Packer's whale of a life

Kerry Packer

If anyone deserved the epithet "larger than life" it was surely Kerry Packer, the high-rolling, death-defying Australian tycoon whose quiet death at his Sydney home overnight yesterday was in contrast to decades of dictating the headlines.

The billionaire media magnate changed the face of world sport, survived multiple heart attacks, won a Melbourne Cup and won and lost fortunes at casino tables and racetracks around the world, all while steering a vast business empire.

He died at 68, as Australia's richest man, with a private fortune estimated at almost $7 billion.

That his end came at home in bed, surrounded by his family, including son and heir apparent James, seemed oddly low-key, but response to his death was anything but.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard described Packer as a great Australian and fellow media magnate Rupert Murdoch said he was one of the most successful businessmen of his generation.

The president of the International Cricket Council, Ehsan Mani, said he took the game by the scruff of the neck when he launched World Series Cricket to outrage back in 1977.

"Day-night cricket, white balls and black sightscreens, coloured clothing and cutting-edge television coverage are all aspects of the game that modern cricket fans take for granted and all of them are down to one man - Kerry Packer," he said.

Players and officials held a minute's silence on the second day of the Boxing Day Test between Australia and South Africa at the MCG.

Others spoke of the toughness - and generosity - of a giant of a man, whose formidable physical dimensions were matched by his intelligence. Packer, known as "Whale" in gambling circles, once dropped $35 million in a three-day bender on the tables of Las Vegas and casually paid off the mortgage of a casino waitress.

He was dogged by health problems, including most recently a kidney transplant. Packer suffered the first of several heart attacks in 1990 while playing polo in Sydney and was declared clinically dead for eight minutes. He was revived by electric shock treatment and was back in the saddle five weeks later.

"The good news is there's no devil. The bad news is there's no heaven. There's nothing," he said after the incident.

He inherited his magazine holdings from his father Sir Frank Packer, and grew his media stakes to include Australia's Channel Nine and ACP, publisher of dozens of top magazine titles, including Australia and New Zealand's biggest-selling weekly magazine, Woman's Day.

The empire expanded to take in petrochemicals, heavy engineering, ski resorts, rural properties, diamond exploration, coalmines, supermarket coupons and casinos.

In sport, the Packer interests were almost as diverse as in business. He played polo and golf and built his own course in the Hunter Valley, owned horses - and gambled hugely on them - and also changed the face of both rugby codes.

When Murdoch launched Super League to break Packer's control of the game's television audience, Packer turned his attention to rugby with a plan for a World Rugby Corporation, which secretly signed up leading All Blacks and eventually forced the amateur code to adopt professionalism.

Packer was dyslexic, excelling as a child more at sport than study, but rivals wrote him off at their peril.

A tough-love childhood saw his father instil competitive values, once sending him on a round trip of 2000km by rail to collect a tennis racket he had left at boarding school at Geelong Grammar.

During a stopover he is said to have wired home: "Arrived Melbourne safely stop No love Kerry stop".

Later he characterised his father as "strict but magnificent".

Until his elder brother Clyde, who ran Channel Nine, Australia's first television network, fell out with his father and moved to the US in the 1970s, Kerry played second fiddle.

But his innovations, including pioneering the use of satellite to broadcast live coverage of major world sports events, saw him quickly stamp his mark.

Ever the pugilist, he said when cricket authorities at Lord's voted to ban the 50 top players he lured to the "pyjama" game: "I will take no steps at all to help anybody. From now on it is every man for himself and let the devil take the hindmost."