Patrick (Paddy) Victor Martindale White was born in London in 1912 as the oldest child of an Australian grazier, Victor (Dick) Martindale White, and his wife, Ruth (née Withycombe), England-born but of an Australian family. He was enrolled at Cranbrook School in Sydney and two years later was sent to board at Tudor House, near Moss Vale, with the hope the climate would be better for his asthma. Having developed a passion for the theatre, a passion he shared with his mother, Patrick wrote his first play 'Love's Awakening'. In 1924 he published a poem in the school magazine. In 1925 the White family travelled to England, where Patrick spent 4 years at Cheltenham College, studying, reading widely and writing poems. After returning to Australia and working for a brief period on a station in the Snowy Mountains, as well as a jackeroo at Walgett, Patrick enrolled at King's College, University of Cambridge, to study modern languages. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1935. By then he had a few poems published, as well as his first book, an anthology titled Ploughman And Other Poems, and a play produced. More publications followed, including his debut novel Happy Valley (1939), for which he was awarded the Australian Literature Society’s gold medal for the best novel of the year, and later Voss (1957), which became the first winner of the Miles Franklin literary award.

In late 1940 Patrick joined the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve and served in various intelligence roles across North Africa, the Middle East and Greece during World War II. He rose to temporary flight lieutenant and acting squadron leader before leaving the RAF in May 1946. During his time in Alexandria, Egypt, he met Manoly Lascaris, who would become his lifelong partner.

White declined a knighthood and other literary awards but in 1973 became the first Australian to receive the Novel Prize for Literature. He was unable to attend the award ceremony in Sweden due to poor health, therefore the award was accepted on his behalf by friend and painter Sidney Nolan. Patrick used the prize money to establish the Patrick White Literary Award, aiming to support writers whose work had not received appropriate recognition.

Patrick's final years were plagued by health issues. Three Uneasy Pieces (1987), a collection of short stories, was his last work of fiction to be published. Patrick died in 1990 at Highbury, the home he shared with Lascaris, in Centennial Park, Sydney. Per his wishes, his ashes were scattered in the park.

Frederick William Whitehouse (1900 - 1973) was a Queensland geologist. Whitehouse completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Queensland in 1922 and was awarded the Government Gold Medal in Geology that year. He completed a Master of Science in 1924. Taking a University Travelling Scholarship to St John’s College, Cambridge, he gained his PhD there in 1925 with a thesis on marine Cretaceous sequences in Australia. Returning to Australia, Whitehouse was appointed Queensland Government Geologist in the Department of Mines in 1925. The following year he took up a position as lecturer at the Department of Geology at the University of Queensland. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the University of Queensland in 1939. In 1941 Whitehouse enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and primarily applied his knowledge to road-building activities in Queensland and New Guinea. Following the war, Whitehouse was seconded to the Department of Co-ordinator-General of Public Works and was on the committee of post-war re-construction. In 1948 he returned to lecturing at the University and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1949. Whitehouse resigned from the University in 1955 following a charge of committing an act of gross indecency with a minor. A conviction was overturned by the High Court 1957. Whitehouse continued to work as a consulting geologist until his death in 1973. His most important work was on the Cambrian faunas of North-Eastern Australia in the 1930s and on the Great Australian Artesian Basin throughout the 1950s.

New Zealand-born Bruce Whiteside migrated to Australia in 1979 and settled on the Gold Coast. In 1988 he founded the organisation Heart of a Nation to campaign against Japanese investment and land ownership in Australia. At the time, Japan ranked third as a source of foreign investment in Australia, well behind the United States and the United Kingdom.

After the demise of Heart of a Nation, Whiteside remained politically active. In the early 1990s he unsuccessfully stood as a candidate for the far right Confederate Action Party. After the election of Pauline Hanson to the Australian parliament in 1996, Whiteside became a vocal supporter, believing he had found in Hanson an effective national advocate for his own views against Asian immigration and investment. In October of that year he founded The Pauline Hanson Support Movement. At the organisation's public launch Whiteside praised Hanson for representing 'the man in the street' against the threat he claimed was posed by Asians, Aboriginal leaders, socialism and multiculturalism.

The Support Movement attracted national attention, but Whiteside's relationship with Hanson soured. Early in 1997, Hanson and her advisors David Ettridge and David Oldfield orchestrated a takeover of the Support Movement and then used its membership list to register the political party, Pauline Hanson's One Nation, with Hanson as the leader. Whiteside was expelled from the Support Movement. Subsequently, the Supreme Court of Queensland ruled that One Nation had been fraudulently registered. This led to fraud charges against Hanson and Ettridge, and in August 2003 they were convicted and gaoled. Three months later the Court of Appeal set aside their convictions.

After his expulsion from the Support Movement, Whiteside continued to follow Hanson's political career, periodically proclaiming in public statements and private correspondence that she had lost touch with her support base. In 2000, he wrote in his online book Destiny Aborted: How They Eliminated the People's Politician, 'that Hanson was being 'compromised and exploited' by her advisors. Her naivety, he wrote, guaranteed that she would never fulfill her early promise.

Pastoralist, Solicitor. Born in Melbourne 16 August 1955. Died 17 June 1929. Member of legal firm Whiting and Byrne, William Street, Melbourne. In partnership with Rupert Clarke, owned Isis Downs Station in Queensland.

Raymond Leslie Whitmore was born near Luton, England, in 1920. After finishing school he worked as a laboratory assistant in the Mining Department at the University of Birmingham and studied externally for a Physics degree from the University of London, which he completed in 1942. He then joined the RAF and was posted to the radio training school at Yatesbury. After a few postings elsewhere, he was transferred to RAF Malvern in July 1943 to undertake special radar duties. Following demobilisation he returned to work at the University, and was awarded his PhD. in 1949. In October 1947 he married Ruth Franklin. They had two sons In May 1953 Whitmore was appointed Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mining and Fuels at Nottingham University, where his research focused on the cleaning of coal. He published extensively and by 1959 had been awarded a D.Sc by the University of Birmingham. This was followed shortly afterwards by promotion to Reader in the Department In September 1967 he was appointed to the Chair of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering at the University of Queensland. From 1970-74 he represented the University on the Australian Research Grants Commission, and held the first of a series of positions with Engineers Australia, ultimately serving as Chairman of the Queensland Division in 1982, and as a member of the National Council. He was made an Honorary Fellow in 1998. Whitmore was also a Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and became a life member of the Australian Coal Preparation Society. For a brief time he was Dean of the Faculty of Engineering from 1974-75. In 1976, he decided to relinquish the Headship of the Department, while continuing as Professor of Mining and Metallurgical Engineering. This allowed him to focus more on scholarship and research. His interest in history ultimately evolved into the writing of a three-volume history of Coal in Queensland. He also formed the first Engineering Heritage Panels within the Institution of Engineers Australia, initially in Queensland and then nationally in 1976. His outstanding achievements in engineering heritage were recognized by the award of the John Monash medal for Engineering Heritage in 2005. In 1994 he had been appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in recognition of his service to mining and metallurgical engineering and to engineering history, heritage and industrial archaeology`. Whitmore died on 20 December 2008.

Born in Adelaide in 1915, Ray Whitrod had appointments in A.S.I.O, Commonwealth Investigation Service and Police Commissioner in Papua New Guinea, before taking up an appointment as Queensland Police Commissioner in 1970. His efforts to reform the State's police met with strong opposition from both within the force and the Bjelke-Petersen Government, and he resigned as a protest against corruption in 1976.