentence.
Following his release, Bond managed to rebuild his wealth through a series of mining investments, predominantly in Africa.
Inside of a decade, he would be readmitted to the Business Review Weekly's 'Rich 200 List' with an estimated wealth of $265m.
His death in 2015 following complications arising from open heart surgery in a Perth Hospital, prompted an outpouring of mixed tributes from friends, enemies and loved ones.
Hawke told reporters at the time it was 'impossible to overstate how much (Bond) lifted the spirits of Australia' following the America's Cup victory.
'The spirits of Australia were low in the early 1980s,' Hawke said.
'We had gone through bad economic times. The country was badly divided. But we united around this marvellous historic victory.'
Hawke acknowledged Bond was a dodgy businessman whose dealings hurt many investors but said: 'On balance, he'll always rank remarkably high for the contribution he made to Australia.'
Journalist and former host of ABC's Media Watch, who spent a significant portion of his career chronicling Bond's rise and fall said: 'He made life interesting, that's for sure'.
'If Bond comes back in another life, my hope would be that he has a little more regard for the truth and that he takes as much care with other people's money as he always did with his own,' Barry said at the time.
