John Hirst

After graduating in Commerce/Economics I joined CSR (very establishment in those days) working in their sugar marketing area. Worked in New Zealand for about a year then went to London to be the second person in their two-man office. This led me into the extraordinary world of the international sugar export trade.

Barbara and I were married the night before we left for London - our honeymoon was spent in Bali, Singapore and Istanbul - in a week.

London, on an Australian salary, in the early 1970s was marvellous. So was the work, and especially the social business life. I represented Fiji on the International Sugar Organisation, so was invited to all sorts of official cocktail parties, etc. at places like the House of Lords, Marlborough House, etc. Worked with a very interesting group of other Commonwealth countries - my first introduction to the multicultural world (which includes the English). Travelled through Europe as much as we could. Our first child, Victoria, was born in London - it didn't curtail our social or travel activities, but we soon found that the English were utterly amazed that anyone over 8 months' pregnant would even venture out of the house, let alone outstay them wherever we went.

Back to Australia, and to the raw sugar marketing area, where I became responsible for raw sugar exports to Canada, USA and Europe, as well as marketing Fiji sugar. Lots more travel overseas, some for extended periods, which was a great concern as our second child, Christopher, had been born a year or so after we returned from London. We made many great international friendships during these years, and still meet regularly with some of these people.

In 1979 I was given the opportunity to go on an "interchange" with the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet in Canberra. The purpose was to understand how government worked. All I can say is that I didn't think that it ever worked well then, and it is a lot worse now.

On my return to Sydney I joined CSR's building materials division and worked with a number of their joint venture companies as CSR's representative. Then on 24 hours' notice I moved to a CSR coal mining joint venture and 24 hours after that, I was in Tokyo, my first visit to Asia, and spent ten days being told by a somewhat irate group of Japanese coal buyers and our trading house, what I had to do to rectify the JV problems. I hadn't realised the difficulties managing a joint venture of seven, of which one was a major oil company, another a major life office, two Japanese and two Korean companies, plus CSR. Interesting times, interesting and robust disputes, interesting outcomes. Much travelling to Japan, Korea, Hong Kong and Europe, sometimes with a matter of hours' notice, sometimes for two or three days and away for three weeks. Great for family life! However, we survived. My son still tells me that I deliberately was not at home for five of his consecutive birthdays

CSR decided to sell out of minerals and so I took the opportunity, before being sold off as a commodity, to resign, joining the Leighton Group in an overseas business development role. I soon learnt that civil engineers were anything but, they knew everything, they thought they were experts in every business discipline in addition to engineering, and are infallible. I don't mean to offend any civil engineers amongst our group. At the time I was deciding to move from this scintillating environment I was headhunted into running an industry association - the Association of Australian Ports and Marine Authorities - from where I will retire at the end of this year. The job appealed enormously - with an expectation of little travel, especially overseas on business. How wrong I have been. Interstate travel virtually every week, but at least there is one overseas trip every year and round-the-world tickets take you where you want to go, such as the Silk Road, India, Africa, Europe, North America ... It has been an absolutely fascinating job.

We now have five grandchildren who are an absolute delight. Four of them, and their parents, have lived with us over the last six months whilst they renovated their house, and we had as much fun together on the last day they were with us as we did on the first. Our house seems very empty now.

Our retirement present to us both is a trip to Antarctica, Chile, where I have distant family, and Argentina in February. We are pushing it to get back for 10 March, but I am doing my best.

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