Boroondara

Distinguished and Famous people from Boroondara

Kew and Camberwell connect Boroondara with both state government and a famously irreverent theatrical career. Birthplace, electorate and childhood each provide a different kind of local link.

🏛️ Sir Rupert Hamer

Rupert Hamer was born in Kew in 1916 and later represented Kew in Victoria's Legislative Assembly from 1971 to 1981. He served as premier from 1972 to 1981, after earlier ministerial roles in local government and immigration. His responsibilities also included the arts and the state treasury. Parliament's record places both his birth and death in Kew, giving his Boroondara connection a personal dimension as well as an electoral one. The local member's working life reached the state's highest political office.

🎭 Barry Humphries

Barry Humphries' childhood in Camberwell formed the opening chapter of the National Portrait Gallery's exhibition about his life. He became an actor, writer and satirist whose characters included Dame Edna Everage, Sandy Stone and Sir Les Patterson. His career took him from struggling theatre work in Australia and England to international audiences, with books adding another outlet for his performances and observations. Camberwell's connection is his upbringing, rather than a claim that every later stage appearance belonged to the suburb. One suburban childhood supplied quite a cast of public identities.

🎙️ Dick Bentley

Dick Bentley was born at Kew in 1907 and worked as a bread carter for his father before music and comedy became his career. Violin gave way to a versatile repertoire including saxophone, clarinet and impersonations. His later British radio success included Take It From Here, where he played the hapless Ron Glum opposite June Whitfield. He was forty-one when he first played the twenty-one-year-old Ron—a useful reminder that radio casting need not consult a birth certificate. Stage work, films and television followed, but his gift for creating a character through voice remained central.

📖 Paul Brickhill

Paul Brickhill was born at Balwyn in 1916 before his family moved to Sydney, where he began a career in journalism. As a fighter pilot he was shot down and imprisoned at Stalag Luft III, where he gathered fellow airmen’s stories and assisted preparations for an escape. Claustrophobia kept him out of the tunnel itself. The experience became the basis of The Great Escape; The Dam Busters and Reach for the Sky followed. His reporting skills helped turn complex events into compelling popular narratives, with books that later found another enormous audience through film.

🎓 Sir John Bunting

Sir John Bunting won a scholarship to Trinity Grammar School in Kew in 1934. Two years later he was school captain, humanities dux and captain of the cricket, football, athletics and tennis teams: a fairly crowded list for a school report. He went on to study economics and became one of Australia’s most senior public servants, heading the Prime Minister’s Department and later serving as high commissioner in London. Kew’s connection is his substantial schooling and the scholarship that supported it. The athletic schoolboy later continued football in Canberra while beginning a career devoted to the machinery of government.

🎓 Olive Zakharov

Olive Zakharov was born at Kew in 1929 and attended Ruyton Grammar School from 1936 to 1946. In her final year she was dux and editor of the school yearbook, having also served as a prefect. She later recalled an adolescent appetite for Shakespeare’s tragedies. Interrupted university study, varied employment and family responsibilities preceded her eventual work as a teacher and counsellor. She entered the Senate in 1983, bringing strong interests in equality and social welfare. Kew’s association is both birthplace and substantial schooling, well before her later working life in Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs and national politics.