AUSTRALIAN DICTIONARY OF BIOGRAPHY

VOLUME 19: 1991–1995 A–Z

GENERAL EDITOR Melanie Nolan

MANAGING EDITOR Malcolm Allbrook Published by ANU Press The Australian National University Acton ACT 2601, Australia Email: [email protected] Available to download for free at press.anu.edu.au ISBN (print): 9781760464127 ISBN (online): 9781760464134 WorldCat (print): 1232019838 WorldCat (online): 1232019992 DOI: 10.22459/ADB19 This title is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).

The full licence terms are available at creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode

Cover design and layout by ANU Press Cover artwork: Dora Chapman, Australia, 1911–1995, Self portrait, c.1940, Adelaide, oil on canvas, 74.0 x 62.5 cm (sight), Bequest of the artist 1995, Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, © Art Gallery of South Australia, 957P71 This edition © 2021 ANU Press I

IREDALE, ROBERT WILSON (BOB) he was promoted to acting wing commander (1913–1994), air force officer and sales (substantive in June) and appointed as executive, was born on 31 March 1913 at commanding officer, flying Mosquito light Castlemaine, Victoria, eldest of three children bombers. He was mentioned in despatches of Victorian-born parents Herbert Henry (1944). On 18 February he participated in Iredale, painter, and his wife Elizabeth, née Operation Jericho, attacking a prison McBeath. Raised in Melbourne, Bob attended at , France, with the aim of breaching Melbourne High School before working as the walls to enable Resistance members to a clerk. An enthusiastic sportsman, he played escape. He later received that country’s Croix club-level tennis and was invited to represent de Guerre avec Palme (1947). Energetic Victoria. In the mid-1930s he moved to New and immensely popular, he flew numerous Guinea, working for the Vacuum Oil Co. Pty intruder sorties, mainly against airfields, as Ltd at Lae and Rabaul. Returning in 1938, he well as bombing and strafing railways, roads, was the company’s sales manager at Horsham, bridges, and supply dumps in support of the western Victoria, where he competed in Allied landing at . Completing his tennis, was a member of the Horsham Football second tour and leaving the squadron in June, Club committee, and took an interest in horse he was awarded a Bar to the DFC for ‘fine racing. A keen motorist, he had a ‘miraculous’ fighting spirit and eagerness for action’, having (Horsham Times 1939, 4) escape from a car ‘raised the morale of his squadron to a very crash in 1939. high level’ (NAA A9300). In May 1940 Iredale volunteered for From 1 February 1945 Iredale the Empire Air Training Scheme, enlisting commanded No. 140 Wing, RAF, that same in the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) in month raiding the Gestapo headquarters in September. He commenced pilot training at Copenhagen. Arriving home with his family Narrandera, New South Wales, before sailing in November 1945, he was demobilised on for Canada in January 1941. Awarded his 5 February 1946. He returned to the Vacuum wings and commissioned in May, he proceeded Oil Company. Moving to England, he to Britain for advanced training. In September managed a hotel at Norwich, before rejoining he was posted to No. 114 Squadron, Royal Air Vacuum (later Mobil Oil Australia Ltd) in Force (RAF), flying Blenheim light bombers 1954 in Melbourne. The following year he was on night-time intruder missions, reconnoitring made assistant sales manager in Victoria. After and attacking night fighter airfields. Renowned becoming marketing manager for Australia, for his daring and tactical skill, he was he retired in 1975. His wife had died in promoted to acting flight lieutenant in January 1968, a year after their youngest son served 1942 (substantive May 1943), and then acting as a national serviceman in Vietnam. By 1977 squadron leader in command of a flight in he had married Dorothy May Peacock at March 1942 (substantive July 1944). He had Mt Eliza, the couple retiring to Mornington. married Doris ‘Pat’ Myers on 11 February He sustained friendships with former 1942 at the parish church at Fakenham, comrades, particularly of No. 464 Squadron, Norfolk. In July that year his aircraft was and in 1993 he became a member of the caught in searchlights and targeted by anti- Mosquito Aircraft Association of Australia. aircraft guns, but, showing ‘great courage By this time, his health was declining due to and determination’ (NAA A9300), he pressed cancer, and he was too ill to take part in events home his attack against an airfield, earning the organised for the fiftieth anniversary of the Distinguished Flying Cross. Amiens raid in February 1994. He died on Posted to the recently formed No. 464 17 June that year at Mornington, survived by Squadron, RAAF, as a flight commander in his wife and the two sons of his first marriage, September 1942, three weeks later Iredale and was cremated. was posted as an instructor at No. 13 Australian War Memorial. AWM65, 2767; Operational Training Unit. Returning to the Coulthard-Clark, Chris. ‘War Pilot Won Honours squadron in October 1943, in January 1944 for Daring Raids.’ Australian, 7 July 1994, 14;

