Michael Turner and his wife, Jaki, were stark naked when I met them; strolling in the altogether down a path on tiny Bedarra Island, (the tropical retreat of the Duchess of York - years before she then made it fashionable).
The Turners had been six months living the castaway life. Fishing for coral trout, scraping succulent oysters off the rocks, and baking them with island-grown taro in red-hot boulders covered with banana leaves; a long way from the conservative Colchester, Essex, that Michael Turner, entrepreneur had left at 20, to go to sea in the merchant navy.
He remembers: "I arrived in Australia and was invited to a party. All the girls were in the lounge-room, the fellows crowded around a beer-keg in the kitchen. I got my beer and walked in to chat to the girls, who were very pretty indeed.
"After a while one of the fellows came in and said: 'Michael, we're a bit worried about you. What're you doing in here?'
"I said I was talking to the girls. He said: 'What are you? Some sort of poofter?'"
Next day the young Englishman donned long socks, long shorts and cotton shirt to go to the beach. As he crunched down the sand, protected from the sun by a wide hat, he heard the comments: "Who's a goose? Who's a goose?"
He laughs. Grey haired now, with a grey moustache he tugs when he tells a joke, he worries: that the carefree, wonderful Australia that he came to 35 years ago isn't the same. "It's become obstructive."
But it wasn't that way when Michael Turner, hotel front-desk manager and door-to-door salesman launched himself into 1950s Melbourne...
"I flew into Melbourne International Airport which was a large tin shed. I had come from lower-middle class Essex where my father bred tropical fish for a living, to a country I had heard was classless and stuck its finger up at things that got in the way.
"I worked at a hotel until I realised there was big money to be made out there selling door-to-door. I sold refrigerators, floor-coverings, curtains and bedspreads. The ladies, I think, noted my English accent and thought that meant good education and honesty so they let me in."
He sold so much to one appreciative suburban housewife that her husband offered him a job in insurance. Why not, asked Michael, when he was told he could make a hefty 500 pounds a week? He became so good at it he remained in insurance for 15 years, elevated to the office of Victorian marketing manager for the London-based Legal & General Insurance Company.
But 15 years was past the Turner credo of a shift every three years. ("Start it up, take a year ironing out the problems, a year getting bored with it and then do something else.")
By now he had met the sylph-like Jaki, and was ready for a career change. "Friends in insurance were having heart attacks at 40. Jaki and I found we could use a hammer and nails, so we started renovating little workers' cottages."
Then - down went the hammers and this time the tropics beckoned. Michael's job as an assistant ship's purser and hotel training after he left the merchant navy, had given him enough skill to manage resorts. On Queensland’s Dunk Island he and Jaki entertained the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Lord McAlpine and Australia's then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, whom they dined with every night.
"We then bought 70 acres on the Daintree River in the rainforest and operated a crocodile safari. No running water, no electricity and a public phone I had to run 60 yards to answer." But it was a roaring success. After that they opened a butterfly farm, learning from a text-book on breeding and with the help of a top lepidopterist, who shook his head and told them breeding butterflies was fraught with difficulties and they'd 'gotta be joking!'
The Turners put up their own aviary, built their own home, put boardwalks over the mangroves and began greeting tourists from all over the world. They took their daily swim in a sun-dappled creek until a local woman was taken by a monster crocodile.
When they heard developer Christopher Skase was building the Mirage resort at Port Douglas, the Turners moved there and set up Rainforest Habitat, the largest butterfly farm in Australia, adding 70 species of birds to flutter about with the exotically-hued butterflies inside the huge net enclosure. Soon there were fruit-bats and wallabies, too, but they had to be nursed like babies, so Jaki would smuggle them and baby bottles into 5-star hotels when they took a few days off.
In a week or two they leave for Lae, in Papua-New Guinea, to create a butterfly house for the PNG Government.
And after that? "We are thinking," said one of the few men who can look right in a white pith-helmet, "of a large eco-display at the foot of a cable-car that is being built.
"But you know, the sense of adventure that attracted me to Australia from 12,000 miles away has been dampened. We may even leave and go somewhere else.
"The Australia I knew when I came here no longer exists.
"It is now run by petty bureaucrats whose whole thinking seems to be to place obstacles in front of anyone with enterprise. Their aim is to make it too difficult to succeed.
"I recently flew to Guam to discuss a big wildlife project with three people from the equivalent of the National Parks and Wildlife Department here. Their attitude to me was immediately enthusiastic: 'Michael', they said, 'how can we help you?'
"In Australia today the attitude of public servants is: 'There must be some rule you could be breaking, so we'd be better off stopping you before you begin.'
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Too Many Bureaucrats Crush Entrepreneurial Spirit
Quote:
Originally Posted by Tim
AS NATURE INTENDED
By Desmond Zwar
Michael Turner and his wife, Jaki, were stark naked when I met them; strolling in the altogether down a path on tiny Bedarra Island, (the tropical retreat of the Duchess of York - years before she then made it fashionable).
