THE names at the top of the list are mostly familiar. Names such as Graeme Samuel, the chairman of the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission, and the newly lightweight media buyer Harold Mitchell.

Adam Gilchrist, with wife Melinda and children Harry, 8, Archie, 3, and Annie, 5, in Hyde Park, London, yesterday

Steve Bracks, the retired Victorian premier, is there too, as is Dame Valerie Beral, the venerated cancer researcher stationed at Oxford University.

So is Adam Gilchrist, the swashbuckling wicketkeeper-batsman who these days heads the Australia Day Council when he's not flaying bowlers in the Indian Premier League or for English county side Middlesex.

The Meyers have fostered 95 children over the past 22 years. Their latest, a six-month-old boy, landed on their doorstep when he was just three days old.

All will get to add some well-earned letters after their names: AC for the highest rank, a Companion in the Order of Australia, down to OAM, for the Order of Australia Medal.

Gilchrist, for one, is used to seeing initials after his name - in his case (wk) for wicketkeeper.

Gilchrist, who retired from Australian cricket in 2008, is with his family in England playing as Twenty20 specialist for Middlesex county.

He showed he has lost none of his old touch by smashing a county record 106 off 52 balls on Saturday. Gilchrist played 96 Tests and 287 one-day internationals for Australia and is considered the greatest wicketkeeper-batsman of all time.

ilchrist has also been the chairman of the Australia Day Council for the past two years.