419 Irish A. D. B.

Herington, John. Air Power Over Europe 1944– report on the new phenomenon of holding 1945. Vol. 4 of Series 3 (Air) of Australia in the War companies, with their many subsidiaries. That of 1939–1945. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, same year his first book appeared, Practical 1963, Air War Against Germany and Italy 1939– Auditing; it went into second (1938) and 1943. Vol. 3 of Series 3 (Air) of Australia in the War of 1939–1945. Canberra: Australian War Memorial, third (1942) expanded editions because it 1954; Horsham Times. ‘Car Overturns, Passengers met a need to understand the transformation Escape Injury.’ 8 December 1939, 4; Lax, Mark, taking place in corporate structures. He joined and Leon Kane-Maguire. The Gestapo Hunters: two barristers, P. H. Allen and R. G. Reynolds, 464 Squadron RAAF 1942–1945. Maryborough, to produce Australian Executorship Law and Qld: Banner Books, 1999; National Archives of Accounts (1942). Irish’s Auditing Theory and Australia. A9300, IREDALE R W. Practice appeared in 1948, and Auditing John Moremon for Students in 1952. His magisterial work, Auditing, came out in 1957. By its fourth IRISH, Sir RONALD ARTHUR edition (1972) an editorial committee of (1913–1993), accountant and company fifteen leading practitioners was listed on the director, was born on 26 March 1913 at title page, but their names were subordinate Dulwich Hill, Sydney, son of New South to ‘Sir Ronald Irish’ as the author and arbiter Wales–born parents Arthur Edward Irish, of the volume, and ‘Irish’ remained on the customs clerk, and his wife Florence Abbott, book’s spine. née Hales. Ronald attended Homebush Public By the early 1940s Irish had entered and Fort Street Boys’ High schools. After corporate life through company secretaryships training with A. S. White [q.v.16] and Fox in the media empire assembled by the late and then C. W. Stirling & Co., he qualified Sir Hugh Denison [q.v.8], particularly with as a chartered accountant in 1934, and the radio station 2GB in Sydney and with the same year became a member of the Institute of nationwide network, Macquarie Broadcasting Chartered Accountants in Australia (ICAA). Services Pty Ltd. Associated Newspapers Ltd In 1935 Irish set up his own practice. was Denison’s flagship. Irish joined its board On 16 May 1936 in the Stanmore Baptist in 1950. Its main assets were an afternoon Church he married Ruth Theodora Aylward, Sydney tabloid, the Sun and the Sunday a stenographer. He formed R. A. Irish and Sun and Guardian, and Sungravure Ltd, an Michelmore in 1940. The firm absorbed up‑to-date printing establishment. He took other partnerships, regional and interstate, part in negotiations during the firm’s swift until 1969, when it joined with a Melbourne- and sought-after takeover in 1953 by John based entity, Young and Outhwaite. Irish was Fairfax & Sons [qq.v.4,8] Pty Ltd, in the teeth senior partner in Irish Young and Outhwaite of outraged opposition by (Sir) Frank Packer until 1980, when it became part of Deloitte [q.v.15], a rival bidder. He remained a director Haskins and Sells. He had been president of of Associated Newspapers and of Sungravure the Institute of Registered Tax Agents in the under the new owner. mid-1940s, a member of the executive council The Sun’s competitor in Sydney’s of the Taxpayers Association of New South afternoon market was the Daily Mirror, one Wales in the same decade, and president of of Ezra Norton’s [q.v.15] papers. He also the ICAA from 1956 to 1958. Together with owned the Sunday Mirror and the Sportsman Ray Chambers in the 1950s he generated in Sydney and Truth, separate editions of a structure for accounting degrees that was which appeared weekly in four other States. taken up by the University of Sydney and the Norton put his papers up for sale in 1958. ICAA. A life member of the Australian Society Again wishing to freeze Packer out, Fairfax of Accountants (1972) and the ICAA (1974), set Irish up as chairman of a shelf company, in 1972 he chaired the Tenth International O’Connell Pty Ltd, which made the Congress of Accountants, which convened purchase. Irish became chairman of Truth and in Sydney. Sportsman Ltd, which changed its name to From the beginning Irish had offered Mirror Newspapers Ltd in 1959, and was sold himself as an authority in his profession. to Rupert Murdoch in 1960. In 1935 he addressed a national meeting of accountancy students on the skills required to

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Massey Documents by Type Book chapters

Iredale, Robert Wilson (Bob)

Moremon, J

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