Sir Alexander Russell "Alick" Downer KBE (7 April 1910 – 30 March 1981) was an Australian politician and diplomat.

His father, Sir John Downer, was a Premier of South Australia and a member of the Australian Senate and was 66-years old at the time of his birth; he died when Alick was aged five.

[6] After the war, Downer joined the newly formed Liberal Party of Australia, and in 1949 he was elected to the House of Representatives for the rural-based Division of Angas.

During his term in office, reforms to migration laws led to the arrival of hundreds of thousands of migrants, mostly from Britain and Europe, where new recruitment posts had been created.

As a result of his experience as a prisoner of war, he arranged for non-criminal deportees to be held in detention centres instead of being sent to jail.

Downer actively lobbied both the prime minister, William McMahon, and the British government directly, for a peerage of the UK Parliament.

He was responsible for the construction of the large Georgian mansion and extensive formal gardens and deer park,[16] "which was important to his concept of the property as an English estate".