Researching Bill Leak

Raised in Condobolin and Beacon Hill, Sydney, Leak attended Julian Ashton Art School during the 1970s. His cartoons were first published in 1983 in The Bulletin and after he drew for The Sydney Morning Herald until 1994, when he was recruited by News Limited to contribute to The Daily Telegraph-Mirror and later to The Australian. As an artist and illustrator, Leak was acclaimed by journalist Peter FitzSimons as "colossally talented, driven, and passionate for his craft".

Leak entered paintings into the Archibald on several occasions, having won the People's Choice Award in 1994 for his portrait of Malcolm Turnbull and the Packing Room Prize twice, in 1997 and 2000 for his portraits of Tex Perkins and Sir Les Patterson respectively. Leak's novel Heart Cancer was published in 2005 and in 2008 ABC TV aired his six-part series Face Painting.

Leak's editorial cartoons for The Australian were at the centre of several controversies. Works that received considerable media coverage include a 2006 cartoon drawn during the West Papuan refugee dispute, a series of cartoons in 2007 that featured Kevin Rudd as Tintin, a 2015 cartoon depicting starving Indian people attempting to eat solar panels and two cartoons in 2016, one an illustration of a neglectful Aboriginal father and another that depicted same-sex marriage campaigners wearing rainbow-coloured Nazi uniforms.

Leak, who was born in Adelaide and educated at Scotch College, lost some of his best sporting years to the war. In the 1930s and early 1940s, Leak represented the South Australian cricket team in eight first-class matches and played for Sturt at district level. He played as a batsman and was an outstanding fielder, winning the Talbot Smith Medal in 1939/40.

He was also a leading player for the Sturt Football Club in the South Australian National Football League (SANFL). He played his football as a centreman and was a member of Sturt's 1940 SANFL premiership winning team. An interstate representative, Leak returned to the club after the war in 1946 and was appointed captain. It was the same year that he joined Prince Alfred College, where he was involved in sports coaching.

As a state cricketer, Leak had the distinction of playing his earliest matches under the captaincy of Don Bradman. He only made South Australia's Sheffield Shield eleven on two occasions, returning a top score of 31. In fact, it wasn't until his sixth first-class match that he made a half-century, breaking the drought with an innings of 79 in a high scoring encounter with New South Wales. Leak, who was stumped four times in his short career, batted anywhere from four to seven in the batting order for South Australia.

During the war, Leak served with the Royal Australian Navy, and was stationed at the naval base in South Australia.