Australian Dictionary of Biography

Keith Roy Whatman (1928–1999), demolition contractor, was born on 23 July 1928 at Concord, Sydney, only child of New South Wales-born parents Arthur Roy Whatman, car salesman, and his wife Mary Ann, née Thorne. Growing up in Bowral as Don Bradman’s second cousin, Keith was educated at Concord Public, Bowral Public, and Bowral High schools. In October 1943 he was arrested and charged with stealing, the first of a series of brushes with the law that culminated in his being sent to a juvenile facility in August 1945. At this time he also became an accomplished boxer, and developed a fondness for ballroom dancing.

After leaving juvenile detention, Whatman moved to Sydney, where he worked briefly as a pastrycook and baker. While later claiming to have left this occupation because the flour gave him hay fever, he had in fact been convicted in April 1947 on eight counts of break, enter and steal, and was gaoled at Long Bay Penitentiary. Released on licence in February 1949, he was arrested again in October for similar offences, and sentenced to a further eight years’ hard labour.

Although considered incorrigible by the judge who considered his appeal against his sentence, on his release Whatman found work in the demolition trade. Starting out cleaning bricks, by 1957 he was selling salvage materials and furnishings from demolished properties. In 1958 he began a demolition business, trading as Whatman and Locke. On 30 August that year he married Bessie Noella Cantrill at the Wesley Chapel, Sydney. She left him after eighteen months of marriage on the grounds of his adultery, and filed for divorce in 1960. By then he was operating on his own as Whatman is Wrecking Pty Ltd. The catchy trademark would remain with him until his retirement. Whatman is Wrecking became synonymous with the demolition of Sydney’s nineteenth-century architecture, including the wool warehouses at East Circular Quay (1963), Sydney’s Imperial Arcade and Victoria Arcade (1964), Adam’s Tattersalls Hotel (1969), and the Australia Club (1969).

On 23 November 1968 Whatman married Shirley June Hynes in a Methodist service at the Wayside Chapel of the Cross, Potts Point. While business boomed throughout the 1970s, a series of controversial projects led to questions about his professional connections. Although he was a cousin of Jack Mundey, leader of the green ban movement in Sydney, Whatman worked on behalf of the developer Frank Theeman in the demolition of green ban properties in Victoria Street, Potts Point. In 1976 his firm was contracted by the City of Sydney Council to demolish the Walter Burley Griffin- designed chimney of the Pyrmont Incinerator. Decommissioned in 1971, by 1976 the chimney was deemed unsafe. He was awarded the contract to remove the top portion of the chimney and later the entire chimney structure. Complaints about the selection process led to questions in State parliament about Whatman and his close relationship to the lord mayor, Leo Port. Parliamentary investigations revealed that in the previous six years (1971–77) the council had spent approximately $450,000 on demolition work, with $401,868 going to Whatman. He had also received a letter of introduction from Port to do business in China, and had the contract for erecting the city Christmas tree. No findings were made against him, and a lengthy defamation case against the Sun newspaper around their reporting of the matter followed; it was settled out of court.

As well as his demolition business, Whatman maintained his passion for dancing. In 1976 he leased the former Broadway Theatre—which had previously been gutted by fire—from the city council (another link that was investigated). He and his wife oversaw the renovation and redecoration of the site. Opened in late 1976, the Broadway Ballroom hosted the Australian and New Zealand championships that year; he and his daughter won as best father and daughter pair. The ballroom hosted classes and weekend dances, but closed four years later as the popularity of ballroom dancing faded. He later claimed he was so heartbroken he could not bring himself to drive past the old theatre.

Whatman dedicated much of his later career to charities, donating both money and time. He supported the Helen Keller School for the Blind, St Joseph’s Orphanage at Lane Cove, and the Nimrod Theatre, and he regularly donated toys to the Sydney Lady Mayoress’ Christmas appeal. Perhaps incongruously, he was also a patron of the National Trust of Australia (New South Wales), despite his years of demolition work. In 1976 he was appointed MBE in recognition of his charitable works.

‘Trimly built and lithe as a dancer’ (Honey 1972, 67), Whatman was ‘nuggety, tough, ebullient and given to hyperbole’ (O’Brien 1971, 40). During a media interview in 1985, he commented that ‘he hope[d] to die falling off a building, at 85’ (Gemmell-Smith 1985, 20). His wish was almost granted the following year, when the bulldozer he was operating on the fourth floor of the Anthony Hordern’s building dropped through a boarded-up staircase and crashed to the ground floor. He suffered a brain injury, the loss of one eye, a shattered leg, and broken ribs, and was in hospital for six months. Although his wrecking days were over, he continued dancing, dying from a heart attack on 26 September 1999 at a dance at Seaforth; he was cremated. He was survived by his wife; the daughter of his first marriage, Belinda; and the son of his second, Evan.