My Journey: from the Bush to Banker and Back

This remarkable story tells of a boy born to dairy farming parents in Central Queensland, Australia at the outbreak of WWII, who left school at 16 and rose to lead the retail operations at Australias leading bank, Westpac and then retired back to his bush roots. It paints a picture of a very different era of Australia. Johns early life on an isolated farm with no electricity and very few creature comforts shows how radically Australian lifestyles have changed in only two generations. It pays witness to the transition in banking from a time when a handshake was a contract to the globalisation of the industry in the 1990s, exploring the dramatic changes in practices, technology and culture that overtook this once revered industry. And it tells of the joys of family life and the challenges encountered as a consequence of promotions and of transfers across eastern Australia and the world. It details how the family dealt with and drew lessons from a series of deep tragedies. John returned to the bush in his later years using his managerial skills for agriculture and social service. In 1987, he acquired a small cattle farm at Yarramalong near Sydney and on retirement established a 100 acres vineyard at Mudgee, NSW that was soon producing award winning wine grapes. John himself was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia for his voluntary work with various not-for-profit organisations including as Chair of the Royal Blind Society later to become Vision Australia. This is a journey of family and service in an Australia evolving from rural sufficiency into a globalised world. It is an insight into country life that is unrecognisable to the smart phone generation; also a chronicle of a now vanished time in Australian banking.