exclusive
Exclusive interview: Nicola Forrest opens up on philanthropy, family and her passion to succeed

It will come as no surprise that somewhere in Nicola Forrest’s wardrobe is a pair of boots from iconic Australian label R.M. Williams. The billionaire philanthropist is a dyed-in-the-wool country girl, most at home on horseback in the red dirt and besides, after a rumoured $190 million transaction last month, she and husband Andrew own the company. Surely an occasion for a shiny new pair. Not so for Forrest, according to eldest daughter, Grace. Her boots are well-loved hand-me-downs from son Sydney, who wore them himself until he grew out of them — aged 10. “He is 20 now and she still wears them, it’s hysterical,” Grace says, pointing out that her mother’s loathing of waste also extended to her eschewing cling wrap and washing and reusing ziplock bags long before it was the done thing. If the notion of one of Australia’s richest people knocking about in an old pair of boots seems incongruous, it would not be the first time that Nicola Forrest was not what people expect. Those anticipating a flashy rich-lister have been surprised to find a disarming and approachable woman. Anyone hoping for a cashed-up benefactor, ready to write a cheque for any good cause, will instead find a shrewd operator who demands maximum impact and full accountability. People expecting a buttoned-up conservative find a playful, dry sense of humour that helped earn her the nickname, Naughty Nic. And up until recently, people might not have expected anything at all, given Forrest has been largely anonymous, particularly compared with her husband of 30 years, one of Australia’s most recognisable figures, Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest. Even during the years she spent at the helm of Minderoo Foundation, the family’s now $2 billion philanthropy juggernaut, she could stand back as passers-by stopped him in the street, just a nameless photographer when a phone was thrust into her hands to capture the moment. Just recently, she chatted happily at a lunch for a couple of hours before talk turned to cattle. It was only when she mentioned Minderoo Station, their sprawling property outside Onslow, that her companion put two and two together. They were mortified; she was thrilled. But those days are numbered. Forrest is stepping into the frame, albeit cautiously. She has causes she wants to talk about — like the vital role of the arts — but she has seen the toll a public persona can take. As she takes up her seat in the bar at The Blue Room Theatre, Forrest jokes that she considered faking an illness to get herself out of this interview. “It really is a quandary, to be honest,” she confides. The passion being discussed this time is the arts, a sector in which the Minderoo Foundation is a major financial force. Back in 2011, it was behind donations of shares from their company Fortescue Metals Group to several cultural groups, including Black Swan State Theatre Company, the WA Museum, WA Opera, WA Ballet and the Art Gallery of WA. At the time they weren’t worth much (as Forrest laughingly says, “we obviously believed in Fortescue and that it would pay dividends but equally, we had no cash”) but serendipitously, as COVID-19 swept through and decimated the industry, the iron ore price surged and the windfall helped keep those arts groups afloat. Now, as WA begins to emerge from the restrictions of the pandemic, Forrest believes the arts have never had a bigger role to play. “People are hungry for it,” she tells STM. “One of the most powerful things with the arts is its ability to take you out of your everyday and that has never been more needed ... For mental health, for connection, it is absolutely vital that we have opportunities for people to come together to be touched by something.” One of Forrest’s first forays into arts administration was joining the board of Sculptures by the Sea in 2008, where she remains a life governor. She quickly applied her business acumen, organising a pro bono economic impact study of the Bondi event to help organisers lobby for funding and setting up a capital fund with substantial donations in 2010 and 2011. Sculptures by the Sea founder David Handley, who describes Forrest as a friend, remembers she and Andrew would host the artists for drinks or dinner at their home. “That sort of support is frankly mind blowing,” Handley tells STM. “Nicola is a very lovely, personable person. I think there is a part of her that is a little bit surprised by the position she and Andrew find themselves in. It’s not in their upbringing. But they have responded to that in a way that is constantly benefiting the not-for-profit sector.” Forrest’s most prominent arts board position now is at Black Swan, where she became chair in 2018; it has not been without controversy (there was a furore last year when the executive director was abruptly replaced). But she first became involved seven years prior, when Minderoo made that initial donation sparked by a newspaper article about how the theatre company couldn’t afford to put on a show at its brand new venue. “I turned to Andrew and said, ‘How ridiculous! How can that happen?’ But it does happen, where governments build infrastructure because it ticks a box —and that is not a criticism — but then the ongoing funding has not been thought through,” she says. “I hate to see things under-utilised ... What arts organisations bring to the community and to all of us is their vision but they can’t set that vision if they are spending all their time trying to raise money when that is not what they are best at.” It is being able to fund people and projects she believes in that drives Forrest. She revels in the success of the Perth Symphony Orchestra, which Minderoo, along with other donors, helped fund back when founder Bourby Webster ran it “on the smell of an oily rag”. “A lot of philanthropy comes down to relationships, where you connect with a vision of an organisation or people and have confidence in their leadership,” she says. “It is sometimes risky, if you are seed funding something that may or may not work, but you can give them that opportunity.” Having cut its teeth on smaller projects, Minderoo has been steadily scaling up. Similarly, Tattarang, the umbrella group for the Forrest’s commercial interests, including a 36 per cent stake in Fortescue Metals Group, has been growing exponentially. In just the past nine months, it has bought two Kimberley cattle stations, iconic bootmaker R.M. Williams and an Albany oyster operation and opened Cooee, a new restaurant on the Swan River, and a proposed resort for Exmouth. It is also planning to redevelop Indiana Tea House at Cottesloe. “As we get bigger, both commercially and philanthropically, our names are out there in relation to agriculture, aquaculture, retail, hospitality, so I’m conscious of people thinking, ‘They’re taking over, they’re into everything’,” Forrest says. “It’s important to understand what drives us; it’s not about owning things, it’s about creating opportunities ... Andrew and I get equal satisfaction out of giving people opportunities on both sides of the fence.” But the Forrests are not your typical philanthropists, demanding a high level of detail on projects they fund. One source, who didn’t want to be named, says it is not in their nature to invest passively, which has led to friction in some partnerships. One of the Forrests’ central pillars for Minderoo is “stretch targets” — aiming for goals that seem unattainable — and that philosophy inspired loyalty or a quick exit. “Nicola is astute, genuinely very smart, and she is just a hands-on person. She drives a tough ask, as Andrew does,” says the source. “They like to have a degree of ownership with whatever it is they are investing in.” Forrest insists it’s not about ownership, but accountability. “It’s not just ‘That seems like a good idea, here is the money’,” she says, “but always understanding what the impact is of what we are giving. I think that is what gives you the most satisfaction ... “Sometimes we have been known to be tough to deal with because we do want to understand the impact and we do want reporting back on what has happened with the support we have given, but we also want to give autonomy.” Jay Weatherill, the former South Australian premier who now heads Minderoo’s early childhood advocacy program Thrive by Five, says that engagement was on display on a recent trip to Katanning, as part of the Early Years Initiative, a partnership with the State Government and Telethon Kids Institute. Weatherill, who has seen his share of people work a crowd, says Forrest’s ability to put people at ease was a huge asset. “You could imagine there would be some degree of trepidation about meeting someone like Nicola but ... she has an easy charm and no airs and graces. People feel immediately disarmed and essentially she very quickly builds up trust and rapport,” he says. But Forrest is not a figurehead; she is “very much driven by evidence and disciplined about interrogating any ideas to see that they are consistent with the evidence”. “(Andrew and Nicola) don’t just check in every now and again; they want serious dialogue on what we are actually doing and it is often a lively conversation,” he says. “They also like us to use them as a resource, so if we hit a snag they expect to be put to work because when they wade in, things happen. They can’t be ignored.” The Forrests founded Minderoo in 2001, making record-breaking donations of $400 million in 2017 and $655 million last year; it funds projects through its core initiatives: Generation One (reducing disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians), Walk Free (eliminating modern slavery), Building Community, Thrive by Five, Collaborate Against Cancer, Flourishing Oceans, Fire and Flood Resilience, Frontier Technology and Research, including the Forrest Research Foundation based at UWA. But the decision to give away most of their wealth was made early in their marriage, Forrest says, when Andrew started fledgling nickel miner, Anaconda. They moved to Perth, ostensibly for six months. “That was 25 years ago,” Forrest laughs and as the company grew, “we agreed that once we got to a certain point, we would give the rest away”. But things with Anaconda, famously, did not go so smoothly. Its flagship project was plagued by delays and in 2001, Andrew was ousted as director. The couple used his severance to start their first philanthropic vehicle, The Australian Children’s Trust, and left Perth, where Andrew found himself suddenly a corporate pariah. They spent eight months on an “idyllic holiday” with their children, Grace, Sophia and Sydney, then aged seven, six and two, starting in a French country house with a cherry tree. “That time after Anaconda was really tough ... but out of that, the trust was born,” Forrest says. “Out of every setback is the seed for equal or greater opportunity; that is very much a motto Andrew has lived by and I truly do believe that. You have to look for the silver