The good, the great and the just plain bad: The people we lost in 2019

Australia, and the world, mourned leaders, musicians, sports stars and many others in 2019, including former PM Bob Hawke, deputy PM Tim Fischer, musicians Chris Wilson and Greedy Smith, and poet Les Murray.

Among those to die were also the infamous – including Australia’s most notorious serial killer, Ivan Milat.

Here’s a look back at some of the great, the good and the just plain bad lost to the world in 2019.

Dec 20, 2019, updated Dec 23, 2019

1/23Bob Hawke, who was Australian PM from 1983-1991, died in May. He was 89.

2/23Tim Fischer, a deputy PM from the Howard era, died in August after a 10-year battle with cancer. He was 73.

3/23Model and actress Annalise Braakensiek was found dead in her Sydney apartment in January. She was 45.

4/23John Cain, Victoria's longest serving Labor premier, died on December 23. He was 88.

5/23Actor Shelley Morrison (at left) with the rest of the cast of Will and Grace. Morrison died in early December, aged 83.

6/23Mental As Anything founding member and singer Andrew 'Greedy' Smith died of a sudden heart attack in December. Aged 63, he had performed with the band as part of a national tour just days earlier.

7/23Bob Willis, pictured here in 1974, died in December at the age of 70. He was considered an Ashes hero, after saving England at Headingley in 1981.

8/23Celebrated Australian poet Les Murray died in April. He was 80.

9/23Serial killer Ivan Milat died in jail in Sydney in October. Aged 74, he had been serving seven life sentences for murdering backpackers in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

10/23Celebrated cook Margaret Fulton died in July, aged 94. Her career had spanned decades – and transformed the way many Australians eat.

11/23Clive James, an Australian journalist, joker and intellectual who had a long career as a writer and broadcaster, died in November. He was 80, and had fought blood cancer for a decade.

12/23Diahann Caroll (left), the first black woman to win a Tony Award for best actress, died in October, aged 84. She also had roles in Dynasty and Grey's Anatomy.

13/23Caroll Spinney, who voiced of Sesame Street's Oscar the Grouch and Big Bird for nearly 50 years died in December. Aged 85, he had retired just a year earlier after years of ill health.

14/23Tanzilia Bisembeyeva, listed as the world's oldest living person in Russia's 2016 book of world records, died in October at the age of 123.

15/23K-pop star Goo Hara took her own life in November, just weeks after fellow star Sulli did the same. The double deaths exposed a darker side of Korea's demanding entertainment industry.

16/23Boxer Dwight Ritchie died after a training accident in Melbourne in November. He was just 27.

17/23Paralympian Kieran Modra (left) died in November after being hit by a car on a training ride. Aged 47, he had won 10 Paralympic medals and two Commonwealth Games medals.

18/23Actor Anne Phelan starred in Neighbours, Winners and Losers, Bellbird and Prisoner. She died in October, aged 71.

19/23Former AFL coach and men's health advocate Danny Frawley was killed in a single-car crash in September. A former captain of St Kilda, Frawley had just turned 56.

20/23Indigenous actor Ningali Lawford-Wolf died at the age of 52 in Scotland in August. She was touring with a stage production of The Secret River.

21/23Self-proclaimed sovereign Prince Leonard died in February, aged 93. He had famously founded the micro-nation of Hutt River in WA – and battled the Australian Tax Office for years over millions in disputed taxes.

22/23The Cars' frontman Ric Ocasek died in September, aged 75.

23/23Conservationist David Bellamy at the opening of a British conservation project in 2009. He died in December.