“He was a great friend to Shepparton, General,” The Boss said when he heard about Bails’ death over the weekend, at 96.
Everyone called him Bails but his proper name was Sidney Baillieu Myer, the second son of Sidney Myer, founder of the famous retail chain.
Bails was born in San Francisco while Sidney was over there studying retailing in the 1920s, having established his first shop in Bendigo around 1900. By 1914, Sidney had bought his first property in Bourke St near the General Post Office, followed by another in 1921; by 1925, building of the Lonsdale St frontage had begun.
Sidney died suddenly in 1934 at just 56, having achieved extraordinary success — when young Bails was just eight. His older cousin, Norman, took over the reins while Bails and older brother Ken finished their education.
Like their father, they were both clever, industrious and generous. During the 1930s Depression, Sidney had famously funded open-air concerts so the public could enjoy performances by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, as well as putting on free Christmas feasts for 10,000 people at the Exhibition Buildings — with a present for every child.
His Sidney Myer Fund, established through his will, helped Ken and Bails build the Myer Music Bowl in 1959. While expanding into the suburbs with Chadstone shopping centre in 1960 and then setting up the Target chain and moving into New South Wales, their support for the arts, education and disadvantage grew just as rapidly.
More than 30 years ago, Bails helped establish the Sidney Myer Fund Australia Day Ceramics award with the Shepparton Art Gallery — now known as the Sidney Myer Fund Australian Ceramics Award, with a $50,000 prize — Australia’s most prestigious ceramics award.
On his regular visits to the area, Bails took an interest in a range of local needs and issues and both the Sidney Myer Fund and the Myer Foundation have supported many local causes over the years. Bails was also part of the gatherings that led to the birth of the Greater Shepparton Lighthouse Project less than a decade ago.
And, of course, without the formidable influence of his nephew and dynamic cultural leader, Carrillo Gantner, our superb new Shepparton Arts Museum building would simply not exist.
Carrillo’s mother, Neilma, was Bails’ sister and together she and Carrillo assembled the Gantner-Myer collection of Australian Aboriginal Art — a substantial part of which they are generously donating to SAM over time.
Like his uncle and his grandfather, Carrillo has never let the grass grown under his feet. He founded the Playbox and Malthouse theatres in Melbourne, has led both the Sidney Myer Fund and Myer Foundation, served as a Melbourne City Councillor, president of the Victorian Arts Centre Trust, chaired the Melbourne International Comedy Festival then the Melbourne International Arts Festival. He served as a cultural counsellor for Australia’s Foreign Affairs in Beijing, sat on the Australia Council and worked for UNESCO.
The Boss reckons Bails’ legendary charm was something else running in the family: Carrillo employed it skilfully in convincing our council to allow SAM the degree of independence it needed to flourish as a destination gallery in regional Australia.
Friends indeed. Woof!
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