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John Hemmes dies after battle with cancer

Scott Bolles
Scott Bolles

John Hemmes at the Good Food Guide awards in 2009.
John Hemmes at the Good Food Guide awards in 2009.Supplied

The patriarch and architect of Sydney's giant Merivale empire has died.

John Hemmes passed away on Sunday night, aged 83, following a long battle with cancer.

The Hemmes family released a statement stating he died peacefully at his Sydney home surrounded by his family.

"I will miss him terribly," his son and Merivale chief Justin Hemmes said.

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John Hemmes embodied the rags to riches migrant dream, having built an empire that swept hospitality, fashion and property.

Yet for all his business success, Hemmes, spoke less of the trajectory of his family-owned Merivale empire and more of simple things in life. Family, food and his love for his adopted city.

The son of a Dutch doctor, he spent WWII and much of his boyhood interned in a Japanese concentration camp. Despite nearly dying from amoebic dysentery, Hemmes said the camp ingrained in him survival skills and an abiding appreciation for food that would eventually form the backbone of his Merivale group.

When the Dutch East Indies were liberated at the end of the war, he moved with his family to Amsterdam but then left for New Zealand.

Initially he struggled to get ahead across the Tasman. His luck would change when he boarded a Europe-bound ship where he met Merivale, an Australian milliner. They married in 1954, then settled in Sydney, where the duo kick-started a fashion business from the garage of Hemmes' in-laws' home.

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The House of Merivale and John Hemmes were perfectly calibrated for the swinging '60s and as the retail business grew, so did Hemmes' interest in undervalued Sydney residential property and city pubs.

'Mr John', as he was now universally known in and outside his business, was ready for the next stage of the company's growth. Always keen to credit his children for the success of the subsequent hospitality foray, praising son Justin's vision and daughter Bettina's design skills, that success parlayed into property-turned-hospitality deals including Establishment, with Merivale paying just $9 million for the George Street building.

Before Merivale's mega-complexes Establishment and Ivy opened, the city had been on the nose with upmarket diners and drinkers. The family brought Manhattan-like glamour to Sydney's downtown.

Hemmes was at heart a risk-taker, and never lost his love for his adopted city. From his first impression of the city in 1951, where he was struck by the colourful taxi cabs in a world where everywhere else they were black. The enthusiasm didn't abate in later years.

"This is the greatest city in the world," he liked to trumpet.

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Scott BollesScott Bolles writes the weekly Short Black column in Good Food.

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