A WORLD REPORT SPECIAL EDITION ON THE PACIFIC RIM : THE SOUTH RIM : The Moguls : Power, Polo, Prison Distinguish 3 Wealthy Men Down Under

Australia is a big country of vast resources and monumental financial moguls. Some of the latter:

RUPERT MURDOCH

Murdoch, 64, is probably flying somewhere between his homes in New York City, Aspen and a sheep ranch at Yass, near Canberra, Australia’s capital. Starting in 1951 with a family inheritance of a tabloid newspaper in Adelaide, Murdoch became not only the dominant newspaper owner in Australia but a media baron in Britain and the United States.

On his occasional visits home--Murdoch took U.S. citizenship in 1985--he plays the Grand Old Man of Australia’s media. But as recently as last month, he was still scrambling for shares in the rival Fairfax Group of newspapers and a major role in cable television, a field he and ordinary Australian consumers have been denied for more than a decade. He also made a bid for global TV rights to the Sydney Olympics in the year 2000.

Meanwhile, this man with what he calls a “Presbyterian attitude” continues to forge a global satellite TV empire linking holdings in the United States, Europe, China and India, which he wants a new generation of Murdochs, led by son Lachlan, to inherit.

KERRY PACKER

Packer, 57, chairman of Publishing and Broadcasting Ltd. (previously known as Australian Consolidated Press), Australia’s biggest magazine publisher and owner of one of the country’s three commercial television networks, is his country’s richest man. His other interests include the Hollywood studio New Regency Films and Texaco Chemicals.

Renowned for a high level of liquidity to finance his periodic raids on vulnerable media properties and his equally famous racetrack gambling binges, Packer is currently in a costly battle with old rival Rupert Murdoch over the structure of the professional Rugby League, the popular Australian-style version of the game. The new arena of cable television rights is also at stake. Murdoch wants a new “super league” while Packer and his Channel 9 network defend the status quo of teams from just two eastern states.

Since 1990, when he suffered a heart attack from which he was revived after 10 minutes of clinical death, Packer has been a tycoon who conspicuously enjoys his wealth. He has reportedly spent millions playing polo and inviting foreign polo players to his lavish ranch outside Sydney. “I died once,” he said in a rare interview. “The good news is there’s no devil. The bad news is there’s no heaven. There’s nothing.”

ALAN BOND

Bond, 56, is very much grounded in Australia, his passports (British and Australian) still in the hands of the Australian Securities Commission. In August, 1992, he was released from jail in the western city of Perth after serving 90 days of a 2 1/2-year sentence for dishonesty in a financial deal. Last November, in a retrial, he was acquitted. Meanwhile, his fortune had been placed under the stewardship of a bankruptcy trustee. Bond had claimed his memories of the financial transactions had been blacked out by “depression” and “brain damage.”

Then, two months ago, Bond persuaded his creditors to accept a penny on the dollar on his debts of U.S. $466 million. He immediately faced another round of fraud charges relating to the purchase of a Manet painting, “La Promenade.”

Famous for underwriting Australia’s successful challenge in the America’s Cup yacht race in 1983 and for his dominance of the Australian brewing industry and ownership of half the country’s television stations, Bond and his immediate family were estimated in 1993 by Business Review Weekly to be worth $60 million. “I don’t think I’ve really fulfilled my potential,” he told reporters just before being released from bankruptcy in February.