William Edward Sing was an Australian soldier of Chinese and English descent who served in the Australian Imperial Force during World War I, best known as a sniper during the Gallipoli Campaign.
Sing was born on 2 March 1886 in Clermont, Queensland, the son of a Chinese father and an English mother. Growing up, Sing encountered considerable anti-Chinese sentiment. As a boy, he was well known for his shooting skill, but was the subject of racial prejudice due to his ancestry. He began work hauling timber as a youth, and later worked as a stockman and a sugarcane cutter.
Sing began his military career as part of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) forces in the Gallipoli Campaign in modern day Turkey. Sing's marksmanship at Gallipoli saw him dubbed 'The Assassin.' On 10 March 1916, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal, with a related entry in military records reading: "For conspicuous gallantry from May to September, 1915, at Anzac, as a sniper. His courage and skill were most marked, and he was responsible for a very large number of casualties among the enemy, no risk being too great for him to take."
Sing returned to Australia on submarine guard duty in late July 1918. An army medical report from 23 November 1918 noted that he had gunshot wounds in the left shoulder, back, and left leg, and had suffered gas poisoning.
In later life, Sing reported chest, back, and heart pain. His final days were spent in relative poverty and obscurity in West End, Brisbane.
Sir Leslie Joseph Hooker was an Australian property entrepreneur, businessman and philanthropist. He created the LJ Hooker empire and was at one time Australia's largest landholder.
Leslie Joseph (LJ) was born in Canterbury, Sydney, in 1903. He lived with his extended family, which included his grandfather, the Chinese-born James Tingyou. His mother died at age of 25 of tuberculosis, leaving LJ an orphan at just eight years of age. He attended public schools in Canterbury and Beecroft, and began working at 13 years of age, initially with a Japanese import and export company and later as a ship's purser. He purportedly changed his surname from Tingyou to Hooker in February 1925 to circumvent the White Australia Policy and be more acceptable to potential business partners and customers.
Hooker's real-estate activities, including his takeover bids and overseas trips, proved newsworthy. Although he himself seldom contributed to public debate, he did call for the abolition of rent control, arguing that there was little incentive for developers to build new blocks of flats in Sydney when older ones were full of tenants on fixed rents.
In 1958 Nation described Hooker as 'the most efficient selling agent of urban real estate in Australian history'; the article explained part of his success by the way in which he had recruited young, trained, 'executive-type' salesmen. In 1959-60, its greatest takeover year, the firm's main acquisitions included W. L. Buckland's pastoral empire, with vast holdings in the Northern Territory, Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales.
The Hooker Corporation went into liquidation after the property crash of the late 1980s, but his name survived in a system of over four hundred franchised real-estate outlets.
He was knighted in 1973 for services to commerce.
