THE passing of entrepreneur Kevin Parry last weekend severs yet another link with the heady days of the 1980s from which Western Australia earned its ‘wild west’ tag.
THE passing of entrepreneur Kevin Parry last weekend severs yet another link with the heady days of the 1980s from which Western Australia earned its ‘wild west’ tag.
A product of the Perth Modern School selective process, Mr Parry, who quit his education at 15, was one of a dozen or so big league WA players to storm the ramparts of Perth’s establishment and briefly install a new order.
A classic example of this brazen new attitude to business was his attempt to merge the staid department store empire of the Boans family into his retail empire. He lost that fight to the national Myer chain but he went on, like many of his peers, to create a conglomerate of ill-fitting businesses built on a mountain of debt.
Mr Parry was an inaugural donor to the John Curtin Foundation and featured in the now-infamous photograph of entrepreneurs and political leaders who came together for its 1984 launch.
Like so many others from this time, Mr Parry was brought undone by the 1987 stock market crash.
Despite his connection with this period, including the failure of his listed Parry Corporation, the businessman is generally regarded fondly, having never quite created the controversy of bigger players of the time, such Alan Bond, and their links to government that became known as WA Inc.
Like Mr Bond, Mr Parry got into yachting in a big way. He’ll be best remembered for financing the Kookaburra syndicate, which unsuccessfully defended the America’s Cup off Fremantle in 1987 at a cost of $20 million.
His sporting prowess extended to baseball, where he was lauded for his achievements on and off the pitch. The main Perth baseball centre was called Parry Field.
After the dramas of the late 1980s, Mr Parry sought to rebuild his fortunes with a series of business ventures.
A return to retailing didn’t work. Another failure was Astop Biohealth, a broad-spectrum anti-viral formulation of botantical extracts to treat animal and human flu.
Then there was the vineyard investment scheme with a twist. Mr Parry’s South Australian venture involved the new grape variety cygne blanc, a white cabernet discovered by Doran Mann in the Swan Valley which had not previously been commercially cultivated.
The vineyard, Benson Rise, was recently sold to a local farmer, and associated wine scheme entities Port Robe Management and Port Robe estate are in the hands of external administrators.
Mr Parry was an undischarged bankrupt at the time of his death, which occurred as a result of a car rollover when he went to collect the mail at his son’s Bullsbrook property, where he was residing.
