Fleay died in Brisbane, Australia, at the age of 85. In an obituary, the New York Times wrote: "As a conservationist, [Fleay] was outspoken and, as "The Daily Telegraph" put it, he 'strove to preserve native Australian fauna in the days when even koala bears were slaughtered in vast numbers for their fur.'"
Archie Roach
Archie Roach (Archibald William Roach), was born in 1956 at Mooroopna, Victoria, Australia. He is an aboriginal-Australian singer and songwriter. His songs are popular in the Australian Aboriginal community.
At the age of three or four, Roach was taken from his family by the Australian government. His two sisters were also taken away. After spending time in an orphanage, he was raised in Melbourne, Australia, by a white family, who had moved to Melbourne from Scotland.
As a teenager, Roach ran away from home to look for his biological parents. After running away, while homeless and abusing alcohol, Roach met his wife, musician Ruby Hunter. During the late 1980s, Roach and Hunter created a band named “Altogether” with other Aboriginal musicians.
In mid-2011, Roach was diagnosed with early lung cancer, and had one of his lungs removed. While recovering, he released his hit album “Into the Bloodstream.”
His album "Charcoal Lane" won an ARIA Award as the Best Indigenous Album of the Year. He was given an ARIA Award as the Best New Talent. The Rolling Stone Magazine listed it in the Top 50 Albums of 1992. "Looking for the Butter Boy" won three ARIA Awards in 1998.
In 2013, Roach won a Deadly Award for Album of the Year. He has also won two ARIA awards and a national Human Rights Award for his songs “Took the Child Away” and “Charcoal Lane.” Many of his songs talk about his experiences and the difficulties he has faced as an Aboriginal Australian.
In 2015 Roach was made a member of the Order of Australia.
John Flynn
John Flynn OBE (25 November 1880 – 5 May 1951) was an Australian Presbyterian minister. He began the Presbyterian Church of Australia. He also started the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia, which brings medical care to people who live far away from doctors or hospitals. Flynn's portrait is on one side of the Australian 20 dollar note.
John Flynn was born in Moliagul in Victoria, Australia on November 25, 1880. His parents were Thomas Eugene Flynn and Rosetta Forsyth. Because his mother died while giving birth to him, John was raised by his mother’s sister in Sydney, Australia.
When he was 16, Flynn decided that he wanted to become a Presbyterian minister and study theology (religion) at the University of Melbourne. In 1911, he finished his training for the Presbyterian ministry and was officially ordained into the Presbyterian Church. He went to live and work in the Australian Outback, where many people had little access to medical care because they lived so far from large cities, doctors, and hospitals. In 1912, he created the Australian Inland Mission, which gave medical, spiritual, and other care to people in the Outback.
For many years, Flynn worked to get the support and money he needed to start an organization that would bring doctors and medical care by plane to people living in the Outback. With the help of Alf Traeger, Flynn was able to create the Aerial Medical Service in 1928. (Its name was later changed to the Flying Doctor Service, and then changed again to the Royal Flying Doctor Service of Australia). In its first year, the Aerial Medical Service flew 50 flights to 26 different places, giving medical care to 225 people. Over the next few years, Flynn worked to get the support the Aerial Medical Service needed to provide "flying doctors" to every part of Australia. By 1939, every state in Australia had an Aerial Medical Service. Now called the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the organization still exists today and has 21 bases throughout every part of the country. It provides medical care to 290,000 people every year.
Flynn became an officer of the Order of the British Empire on June 3, 1933.
Sidney Myer
Sidney Myer created Myer’s, one of the biggest department stores in Australia. He emigrated from Russia at the age of 20 and started off as a small merchant and went on to be the owner of a large chain store.
Simcha (Sidney) Myer Baevski was born on the February 8, 1878, in the Jewish section of Kritchev, Russia. He was the youngest of eleven children. He attended a primary school for Jewish children. While at school, he managed his mother’s shop and helped the shop be very successful.
When Myer was 20, he and his older brother, Elcon, moved to Australia. Myer arrived in Melbourne, Australia, as a Jewish refugee in August of 1899. He did not know English, and had almost no money and no visa. Soon after arriving, he changed his name to Sydney Myer in order to be more Australian.
The Myer brothers moved to Bendigo, a city in Victoria, Australia. There they started a small drapery business, where they sold fabrics of all different styles, colors, and sizes. Because they disagreed about whether their store should be open on Sundays, the brothers decided to stop working together. Sidney bought his brother's share of the business, and Elcon moved on to Melbourne.
As Myer's business became more successful, he opened a larger store in Bendigo, and new stores in Melbourne and Adelaide. Today, Myer's is one of Australia’s biggest department stores. Myer's is known for having fashionable clothing made by many different designers.
After he went to a performance at the Hollywood Bowl, a famous outdoor theater in California, Myer created the Sidney Myer Music Bowl. In 1929, Myer began to arrange free outdoor concerts by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, held at the Music Bowl. These free concerts are still held today, and are very popular.
Myer died on September 5, 1934. After his death, Myer's family set up the Myer Foundation, which receives millions of dollars every year from the Myer family. The Foundation supports programs that benefit Australia and help Australians in need.
Marcus Oliphant
Sir Marcus “Mark” Laurence Elwin Oliphant, commonly known as Marcus Oliphant, was an Australian physicist and humanitarian. He helped to develop nuclear weapons. He was involved with the first experimental demonstration of nuclear fusion.
Oliphant was born on October 8, 1901 in Kent Town, Adelaide, Australia. His father, Harold George “Baron” Oliphant, was a civil servant. His mother, Beatrice Edith Fanny Oliphant, was an artist.
After graduating from Adelaide High School in 1918, he was unable to get money to pay for university. He got a job cleaning floors at a jewellery store. He was soon able to study at the University of Adelaide. He was interested in medicine, but Kerr Grant, the physics professor, offered him a place in the Physics Department. He received his Bachelor of Science degree in 1921.
Oliphant attempted to build a cyclotron at the University of Birmingham. The completion of it was postponed by the World War II in Europe in 1939.
He was involved with the development of radar with John Randall and Harry Boot. They created a completely new design, the cavity magnetron, which made microwave radar possible.
His most important achievement was being involved with the development of the atomic bomb. He reported that it was possible, and achievable as early as 1943. He spread his research in the United States, which led to the development of the Manhattan Project, led by physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.
Oliphant died on July 14, 2000 in Canberra, Australia.
Many places and things are named after Oliphant. There is the Oliphant building at the Australian National University, the Mark Oliphant Conservation Park, a South Australian high schools science competition, the Oliphant Wing of the Physics Building at the University of Adelaide, and a high school in Munno Para West, South Australia.
He is known for the co-discovery of deuterium, tritium, helium-3 and nuclear fusion and for the development of microwave radar.