Kerry
Packer died last December He got a state funeral

Wine
man Len Evans died yesterday: Will Len Evans?

And why
should Evans? Well he did help found and drive the development of the Australian
wine industry, especially in the Hunter. What did Kerry Packer do (except
develop a greed for controlling cricket) except
threaten politicians and people who opposed him in business?

The
Australian wine industry is now a multi billion dollar industry, thanks to the
efforts of people like Evans who took it from the confines of the small rural
hamlets in the Hunter and the few Sydney doctors and others who knew of it (and
the same in the Barossa in South Australia and around Griffith in NSW) to a
wider world here and overseas.

Others
helped and the wine industry today is testimony to their efforts, even though
corporates are doing their best to ruin parts of it
with greedy expansion and silly ideas of treating wine like
beer!

What
did Kerry packer leave behind? Well his father and grandfather did all the hard
yards at the old newspapers, magazines and TV Empire established called
Consolidated Press.

Kerry
just reshuffled a few assets, barked at a lot of people and took over someone
else’s casino in Melbourne to get into gaming, and posed as an
investment brainiac.

It will
be impossible to take the Len Evans influence out of the wine industry: son
James Packer is busily taking as much of his father’s influence, mates, and
other things out of PBL and Cons Press, that it has become the talk of Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs
social and business set.

There’s
a joke doing the rounds of Darling Point, Bellevue Hill and Vaucluse at the moment: Kerry Packer stipulated that he was
to be buried at Elleston at Scone (where he played
polo) to stop James from selling it.

The
father knew the son!