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We can only imagine what the late Sydney charity doyenne Nola Dekyvere, a formidable woman with a firm view on what constitutes polite society, would have made of this year’s Ronald McDonald House Charities Gala Dinner when midlife hipster MC Daimon “Double D” Downey hit the microphone and cranked up the beats.
A good cause: Lachlan Murdoch, Lisa Wipfli and Sarah Murdoch at the Ronald McDonald Gala Dinner in April.
While the worlds of big money Sydney philanthropy and its glittering balls, gala dinners and delicate politics in 2023 sound a lot different to those of 80 years ago, at their core things have remained remarkably similar when it comes to raising money for charity.
This promotional photograph for the inaugural Black & White Ball appeared in the home magazine in 1936. From left Enid Hull, Anne Gordon and a young Nola Dekyvere.Credit: State Library of New South Wales
It’s still all about who you know.
The Ronald McDonald House gala at Rose Bay’s swanky Catalina in April was organised by Dekyvere’s modern-day counterpart, the inveterate Instagram sharer, social pages fixture Lisa Wipfli, wife of radio star Michael “Wippa” Wipfli. She is currently living it up on the Cote d’Azure in a no-expense-spared Euro vacation after attending chicken heiress Tamie Ingham and celebrity chef Guillaume Brahimi’s “society wedding of the year” in Paris.
The Good Life: Lisa and Michael Wipfli at Hamilton Island in 2022.Credit: Ken Butti
Wipfli and her fellow committee members pulled off an event that was definitely not Dekyvere’s proverbial cup of tea, though she would have been impressed by the $1 million raised to help support seriously ill children and their families.
Just as Dekyvere had done decades before with her Black & White Balls, Wipfli worked her little black book of contacts, summoning everyone from her hubby’s boss, the billionaire media mogul Lachlan Murdoch and his wife former supermodel Sarah, to millionaire breakfast TV star Karl Stefanovic and Westfield heiress Monica Saunders Weinberg. All of them happily endorsed the event.
Similarly, as the wife of one of Australia’s most prominent wool buyers, in 1936 Dekyvere targeted rich pastoralists like the White family and wealthy city folk, including the Packers, who gravitated to her annual ball for the Royal Sydney Industrial Blind Institute (later the Royal Blind Society). Dekyvere served as the committee’s president from 1952 to 1970.
Things got a little looser in the 1970s, perhaps in reaction to the end of Dekyvere’s iron-fisted reign, like the time the late Lady Susan Renouf and the late Lady Sonia McMahon dressed up as Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe performing Just Two Little Girls from Little Rock from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
Putting money where their mouths are, Joshua and Linda Penn are the current co chairs of the Gold Dinner Committee.
Another year saw the ball’s scantily clad committee members perform a jaunty rendition of Take Back Your Mink from Guys and Dolls. This may seem unthinkable in 2023, although the current chair of the Silver Committee Maree Andrews did throw a “Dark, Dangerous and Decadent” themed 40th birthday party last year which saw guests turn up in lacy lingerie.
Charity Queens of Vaucluse from left: Marly Boyd, Alina Barlow, Sarah Carroll, Terry Biviano, Maree Andrews, Sophie CurtisCredit: Instagram
Needless to say, a position on Sydney’s more exclusive charity committees is a one-way ticket to social cache, as it was for Dekyvere, who was appointed MBE in 1958, and elevated to CBE in 1972 in recognition of service to the visually impaired.
The late media mogul Sir Frank Packer even convinced her to write a weekly column for his Sunday Telegraph.
Not dissimilar to Wipfli’s current-day Instagram feed, which has been flooded with her famous mates and envious life, Dekyvere delivered “My Week”, giving readers a look into the social life of Sydney’s elites, from visiting celebrities to the antics of her two poodles, Gigi and Jean.
Arabella Gibson, CEO of the Gidget Foundation.
While the Black & White Committee still exists, philanthropy has morphed into a much more diverse concern, raising funds for myriad causes like the Two Good Co, which started out in a soup kitchen and now aims to empower vulnerable women in refuges, giving them a practical pathway out of domestic violence to independence.
Others have embraced professional management, such as former corporate high-flyer Arabella Gibson taking on the CEO role of the hugely successful Gidget Foundation, which is focused on creating a community to raise awareness and fund services to help mothers dealing with Perinatal Depression.
In terms of social gravitas, the annual Gold Dinner and Silver Party, eclipsed the Black & White Ball years ago. Aimed firmly at the top end of town, the ego stroking is forgiven when the tens of millions of dollars raised helps to fund the equipment and research that keep Sydney’s Children’s Hospitals functioning.
Gina Rinehart donated $5 million at the last Gold Dinner.Credit: Getty
Over the years a stellar lineup of mostly women have driven each committee, from PR supremo Naomi Parry, purveyor of Hermes purses Karin Upton Baker, socialites Marley Boyd and Deborah Symond-O’Neil, wealthy food blogger Stephanie Conley Buhre, chicken heiress Tamie Ingham and fashion designer Camilla Freeman-Topper on the Silver committee, to the Gold Dinner’s alma mater that counts social blue bloods Skye Leckie, Monica Saunders Weinberg, Russian heiress Alina Barlow and current co-chairs, mother and son duo, Joshua and Linda Penn.
The Penns made headlines this year when they convinced Australia’s wealthiest person, Gina Rinehart, to donate $5 million at the most recent Gold Dinner, a donation which took months of negotiation and which was orchestrated to the most minute detail. The Penns also threw in $3million of their own dough, bringing this year’s result to a record-breaking $19.2 million for sick kids.
Even Dekyvere could only dream of such a result.
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