The Ausfamous 100 Of All Time

A Test batting average of 99.94, the most famous number in Australian sport.

The Meriam man whose High Court case overturned terra nullius in 1992.

Commanded the Australian Corps on the Western Front in 1918.

Shared the 1945 Nobel Prize for turning penicillin into a medicine.

The soprano who carried Melbourne’s name to the world’s great houses.

Lit the Olympic cauldron, then won the 400 metres at Sydney 2000.

First Prime Minister of the Commonwealth, 1901.

The ‘Father of Federation’ and five-time Premier of New South Wales.

Co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph; canonised in 2010 as Australia’s first saint.

Western Arrernte watercolourist of the MacDonnell Ranges.

Led the 1966 Wave Hill walk-off by Gurindji stockmen.

‘La Stupenda’, among the great sopranos of the century.

Nobel Prize in Literature, 1973.

Flew the first trans-Pacific crossing, 1928.

Advocate and protector of immigrant women and families.

Olympic 100m freestyle champion at three consecutive Games.

The only player to win two calendar-year Grand Slams, 1962 and 1969.

Wrote ‘Waltzing Matilda’ and ‘The Man from Snowy River’.

The defining voice of the bush short story.

Author of My Brilliant Career; the nation’s leading literary award bears her name.

First woman elected to an Australian parliament, 1921.

Ngarrindjeri inventor and the first published Aboriginal author.

Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister.

Led the nation through the darkest years of the Second World War.

Prime Minister who launched the Snowy Mountains Scheme in 1949.

Medibank, free university and the Racial Discrimination Act.

Floated the dollar and won four federal elections.

Nobel Prize, 1960, for acquired immunological tolerance.

Nobel Prize, 1963, for work on the synapse.

Adelaide-born; the youngest science Nobel laureate, 1915.

Nobel Prize, 2009, for the discovery of telomerase.

A pioneer of modern heart transplantation in Australia.

His foundation restores sight in dozens of countries.

Developed the multi-channel cochlear implant.

Co-developed the vaccine against HPV.

Nobel Prize, 2005, for showing bacteria cause stomach ulcers.

Spray-on skin; Australian of the Year, 2005.

Nobel Prize, 1996, for how the immune system recognises infected cells.

Surgeon and leader of prisoners on the Burma–Thailand Railway.

SOE agent the Gestapo called ‘the White Mouse’.

Bidjigal warrior who led resistance to the early colony.

Wangal man who became the first go-between with the colonists.

First Aboriginal member of federal parliament, 1971.

Led the 1965 Freedom Ride through regional New South Wales.

We Are Going (1964), the first book of poetry by an Aboriginal author.

Winner of seven Grand Slam singles titles.

The ‘Golden Girl’; four Olympic gold medals.

Seven Olympic medals across three Games.

Olympic 1500m champion in world-record time, Rome 1960.

Three world titles, one in a car bearing his own name.

‘King of the Mountain’, nine times a Bathurst winner.

So dominant the rules were changed to slow him down.

708 Test wickets and the ‘Ball of the Century’.

The fast bowler of his generation; 355 Test wickets.

Five Olympic gold medals.

Premiership player and coach; a legend of the game.

Hawthorn great and four-time premiership coach.

‘The King’ of State of Origin.

Captain, then coach, of champion Australian sides.

331 weeks as the world’s number one.

Seven world surfing titles.

Three Grand Slam singles titles, including the 2022 Australian Open.

Four decades as one of the world’s best-selling pop artists.

Academy Award for Best Actress, The Hours.

Two Academy Awards and a stage career in Sydney and London.

Posthumous Academy Award for The Dark Knight.

The first actor to win a posthumous Academy Award, for Network.

Hobart-born star of Hollywood’s swashbuckling era.

Took Australian wildlife into homes around the world.

Grease, four Grammys, and a cancer centre in her name.

‘A Pub with No Beer’ and more than a hundred albums.

The brothers who built AC/DC.

INXS frontman and one of rock’s great showmen.

Songwriter of the national story.

From Melbourne’s post-punk scene to world stages with the Bad Seeds.

Yolŋu singer whose voice crossed every language barrier.

‘Took the Children Away’ gave voice to the Stolen Generations.

Creator of Dame Edna Everage.

Critic, memoirist and broadcaster.

The Female Eunuch, 1970.

The Shock of the New and The Fatal Shore.

The Ned Kelly series.

Heidelberg School master of Australian light.

Shearing the Rams and the Heidelberg School.

A leader of Australian modernism.

Twice winner of the Archibald Prize.

Author of The Australian Ugliness.

Brought Bauhaus modernism to Sydney’s skyline.

Pritzker Prize, 2002; ‘touch the earth lightly’.

Wallpapers still printed from her original screens.

Built one of Australia’s great fashion houses.

Changed cricket for good with World Series Cricket.

Built BHP into the nation’s steelmaker.

The Sunshine Harvester, and a landmark wage case.

The box kite that informed early powered flight.

Founded what became the Royal Flying Doctor Service.

Pioneer aviator of the outback.

Among the first women in the British Empire to stand for a national parliament.

Only woman in Australia’s delegation to the founding of the United Nations.

Co-founded Canva in Perth.