I remember the day World War 2 ended . . .   I was 9 and Dad popped us in the car, and we went up to Kings Cross. There were girls in bras and panties dancing on the top of cars!!! I had never seen anything like that before!

I grew up in . . .  Roslyndale Ave in Woollahra. In 1936 my father bought this huge three storey house built in the 1850’s and it was on an acre of land. He got it for a song … and my brother and I played in paddocks around the house. The house is still there.

My first car was . . .  a 1936 Morris which I got in the late 1950’s. Sometimes it struggled to get up the hill at North Sydney  where the freeway is now, especially if I had a heavy passenger. So, I would have to put the car into reverse and go up the hill that way. I would get a lot of strange looks! I also had a Vespa scooter when I was young. I saw the film Roman Holiday and fell in love with Audrey Hepburn. I couldn’t afford Audrey Hepburn, so I bought a Vespa. I even drove it to the top of the trig station at Mount Kosciusko.

As a child . . .  I had no idea of what I wanted to do when I grew up. When I was 16 I met the Captain of the HMAS Sydney and decided I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I went to work in retail at Waltons, worked in real estate and the cotton futures market. I retired at 66, but then was offered a job helping people with their superannuation and retired again 15 years ago.

I have happy memories of . . . sailing on the weekend with my father. After the war he bought a sailing boat and every weekend we would go out sailing. All my friends remembered those sailing weekends.

The best decision I ever made . . . was to get married to Margot. I met her at a party,  she already had a nice boyfriend – but I didn’t like him!! I asked her  ‘Do you want to tell him that I will be taking you out tomorrow night?’ , and she said ‘Yes!’ We married in 1961.

I always had . . . a faith. My parents would not let me go to church on my own till I was about 10. Then I would walk down to All Saints Woollahra, and my parents would pick me up at 11 and we would go sailing. 

I first came to SHAP . . . in 1988. I went to St Peter’s to give thanks I survived my motor car accident. I had died and saw lots of little lights coming closer and closer, and then a voice asked me ‘would you like to go home?’ and I said ‘yes’. Now I go to the 8am service at St Michael’s.

In my spare time I like to . . . Build model boats. I have built about eight or nine, including a 9-foot-long submarine which is now down a HMAS Albatross, with two other of my pieces. At the moment I am building a model boat of a Danish tug in the men’s shed up at Moran.

The best advice I ever got was … from the man I used to buy my cigarettes from. He sold me my cigarettes with a box of matches on top. He told me he was the largest retailer of Federal Matches, because he always sold them along with the cigarettes. It is what we call upselling now. I took that idea and used it at Walton’s where I worked. So, for example when people bought a bed we suggested they might like to consider buying a mattress … sales increased dramatically!