The Turners had been six months living the castaway life. Fishing for coral trout, scraping succulent oysters off the rocks, and baking them with island-grown taro in red-hot boulders covered with banana leaves; a long way from the conservative Colchester, Essex, that Michael Turner, entrepreneur had left at 20, to go to sea in the merchant navy.
He remembers: "I arrived in Australia and was invited to a party. All the girls were in the lounge-room, the fellows crowded around a beer-keg in the kitchen. I got my beer and walked in to chat to the girls, who were very pretty indeed.
"After a while one of the fellows came in and said: 'Michael, we're a bit worried about you. What're you doing in here?'
"I said I was talking to the girls. He said: 'What are you? Some sort of poofter?'"
Next day the young Englishman donned long socks, long shorts and cotton shirt to go to the beach. As he crunched down the sand, protected from the sun by a wide hat, he heard the comments: "Who's a goose? Who's a goose?"
He laughs. Grey haired now, with a grey moustache he tugs when he tells a joke, he worries: that the carefree, wonderful Australia that he came to 35 years ago isn't the same. "It's become obstructive."
But it wasn't that way when Michael Turner, hotel front-desk manager and door-to-door salesman launched himself into 1950s Melbourne...
"I flew into Melbourne International Airport which was a large tin shed. I had come from lower-middle class Essex where my father bred tropical fish for a living, to a country I had heard was classless and stuck its finger up at things that got in the way.
"I worked at a hotel until I realised there was big money to be made out there selling door-to-door. I sold refrigerators, floor-coverings, curtains and bedspreads. The ladies, I think, noted my English accent and thought that meant good education and honesty so they let me in."
He sold so much to one appreciative suburban housewife that her husband offered him a job in insurance. Why not, asked Michael, when he was told he could make a hefty 500 pounds a week? He became so good at it he remained in insurance for 15 years, elevated to the office of Victorian marketing manager for the London-based Legal & General Insurance Company.
But 15 years was past the Turner credo of a shift every three years. ("Start it up, take a year ironing out the problems, a year getting bored with it and then do something else.")
By now he had met the sylph-like Jaki, and was ready for a career change. "Friends in insurance were having heart attacks at 40. Jaki and I found we could use a hammer and nails, so we started renovating little workers' cottages."
Then - down went the hammers and this time the tropics beckoned. Michael's job as an assistant ship's purser and hotel training after he left the merchant navy, had given him enough skill to manage resorts. On Queensland’s Dunk Island he and Jaki entertained the Duke and Duchess of Bedford, Lord McAlpine and Australia's then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, whom they dined with every night.
"We then bought 70 acres on the Daintree River in the rainforest and operated a crocodile safari. No running water, no electricity and a public phone I had to run 60 yards to answer." But it was a roaring success. After that they opened a butterfly farm, learning from a text-book on breeding and with the help of a top lepidopterist, who shook his head and told them breeding butterflies was fraught with difficulties and they'd 'gotta be joking!'
The Turners put up their own aviary, built their own home, put boardwalks over the mangroves and began greeting tourists from all over the world. They took their daily swim in a sun-dappled creek until a local woman was taken by a monster crocodile.
When they heard developer Christopher Skase was building the Mirage resort at Port Douglas, the Turners moved there and set up Rainforest Habitat, the largest butterfly farm in Australia, adding 70 species of birds to flutter about with the exotically-hued butterflies inside the huge net enclosure. Soon there were fruit-bats and wallabies, too, but they had to be nursed like babies, so Jaki would smuggle them and baby bottles into 5-star hotels when they took a few days off.
In a week or two they leave for Lae, in Papua-New Guinea, to create a butterfly house for the PNG Government.
And after that? "We are thinking," said one of the few men who can look right in a white pith-helmet, "of a large eco-display at the foot of a cable-car that is being built.
"But you know, the sense of adventure that attracted me to Australia from 12,000 miles away has been dampened. We may even leave and go somewhere else.
"The Australia I knew when I came here no longer exists.
"It is now run by petty bureaucrats whose whole thinking seems to be to place obstacles in front of anyone with enterprise. Their aim is to make it too difficult to succeed.
"I recently flew to Guam to discuss a big wildlife project with three people from the equivalent of the National Parks and Wildlife Department here. Their attitude to me was immediately enthusiastic: 'Michael', they said, 'how can we help you?'
"In Australia today the attitude of public servants is: 'There must be some rule you could be breaking, so we'd be better off stopping you before you begin.'
"Isn't that a terrible shame?"
Thanks for this:
Really interesting, & fascinating: although the final comments are somewhat worrying, as I was rather hoping the Aussie Go-Get-'um 2-Fingers in the Air spirit was still alive & kicking, but sounds like you have the same problems that we are trying to escape from in UK. Quite depressing really. Pity bureaucrats don't have the kind of life span that some butterflies have, although they could never be so attractive, or useful: more like files at a picnic...
We need to start a Curb a Bureaucrat party, as they are just making our lives miserable.
Too Many Bureaucrats Crush Entrepreneurial Spirit