lining, how do I rise up from this?” But few people knew that it had also come as they were mourning the loss of their third daughter, Matilda, who was stillborn in 1998. Forrest’s voice wavers slightly as she says simply, “it was a difficult year”. It made for a deeply personal connection for the first project they funded: the then-fledgling Women and Infants Research Foundation. Renowned obstetrician John Newnham approached them with his ambition to create a new field of medicine looking at life before birth, not knowing they had so recently lost a child. His gratitude is still audible when he talks about how it helped him build a leading research body that has reduced rates of premature birth. “That they were willing to make such a generous donation at a time when they were only just starting out shows how committed they were to the principle of philanthropy,” he says. They refused to let him tell anyone, saying they were doing it for their faith, although Newnham says they have since been convinced that being more open about giving helps encourage others. Forrest says their giving is also “very much driven” by the country upbringing she and Andrew experienced, she on a farm in NSW, he on Minderoo. “Our parents worked very hard, struggling with the seasons and prices of wool or beef, floods, droughts and sacrificed a lot for us to get a good education,” she says. “We were privileged to go to very good schools and in those schools, you meet people from all walks of life but — and I have continued to observe this — kids who have access to everything can be the most unhappy people. There are no boundaries. Satisfaction in life is so often about making what you can with what you have but when the whole world is open like that, there is no limit, so how do you get satisfaction?” As an insider points out, frugality and humility are important to the Forrests, who took on a huge amount of personal debt and risk to establish their businesses. “People assume it’s all Hollywood and it’s really not.” It was 2003, not long after the bruising Anaconda fallout, when they started FMG around the kitchen table; Nicola helped interview executives and hosted the Christmas parties at their house. That company is now one of WA’s biggest, recently reporting a record profit of $6.6 billion, putting the Forrests’ wealth at $23 billion this year. Andrew stepped down as chief executive in 2011 but remains chairman. Forrest concedes a public fascination is inevitable with wealth of that unimaginable magnitude. “People hear, ‘one of Australia’s richest people’ or ‘10 richest people’ and things like that and they imagine you must be something different,” she says. “When my kids were at school and you’d get to know the other parents bit by bit, they would say, ‘Oh, you’re just like a real person’ and I would just say, ‘What did you think?!’” Her friends dubbed her the UCB — the undercover billionaire — although Forrest jokes that she has gotten used to spending “a little bit more”. She says she sometimes wonders if she’s done too good a job with her kids, who rib her if she buys something they deem unnecessary. But jokes aside, of all the things she’s done, Forrest is most proud of her “strong family unit”. But it has been a rollercoaster year on the home front. On a family holiday to Raja Ampat in Indonesia at the beginning of the year, daughter Grace and her partner Brandon Clemens came off a jetski doing 70km/h — “they were catapulted 25m apart and when he came up, she was floating face down in the water”. After appointments with a neurologist and five weeks using a walking frame, Grace, the co-founder and head of Walk Free, recovered but Forrest says it was “very scary”. Then coronavirus happened but for the Forrests, there was an unexpected silver lining: the chance to spend time with their youngest daughter, actress Sophia, and her partner, Ride Like a Girl co-star Zara Zoe, who live on the east coast. They stayed for a couple of months and Forrest says having the whole family under one roof was “absolutely glorious”. Sophia’s coming out was “completely accepted by Andrew and I”, Forrest says. “It’s interesting, people say, ‘Oh, that must be hard’ or ‘That must be different’ but there was no adjustment required. Sophia has never been happier. I do have conversations like, when they say they want to have children, I say, ‘Well, how do you do that?’ But they can manage that.” Both Grace and Sophia’s work and personal advocacy comes with a public profile, including maintaining a social media presence, and Sydney is also flexing his activist muscles while studying at university. But Forrest says that after protecting her children from public life as kids, she now trusts them to manage the pitfalls. “Growing up with a father with a public profile where people have an opinion, you have to learn not to let that run your life,” she says. “Courage and determination are some of our values and you can lose courage if you listen to all those voices or take on all those criticisms. You can’t be blind to it, you have to be open to feedback, but you can’t make decisions based on other people’s opinions. “(My daughters) are strong, modern women, that’s for sure. They challenge their mother and their father all the time. We have very good conversations around the table.”

The West Australian exclusiveExclusive interview: Nicola Forrest opens up on philanthropy, family and her passion to succeed

exclusive
Exclusive interview: Nicola Forrest opens up on philanthropy, family and her passion to succeed