The story of Clive Palmer and his run in Australian politics

Clive Palmer is arguably Australia’s most eccentric and public billionaire. He has made several novel investments, including funding a dinosaur theme park, a footy team, and a modern-day rebuilding of the Titanic, the ship that famously sank in 1912 after hitting an iceberg. Palmer made and lost most of his money in the Australian mining industry.

Palmer met his wife of 22 years while studying at the University of Queensland. They were happily married until her death in 2006 from cancer. Palmer often cites that raising his daughter without her mother has been one of his greatest ever challenges.

When he dropped out of University in 1975, Palmer went on the become a real estate tycoon and made a large sum of money pursuing property development. He capitalised on the property boom in Queensland at the time and ended up retiring from the real estate industry at only 29 years of age. He has said that he made around $40 million AUD from his property investments before leaving in 1980.

Later in the mid-80s Palmer got into the Australian mining industry, starting 3 different companies aimed at mining exploration in Western Australia. He eventually leased the most successful of these mining companies to a Chinese firm for a deal worth around $3 billion AUD.

In 2007, Palmer married his second wife Anna. Anna is 20 years younger than Clive and actually had Clive act as ‘father of the bride’ in her previous wedding. He had 2 more daughters with Anna.

In 2013 he started the ‘Palmer United Party’. He has had an interesting political career and is best known for embracing internet meme culture in his campaigns. However, this has not yielded much success for him in the end.