Family Confidential

A powerful series on some of Australia’s most famous and influential families opens with the hidden face of Frank Lowy, at an extraordinary turning point in his family’s history. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the global multi-million dollar retail brand Westfield which Frank Lowy created from a small suburban shopping centre. But behind the meteoric success is a family that is still struggling to reconcile its past and its future. As Lowy comes full circle with his past, he returns to eastern Europe to finally lay the ghosts that have shaped him and his family for over 70 years. The Lowys are pillars of the Australian Jewish community, but Frank’s father, Hugo, struggled to make a living and provide for his wife and five children during the Nazi occupation of Hungary. When he disappeared suddenly, and without trace in 1944, the experience marked Frank indelibly. Years later, despite the incredible business success he enjoys in his adopted country Australia, Frank Lowy and his three sons, who have joined him at the highest echelons of corporate power, still nurse a deep, private wound. He speaks about it for the first time and the private side of the bold, tough businessman is shown to be poignantly vulnerable.

Bob Jane’s name and face is one of Australia’s most famous brands, but the cost of this fame and the lifestyle it brought, has been significant. The country’s leading ‘revhead’ made it out of tough working-class Brunswick in Melbourne to motor racing fame and a multi-million dollar tyre empire . But the flamboyant racing king has paid a large personal price along the way. Broken marriages,, family tragedy and sensational headlines in a bitter public court battle has left him a wiser, more sanguine man than the “toughest little bastard in Brunswick’’ he was named at the tender age of 14. Now 80, his crash and burn approach to life has slowed, but the fire in his belly still burns for a good ride around the track.

The racing family that has survived and thrived against the odds, the Waterhouses, tell of their bruising experience through four generations of bookmaking in Australia. Gai Waterhouse is on top of her game now, having trained some of the biggest track winners in the country, but there was a time when the mud flew at this family and the going got very rough. Family patriarch Bill, 87, has always enjoyed a reputation for toughness, from his struggling upbringing in a workers pub at the foot of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, to the loss of his livelihood after the scandalous Fine Cotton affair. A hard and fast player, punting was his life and although family was important to him, his marriage to Suzanne foundered because he was rarely home. Vilified in the press, and then turned on by family members, and dragged through the courts, he and son Robbie lived on their wits when the stakes were down and pulled the family through. Now, the next generation, grandson Tom Waterhouse is, at 27, the biggest single bookmaker in the country. And Bill and Suzanne have set new odds on their partnership – on his terms.

Once the darling of the wine industry, talented winemaker Andrew Garrett and his family have now been forsaken by the industry that once celebrated them. Starting their amazingly successful business on a $3000 loan, Averil and Andrew Garrett worked their dream hard with innovative marketing and production and their label became a national and international bestseller. But their high life and rollercoaster ride came to a full stop when fire devastated the historic winery they had hoped to make the headquarters of their empire. Financially strapped with commitment to expansion plans, they were forced to take on a Japanese multinational as a majority partner, but it was the beginning of the end of Andrew Garrett. Unable and unwilling to toe the corporate line, Averil and Andrew walked away from their company and bought a magnificent property in the Adelaide Hills, planning it to be the centre of a vineyard, winery and tourist centre. But planning laws intervened, so Andrew invested heavily in vineyards and again fate turned against them. A desperate struggle to hang on to their home ended in 2004 when they were evicted. They were declared bankrupt. But worse was to come.

The Hemmes family revolutionised the Australian fashion scene with the House of Merivale and Mr John. Their name has been synonomous with style and sophistication for more than 50 years. The women are the retiring types, Merivale and daughter Bettina eternally camera shy, leaving it to the men, John Hemmes and son Justin to be the showmen. They have risen to the challenge, often branded as peacocks and playboys, revelling in the fast, shiny and new and attracting more than their fair share of gossip and innuendo. Today the Hemmes command a hospitality empire comprising a chain of glamorous restaurants and nightclubs worth a reputed $500 million. But despite the hype, enormous wealth and flamboyant exterior, this family of four is an intensely private and tight knit group. The outward glamour belies the reality of a family as real and down to earth as any other. They also have a new reality to deal with. John Hemmes has a serious illness.

Australia’s most high-profile Aboriginal family, the Mundines, whose members include boxing legends Tony and Anthony ‘Choc’, are cursed from a source that once gave them power and unity. A remarkable act of charity 60 years ago gave the Mundines an extraordinary advantage over many others in their community. The owners of a NSW cattle station, where the Mundines lived and worked, gave the family 50 acres of land to call their own. Having this property saved the family from untold suffering and dispossession by the Aboriginal Protection Board. It was a gathering place for the clan, and the children who grew up in its bushland came to cherish ‘The Square’ as it became known, and the roots it gave them. There were even jobs for all the Mundine men when a mine opened and operated right next door. A new generation grew up with the confidence and wherewithal to move to the city and build exciting new futures. Leading the charge was Tony Mundine who became a world champion boxer – and put the family, and Baryulgil, on the map. But gradually the Mundines became aware that for all their success, something was terribly wrong. In an ironic twist, the land that had given them so much was slowly but surely killing them. Now, the Mundine women, who’ve held the family pain for over 30 years, are finally telling their story. They’ve lost hundreds of their family and many are still getting sick and dying. Led by Tony and the most famous of them all, his son, ‘Choc’, the family is facing the fight of their lives.

Once known as one of the biggest ratbags of Australian rock'n'roll, Jimmy Barnes is now regarded as music royalty. But it hasn't been an easy journey. Jimmy's battles with drugs and alcohol have taken him to the brink, almost costing him his family and his life. He was saved by an unlikely love affair that has survived against the odds. Jane Barnes grew up in a very different world to Jimmy's. She spent her childhood in a traditional warm family compound in Thailand and brought her unique values to her marriage with Jimmy. This modern Australian love story reveals one man's courage to face his demons and his transformation and strengthening through the love and support of an extended, blended family.