Sydney Morning Herald, Thursday December 31, 1987 - A Touch Of Dinky-di Nobility

A Touch Of Dinky-di Nobility

Sydney Morning Herald

Thursday December 31, 1987

ANTHONY DENNIS.

AT HOME in Britain they may live in ostentation, they may drive limited-edition cars, they may flaunt their pomposity. But in Australia's meritocracy, the nobility eschew notoriety, they conceal their privilege or, at worst, they indulge in startling opportunism.

If Australia was once a repository for bounders, it has intriguingly become an outpost of the titled in exile. The defiantly-elitist bible for toffs, Debrett's, claims that there are thousands of members of the peerage and baronetage families living in Australia, including at least eight peers and a couple of dozen baronets with exquisite bloodlines.

There are many more belonging to European families, like the Countess Byergetta Von Bulow. Wherever she appears heads don't just merely turn, they spin. At high noon in a hotel foyer in a strangely unfashionable end of town, the electronic doors slide open to reveal a beautiful, buxom blonde. In one hand she waves a mobile telephone (which rings during tea in the lounge), and wears jewellery which drips from wherever it can be fastened.  MORE