BOB BROWN –
ASOPA 1966/67
I never wanted to be a
Cadet Education Officer. In my final
year at St Edwards College, Gosford, thanks to
prompting by my geography teacher Joe Driscoll to consider a career in Papua New Guinea, my
original intention was to do the Cadet Patrol Officers Course at ASOPA when I
was old enough. My parents were horrified and managed to persuade me to do the
CEO course instead.
My memories of ASOPA are
doing all the hard swot in the first year and then enjoying the second year as
co-tenant with Ian Johnson of 64 Vista St, Mosman – which tended to be the
party house of 1967.
Practice teaching was at
Tusbab High School and I was genuinely pleased to be posted there afterwards.
Madang was as good as any place to be in TPNG. I never regarded being in TPNG
as 'work' – it was just a wonderful & unforgettable place. Amongst my
memories are:
· All the
students I knew
· The student
strike/riot of ’68 at Tusbab
· The
earthquake of ’70 at Madang
· Being
admitted to the Hansenide Colony at Hatzfelthaven with typhoid
· Playing rugby
league all over the Territory
BINARY BITS & ALL
THAT
Teaching was never my
chosen path and I was always considering alternatives. Whilst on annual leave
in Sydney in 1969/70 - Ian Johnson had
suggested we go to London instead - I rocked up at IBM in response to an ad for
trainee computer programmers. I was offered a place the day before I was
scheduled to fly back to Madang and asked them to keep the position open for me
until I returned in a year's time. Not surprisingly, they declined.
Once my three years were
up I returned to Sydney, not without plenty of regrets, and lived most of the
time around Mosman and Kirribilli. I enrolled on a full-time Computer
Programming course at the Control Data Institute in North Sydney. By the time I
had finished the course I realised I didn't want to be a computer programmer –
despite the terrific salaries on offer. No silicon chips in those days and
everything had to be coded in 'machine language' – i.e. binary arithmetic.
Punch cards were king!
A PRIVATE LIFE
Looking for jobs in the
private sector I came across one at P Rowe International who were Dupont's distributor in Australia.
They were looking for somebody to implement a computerised inventory control
system. My final course assignment at Control Data had been identical to what P
Rowe International needed. At the interview I must have appeared like a whiz
kid and my career in operations management was launched in the private sector.
Around this time I read
two influential books. One was entitled 'How to Get Real Estate Rich'; the
other on how to progress in business. A key feature of the latter was that you
should never stay in a job any longer than when you had mastered the essentials
of that job. Sell yourself to a higher bidder!. So just about every year I
changed jobs. First to the Readers Digest and
then Select Distribution to launch the Readers Digest and Family Circle
magazines at every supermarket checkout in the country – a hopeless task. I
went six years without a holiday.
THE CORPORATE SPY
Next came an intriguing project. Pykes Tours – the
oldest tourist coach company in NSW – were having problems. Its ultimate parent
company, British Electric Traction, which included P & O and Wembley
Stadium amongst its portfolio – were
constantly having to inject funds into Pykes despite the business
appearing healthy. The existing management of Pykes were being evasive.
I was planted in the
business by the parent company as operations manager with the brief to find out
what was going on. My reward if
successful was that I would get the top job at Pykes. It did not take me
too long to discover a business beset by fraudulent invoicing; abysmal cash
control and being dictated to by the Transport Workers Union. When I announced
to head office that I could cut payroll costs by 25% without affecting the
efficiency of the business and sort out the other issues – the top job of General Manager was mine
within days.
From there it was
downhill. A merger with Australian Accommodation & Tours (AAT) - owned by
TAA, helped prove that the business inherently was a rotten egg. It was time to
move on – but where to?
WHERE TO NOW?
I had become good
friends with the company accountant John Babula – we played touch footy on
Sunday mornings for the same team in the South Sydney competition. During the
summer of 77/78 we had gotten into the habit of taking a two hour lunch on
Fridays and going to Maroubra beach for a surf. On one such February Friday
while resting on the beach we addressed the issue of where we should move. John
decided he was finished with the private sector and wanted the security of the
public service. He went on to become Chief Financial Controller of the NSW
State Railways.
For me, I declared that
I was going to buy 10 acres of land in
the South of France and grow grapes and make wine! Having never been to Europe,
let alone France, nor make wine this was some statement but my broad intentions
were serious aided by a general disenchantment with Australia.
