Sam Burston

Sir Samuel Gerald Wood Burston OBE (24 April 1915 – 14 July 2015), known as Sam Burston, was an Australian grazier who represented the rural sector as President of a forerunner of the National Farmers' Federation, and served as a member of the board of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Science and Technology Council.

Samuel Gerald Wood Burston was born in 1915 in Adelaide, the eldest son of Sir (Samuel) Roy Burston, a distinguished physician who later became Director-General of Medical Services in the Australian Military Forces. (Roy Burston served in Gallipoli; Sam was born the day before the Anzac landing, and lived to see the centenary of that event celebrated internationally.)

In 1934, Sam Burston joined the Australian Army as a private, and was commissioned as a lieutenant in 1935. In 1939 he studied temperate farming techniques in Britain and Germany. In World War II he was mentioned in dispatches on 30 December 1941, and was the commander of a tank squadron with the 9th Division, which was distinguished at the Battle of El Alamein (1942).

On repatriation he ran his property Marlee, near Naracoorte, South Australia. He later moved to Noss Estate at Casterton, Victoria, where he was a grazier until retirement in 1985.

From 1976 to 1979 Sir Sam Burston (he was knighted in 1977) was President of the Australian Woolgrowers' and Graziers' Council. In that capacity he was deeply involved in helping resolve the 1978 Live Sheep Export Dispute, through extensive negotiations with the Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, his Minister for Industrial Relations, Tony Street, and the President of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Bob Hawke. In 1979, Burston oversaw the merger of the AWGG with seven other rural bodies to create the National Farmers' Federation.

...
Wikipedia