Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

17 but they were again fortunate when a general increase in the price of base metals took place in 1905. This particular boom encouraged Lionel to make a visit to Australia which had extremely important consequences as he and Clark acquired interests in mining companies based at Broken Hill (where silver, lead and zinc were mined) and a rather informal, but extremely influential, group called the Anglo-Australian Group came into being. According to his brother, W.S.: ‘Between these parties there was never any agreement or letter implying any arrangement. They were merely friends believing in Australia and its future.’ There was a good deal of financial sleight of hand as companies and syndicates (such as the Hill Syndicate, the Broken Hill Syndicate and the rather shadowy Share Guarantee Syndicate) came and went but there were essentially three major components in this Group; moneyed parties based in both Australia and in England and a group of technical and administrative experts. The major providers of capital and financial services in Australia were the Baillieu brothers William Lawrence (‘W.L.’), Edward Lloyd (‘Prince’) and Percy Clive (‘Joe’); 17 the main English backing came from Robinson, Clark and Francis Algernon Govett 18 , whilst the chief technocrats were the firm of Bewick, Moreing & Co., for whom the major player was Herbert Clark Hoover, eventually to become President of the USA. During 1905, Lionel organised a trip of potential large-scale investors from Melbourne to the Broken Hill mining fields during which some that, whilst the pair issued justificatory affidavits, they took no direct action against their critics. 17 A descendant of the Baillieu brothers is Ted Baillieu, who was, until 2012, the Premier of Victoria. 18 Govett was born in Surrey in 1858, the son of a stockbroker. The early life of Lionel Robinson Future United States President Herbert Hoover, pictured in his 30s when a mining engineer and close associate of Lionel at Broken Hill.