I discussed this with
Joan, my long-term girlfriend of five years
– a '£10 tourist' from Britain' who had fled Britain during the '3 day
week' -
and she was not all that keen. But in July 1978 off we went to
investigate - bumping into Ian Johnson in the toilets at Bombay airport, as you
do.
By the end of our two
month visit we decided that Britain and Europe was where we wanted to be. First
Joan had to complete her 4 year Librarian course and me my external Bachelor of
Business (Accounting) at Mitchell College of Advanced Education and we had to
sell up property.
In the meantime, after a
brief stint with Mr Icee – The Coldest Treat in Town - I left the private
sector and spent my final year in Australia working for the Spastics Centre at
Allambie Heights. Being responsible for having to move so many handicapped
children and adults great distances across Sydney, I left Australia a humbled person.
BRITAIN or BUST
When we arrived in
Britain in April 1980 there were 3 million unemployed; interest rates were 15%;
the inner cities were burning and Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. For me
there was no turning back.
Job offers were few and
far between but in September I was offered two good jobs on the same day. One
was General Manager of Cheshire-based
Berkeley Travel who operated package tours to the south of France and Florida.
They promoted their business throughout the workingmen’s clubs of Northern
England on the basis that the first thing a person did when made redundant was to spend some of their
redundancy money on a holiday. And there were plenty of potential customers!
The other offer was from
West Herts College, just outside London, who had initially interviewed me for a
tourism lecturing position but then offered me a post lecturing in Accounting
and Statistics. A return to education was not what I had planned.
In the end, Berkeley
Travel were offering a better salary, a company car and lots of travel
benefits. But also long, long hours. As a lecturer I would have 20 hours class
contact a week and 14 weeks paid holidays a year. The road to France was clear.
Throughout that decade
we prospered under the Thatcher Revolution and I did my part by canvassing for
her party in General Elections. There were regular trips to France - day, weekends and weeks - and plenty of looking
at French estate agents windows and thinking “if only”.
FROM MAROUBRA BEACH TO
NOIZERET
In 1990 the opportunity
arose to buy an eight acre former vineyard in the heart of the Burgundy
vineyards of France in the tiny hamlet of
Noizeret. Built in the late 18th century the dry-stone
property had not made wine since the mid 50's and was a bit of a wreck The giant wine press , fermentation
tanks & cellars remained but, alas,
no grape vines. For the next few years I spent the bulk of my 14 weeks' annual
holidays renovating part of the property (the Farmhouse) with Joan accompanying
me as often as possible. Having no children made this easier. Maroubra beach
had been 12 years ago.
Changes were afoot in
education with the government announcing that they were proposing to abolish
the practice of teachers retiring on a full pension at 50 and then returning to
work the next day as a part-time teacher. Retirement would be at 60 instead. I
had no wish to go on to 60 so in 1997 jumped out of the paid workforce just in
time to collect my pension.
We still had a need for
additional income so we set about developing our French property as a holiday
destination. First the Farmhouse was rented out successfully for short term
lets when we were not there. Then we decided to do a total renovation of
another detached building on the site where the wine had been made – The
Winery.
We leased our house in
Roman St Albans in England and moved to France. The Winery had no electricity,
no water, no sewage, an outside dunny (just a hole in the ground - French
style) and a huge hole in one of the floors. We had intended using the rent
from our St Albans property to fund a lot of the works but our English agent
cheated us and we had to move out of the Farmhouse so we could earn some rental
income from it.
We lived in a single
room in the Winery with a makeshift bathroom that had just a toilet; and a
bathtub in which we washed ourselves, our clothes and our dishes. Our kitchen was
an outside BBQ. Over 20 months the Winery was turned into a two bedroom &
two bathroom character cottage forming part of the small portfolio of
Noizeret.com.
Returning to live in the
UK, for the past 13 years we have successfully marketed Noizeret.com to the
English and German markets while also picking up bookings from North America
and Australia. From late March to early November we do the 900 kilometre
commute by car from St Albans to France every four weeks or so to do a little
bit of 'Spring cleaning'.
RUGBY LEAGUE
Throughout all those
years – and even before my ASOPA days – I have had a lifetime involvement in
rugby league. When I initially settled in the UK in Hemel Hempstead there was
no local rugby league club so I started one. At 34 I thought I would be an
administrator but immediately found myself playing competitively until I turned
40. The club I founded – now called
Hemel Stags – started off as a pub team playing in borrowed shirts on a hurling
pitch. Today it has over 40 employees, plays in the professional ranks and I am
the full time (almost), voluntary C.E.O.
A couple of websites:
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