This was published 21 years ago
Art's white knight ... or, some would say, its devil in a sharkskin suit
On a fine day last year, David Deague stepped out of a small hired plane and into a balmy, red-tinged evening in William Creek, population 10. His wife, Kristene, and four children followed.
With them were all the essentials to survive a week at the town's tiny, corrugated-iron pub - $100,000 worth of champagne and red wine, a white sharkskin tuxedo, cocktail gowns and supplies for a medieval banquet surrounded by the delicate, crystal-sugar salt pans of South Australia's Lake Eyre.
A motley group of people was waiting on the bush landing strip. This included Deague's personal art consultant, Ken McGregor, the curious publicans of the William Creek Hotel, and some of the 10 hand-picked artists involved in one of the most lavish privately funded arts ventures in recent years.
The artists were slightly anxious. Deague, after all, had invested more than $1 million in the past year in an ambitious project aimed at reviving the Australian landscape painting tradition.
For many of the group, this was the first sighting of their benefactor. Deague - multi-millionaire Melbourne property developer, one-time bankrupt and keen art collector, affectionately nicknamed Conan by friends and Demolition Dave by detractors - seemed an unlikely saviour of the arts.
Still, they counted themselves lucky. Deague's inaugural venture, William Creek and Beyond, featuring 10 artists based in bush studios near the town and remote encampments across much of the outback, was lavish beyond belief.
All they had to do in return, in this spectacular Mad Max setting, was produce 10 paintings each for Deague's sprawling family home and the headquarters of his company, the Asian Pacific Building Corporation.
There were four-wheel-drive vehicles, vans, satellite phones, coach drivers, gourmet caterers, up to five light aircraft, even an oxygen tank to treat the respiratory problems of one member of the group, artist Robert Jacks.
The cost of renting a helicopter for a week - $66,000 - was staggering enough. That night, there were celebrations over champagne and a gourmet dinner. Deague presided over the surreal banquet, dressed in a white tuxedo.
A year later, Deague is the owner of what is being touted by some as a historically significant new collection of Australian work - more than 150 landscape paintings, to be unveiled in Sydney next week at a hired venue at the Museum of Contemporary Art before a major regional tour earlier next year.
Deague's mysterious appearance in the cultural big league has caused ripples aplenty, claims of tall poppies and sour grapes, and heated speculation from arts figures in Sydney and Melbourne.
How did a man who owed his creditors $52 million just a few years ago end up morphing into the new money man of the arts? How did someone once dubbed the "Arthur Daly" of the building industry by John Thwaites, then Victoria's opposition spokesman for planning, attract some of the best artistic talent in the country? Was this a genuinely magnanimous gesture or a cynical tax lurk?
Deague is unruffled by the gossip, too busy establishing a miniature arts empire centred on the year-old Deague Family Art Foundation. He has plans for annual expeditions modelled on the William Creek experiment, including to the Amazon and New York.
"About the critics - look, I don't care," he says amiably."I think the old, traditional galleries get a bit jealous of people like us. They think we're going to steal their business. It's the tall-poppy thing.
"How much has it cost me? Well, over one million, although I haven't added it up yet - I'm beginning to get frightened." He laughs.
The selected artists - John Olsen, Rodney Pople, Tim Storrier, Jason Benjamin, David Larwill, Hazel Dooney, Robert Jacks, Mark Schaller, Jeff Makin and Andrew Sibley - have since repaid Deague's magnanimity with unstinting praise.
In the book of the trip, John Olsen, particularly, waxes lyrical, comparing the venture to Sidney Nolan's discovery of Kelly country and the Heidelberg painters going into the Dandenongs.
High praise, indeed. But sceptics question why Deague - more comfortable hanging out with property mates and neighbours like trucking magnate Lindsay Fox, than in opera hall foyers - is attempting this pricey cultural makeover.
A factor behind the hostility from some quarters is Deague's decidedly "un-arty" image, although he has been a collector for more than 30 years. The other stumbling block lies in his business history, a decidedly eventful one, by any measure.
Deague declared bankruptcy in 1995 after disclosing debts of $52.5 million to creditors, including Westpac, and Hudson Conway heavyweights Lloyd Williams and Ron Walker.
The debts were settled when Deague offered to pay a full and final settlement - a fraction of the total debt - to creditors.
Later in the same year, Asian Pacific Building Corporation purchased the historic Portsea mansion, Ilyuka, for more than $5 million.
Deague promptly, and illegally, demolished part of the property, attracting local protests and a record fine.
In 1999, Thwaites told the Victorian Parliament that Deague, who had controversially been awarded a $200 million tender for an urban renewal project in Melbourne,had a "dodgy business record".
His company hit back with a statement rejecting the allegations and challenging Thwaites to make the "same highly derogatory comments outside ... Parliament".
Last year, troubled times returned, when Lloyd Williams went to the Supreme Court seeking more information about Deague's funds at the time of the settlement of the $32.7 million debt owed to a Hudson Conway company, Vania. The case was dismissed.
So, is Deague a force for good or disaster for the Australian arts scene? The constant insinuations anger McGregor. "It has certainly not been done as a money-making scheme. If you did it for money, you wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole."
Gallery owner William Mora is a supporter, although he is less than impressed with the quality of some of the paintings Deague got for his money. "The whole project paid well, the artists sold their works, so what are people complaining about? I've got nothing against self-promotion and, sure, there could be tax benefits, but that's just normal philanthropy," he says.
But critics say the developer's emergence is the result of shrinking public arts dollars, which leaves a void for self-promoters to step into.
One gallery owner, who did not want to be named, said the project was "as about as pioneering as a coffee shop on Carlton Street".
But perhaps Deague's most vocal opponent is Kate Baillieu, of Melbourne's wealthy Baillieu clan, who battled Deague during the demolition furore in 1995. "I saw a lot of his great care and compassion for the landscape when he illegally demolished the house, destroyed the landscape and gardens and tore up the cliffside." .
Deague, the man in the white sharkskin suit, remains undeterred. He dismisses the possibility his million-dollar dream will attract the interest of out-of-pocket former mates such as Lloyd Williams or Ron Walker (who did not return calls yesterday, citing a busy schedule).
Does this make him sweat at night? " No, no, my old life is in the past. This is my life now, this is what I'm doing."