Basil Sellers said that he is Anglo-Indian, that he was born in India, although both parents were of British ancestry, they were neither one nor the other. When Indian independence came in August of 1947, it was his mother who thought better of going to the mother country (England) where a vast majority of the Anglo-Indian community headed. She decided, however, to migrate to Australia, for her children's future, even though his father would have preferred to have stayed in India.
His mother was a very wise woman, many of her decisions having proved later to be absolutely right. Moreover, she was someone who made things happen. She saw the vision and made it into a reality. Basil Sellers said he was very blessed to have had such a mother.
Mark Tronson asked Basil Sellers to explain further about an incident spelt out in his book, "From India with Love". During a church service in Sydney, the Minister was reading from Matthew: "Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden and I will refresh you." At that time, his business outlook was far from positive, but after this he felt within himself more comfortable.
"The Lord sent that message to me and after that I never looked back," Basil Sellers noted.
He said that he started work at 16 for a stockbroker and after some years, he had the chance to turn around a company. He noticed that he saw strategies others hadn't recognised previously, and eventually he earned the nickname 'The Turn Around King'. Basil Sellers said that this was something that is intuitive, one cannot teach how to turn around a company.
He made the point that he suspects he would not have done anywhere near as well with a thriving company by attempting to make it more profitable. He has been much more comfortable finding strategies to rescue companies that were in bad shape.
Both Basil Sellers and his brother, Rex, are high quality athletes. He has represented South Australia in basketball, and Rex has been an Australian cricketer. He has long recognised that top-level athletes seek to be refreshed with respite, so they can return to their art and perform even better.
He has always been aware of the stress and pressure athletes face; and when Mark Tronson (the Australian cricket chaplain) proposed a Respite facility for athletes, he said, it was "exactly what I was thinking".
As a result, two respite facilities are now functioning for Australian Institute of Sport athletes and the Cricket fraternity: Basil Sellers Moruya (NSW south coast) and Basil Sellers Tweed (NSW North Coast / SE Qld) coordinated by Well-Being Australia of which Dr Mark Tronson is Chairman.
Art too is a passion for Basil Sellers who is a serious collector. He explained that his Moruya 'Basil Sellers $10,000 Bi-Annual Art Prize' is a community prize without a restricted subject whereas his 'Basil Sellers $100,000 Sport-Art Prize' at Melbourne University's Ian Potter Museum of Art is specifically for art on a sporting theme.
Basil Sellers said that he has always been bemused that in Australia, the last 6 pages of any newspaper are on sport - but go into any art gallery and there is rarely anything on sport. He stated that Australia is such a sporting nation that he felt Sport had been neglected in the Arts, although increasingly large numbers of Australians are now visiting art galleries and museums.
On a similar note, he has commissioned the ten Basil Sellers Sculptures of sporting icons at the SCG (Sydney Cricket Ground), six of which have already been completed. He got the idea for this series while he was visiting the MCG (Melbourne Cricket Ground) when the Dennis Lillee sculpture was being unveiled 'in his full delivery stride'.
Basil Sellers took his idea to the SCG Trust's chairman, Rodney Cavalier, who jumped at it. "This is a novel way that I can bring sport and sculpture together and give those sculptors a helping hand in notoriety," Basil Sellers explained.
This video can be viewed at tv.bushorchestra.com/Professionals/videopages/basil_sellers.html