On 7 April, Crikey ran an item under the headline “Gordon Barton dead: not important enough for Australian press,” which reported the death of Gordon Barton, one of Australia’s most important and idiosyncratic business and political operators three days earlier.

In that item we wrote: “Crikey is amazed that the death last Monday of one of the most significant Australian business, political and media figures – Gordon Barton – has apparently gone unreported and ignored by “papers of record” like the Financial Review, The Australian, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.”

Well, on Saturday there was a memorial service for the largely forgotten Gordon Barton at Sydney University. As one attendee reports:

A good crowd turned up. This was a humanist’s version of a congregation. We hung about waiting for a wedding to finish so I guess it was One Wedding and A Funeral. The speeches picked up on different aspects of his life and these were interspersed with clippings from an old interview of GB by the late Bob Moore in his Profiles of Powers series (b&w,ABC TV).

Apologies were offered by people like Michael Kirby, Bill Deane and Geoffrey Robertson. Malcolm Turnbull and his wife, Lucy, were prominent in the front row until Peter Coleman arrived and persuaded them to join him at the back. This was slightly droll, given that Coleman is Peter Costello’s father-in-law!

The formal speeches ended with a neat talk by Gordon’s son, Geoffrey, who bears a spooky likeness to his father and has begun a business couriering letters in competition with the Italian Post Office, in which he had been receiving paternal encouragement and advice.

Afterwards a large number of the attendees repaired to two nosheries in nearby Glebe. The politically inclined chose to eat separately from the old libertarians, who were present in great numbers. Both groups imbibed well but managed to resist any temptation to commit public indiscretions.

Barton’s former Nation Review editor and Angus and Robertson managing director Richard Walsh gave a touching tribute to Barton, which included this anecdote:

One of my favourite Gordon stories relates to his quixotic bid for election to the Senate in 1974 – this was to be the last tilt at this particular windmill by the Don Quixote of Australian politics. ABC TV decided, in their infinite wisdom, to film a day in the life of Gordon Barton as part of their election coverage. Because he was going to be in Melbourne, they suggested to him the filmic possibilities of his visiting his by-then illustrious newspaper, Nation Review. They assumed he regularly visited us, no doubt to pass on his latest ideological diktats – after all, this was what all newspaper proprietors did, wasn’t it?

The truth is that Gordon had never once visited us in our then West Melbourne offices. Indeed, he phoned me a few days before this and with his customary diffidence asked whether I thought this would be okay. I in fact welcomed it. Most of my staff had never met the man, but had a great, if distant, affection for him. He said he’d come by at 5.30. “Hooroo,” he said cheerily, as he so often did, when he hung up.

When 6pm arrived that day and there was a no-show, I assumed there had been a major hitch. But then I got a phone call. I could hear the money drop at the other end – it was obviously a public phone – and then there was Gordon’s strangely strangulated voice. He said he’d lost our address, which he’d been carrying around on a piece of paper, and he didn’t know where we were. Was there ever another proprietor remotely like Gordon – one who didn’t even know where his newspaper was located?

And his former business partner, Shann Turnbull, explained Barton’s approach to capitalism:

In 1967 I was included among his six equity partners to form a pioneering corporate raiding venture. Gordon’s perverse personality was reflected in its name, Tjuringa Securities. A tjuringa was a secret sacred object of Australian Aboriginals males. During the following seven years we acquired and re-organised over a dozen listed companies. Besides heading up the management of some, I was also head “ferret” identifying targets. One was our first acquisition in Hobart where we made our first million dollars and later built the first legal casino in Australia.

CRIKEY: As usual, the “mainstream” media managed to largely overlook the tributes to Gordon Barton. Not sexy enough.