John Darling (1923-2015), businessman, company director and media producer was the son of Harold Gordon Darling, chair of BHP. Educated in Melbourne, Darling joined the RAAF as a teenager and served with distinction as a night pilot in Britain. He was aide de camp to the young Queen Elizabeth on her tour of Australia in 1954. Having become involved in the management of his family’s business, John Darling and Son, he moved into investment banking, establishing Darling and Company in 1961. In the 1960s and 1970s he encouraged the careers of James Wolfensohn and David Clarke, among others. For 27 years he was chair of BP Australia, and for many years he served on the boards of Alcoa Monsanto Australia and Goldfields Consolidated. He was also on the advisory board of the CSIRO, and he sat on the council of the Australian National University for three decades. Having been first chair of the Australian Film Development Corporation in 1970s, he established the production company Burbank, which enabled the creation of many animated features and films. In 1982 he founded the Lord’s Taverners Australia, an organisation that promotes cricket among young and disadvantaged people, running the Imparja Cup for remote-area Indigenous youth and competitions for blind, deaf and intellectually impaired players.
