In last month’s Fifty-Plus News I wrote about royal tours in Victoria and the forthcoming exhibition about them at the Royal Historical Society. It has now been opened – by the Lieutenant Governor of Victoria, Lady Southey AM, with the strong cultural echo that she was born Marigold Myer, the younger daughter of the founder of the pace-setting Bourke Street store.
As famous as his creation has become, Sidney Myer, the person, outshines it, for it was he who implanted ideas and processes that set new benchmarks for retailing and employer–employee relations. He also invigorated Australian philanthropy. Although a business giant and a smart operator, he was an interesting mixture of enthusiasm, dignity, charm and informality, a notable patron of the arts with an active social conscience. In 1930, during the great depression, he provided a Christmas dinner for 10,000 poor people at the Exhibition Building and over three years, to 1932, gave 22,000 pounds to provide work on the Yarra Boulevard. He retained staff in the belief that it was "the responsibility of capital to provide work". That is a view not much in vogue today.
When he died at 56 in 1934, Sidney Myer’s work was not ended. His legacy, and his family’s commitment to it, through the Sidney Myer Trust and Myer Foundation, continues to enhance social and cultural causes. The young Russian Jewish migrant of 1898 had made an incredible mark on Australian life.
Just as incredible has been the mark on our history of the treatment of Aborigines, the Chinese and the Jews. Even though he converted to Christianity, Sidney Myer was hurt by lapses in our interpretation of the national ideal of ‘a fair go’. With that in mind I would like to refer readers to a special time and place when shared risks, both physical and financial, overcame ethnic prejudice.
In Ballarat in the 1850’s, dozens of Jewish storekeepers supported miners financially in the quest for gold buried deep in the wet ground of the Ballarat East basin. The labour was prodigious and the financing hazardous but such partnerships created a community spirit that defeated prejudice. Jews like Steinfeld and Charles Dyte (who became mayors of Ballarat East) and Julius and Isadore Wittkowski (among many Poles) were celebrated citizens. Their graves in the Old Ballarat Cemetery are monuments to the pride in their achievements.
Migration has magical effects in stimulating people to achieve. We have seen it in our own day in men like Arvi Parvo, who are good reason to celebrate diversity.
