WHACK! DON’T GO THE BALLS
Gerard Timpson, a lanky, moustachioed ex-furniture-salesman, ex-restaurateur, Name at Lloyds and now golf driving range proprietor, glances across at his 18 acres of manicured lawn.
And there is no sound of golf club striking ball. Not from the upper level of his $1 million concept; not from the bays below; nor from his adjacent par-3 golf course.
Lady Luck, it seems, is momentarily frowning on him.
Clad in bright blue shorts and a shirt that is the Australian flag, "G" as he likes to be called, believes that possibly he is a little ahead of his time. The golfing hordes are deserting his 42 driving bays in droves. 'At night it picks up a bit, but I'd say it will all happen in maybe 30 years' time.'
Rather a long wait for the 47-year-old migrant entrepreneur who has invested a princely sum into the project.
"G" retired at 38 and headed for Queensland where he felt there would be a crying need for golf driving ranges.
He and his Harvard-educated brother, working on the principle of supply and demand - and with an enthusiastic trust in The Lady - noticed that a particular shop in London suburbia always had people crowding outside, waiting for the doors to open. 'We discovered the shop sold three-piece suites. "Ah," we said. "This is the way to go."
So they took themselves off to Surrey Docks and opened a furniture store in a disused canteen on a bomb site. 'Great idea, except when we threw open the doors, nobody came.'
Leaflets were the answer. They printed thousands and distributed them door to door when they closed the shop at 8pm. Two customers per thousand turned up. So they printed 3,000 more.
'Then we had a bit of luck. The abolition of resale price maintenance was extended to the furniture business and we were able to discount madly.'
Business, egged on by the benign smile of the Lady, was so good they opened a string of shops and called them Furnitureland. Then "G" saw problems with the need to advertise competitively on television and decided it was time to sell his share.
Maybe the Lady wasn't keen on him any more, for his venture into fast food, in Reading, was not an unmitigated success.
Market research told "G" that there were but three food outlets in busy Reading where one could manage lunch in less than three-quarters of an hour. So he launched into a franchised restaurant, tying his money up into a renovated former shoe shop and placing his future success in the hands of a father-and-son franchiser; the father drove a black Rolls Royce and the son an Aston Martin. An encouraging sign.
'I knew nothing about catering. I believed all I had to do was pop in during the morning and say "Hi!" to the staff and pop out again.'
There were, unfortunately, delays in transforming the shoe shop and by the time the restaurant was ready to welcome its first customer, there were now 17 food outlets in Reading. 'I nevertheless paid over the franchise money in the afternoon and next morning at nine o'clock, received a phone call from the franchiser. "Terribly sorry. I've got bad news. I'm afraid we've gone bust."'
Now the gentleman restaurateur who had no idea how to cook, faced "five bags of potatoes that had to be cut up and turned into greasy chips." This time Her Ladyship was quite obviously "not on one's side."
In 1987 "G" decided furniture shops and restaurants no longer held a lot of appeal so he joined a syndicate to become a Name at Lloyds. 'For 300 years before I invested, a Name on 10 syndicates could possibly have had three losses. A larger Name, maybe two losses. Two years after I joined, we hit the worst year ever. 1990 was even worse than that; 91 terrible. We haven't got the results for '92 yet.'
So "G" made up his mind to become a great golfer. He took lessons and for hours a day, seven days a week, lashed at practice balls on an English golf driving range. 'People came with their sandwiches at lunch-time to hit balls, and in droves at weekends.'
His golf "got rather worse" and the dream of the international circuit faded. But he knew that golf driving ranges were a winner. Particularly after visiting one in Spain to be offered a slot two years ahead.
Cairns, in Far North Queensland, a magnet to hundreds of thousands of Japanese tourists, and with no less than seven new golf courses on the drawing-board, was his target. 'I knew the stories about the old American railroad monopolies and believed that if I had the only driving range, players coming off a total of nine courses, almost within view of the land I bought, would have to come to my range to iron out their problems.'
The first Japanese golf course costing $35 million was opened and today does not have a resident pro. The others have been put "on hold" or their land being turned into housing estates. 'The 50% of Japanese who play golf head for Hawaii; those who don't, all fly into Cairns or the Gold Coast.'
Ah..but if all else fails, the 18 lush acres of the former sugar cane farm would surely be a valuable housing development?
Well...Lady Luck had something to say about that, "G" is afraid. It recently emerged as a line of fine print on council rates notices, that the area was flood-prone. Maybe only every 30 years or 100 years, but nevertheless an unsafe bet for housing.
This morning "G" is mildly cheered by two visiting Canadian and US golfing tourists who tell him his 42 Prize Golf bays would be packed night and day if he could move it to where they come from.
He just grins, limping a little as he says farewell. 'Golf is out of the question for me,' he smiles ruefully. 'When we were almost finished building I toppled off the second tier and smashed both my heels.'
Not long afterwards he put in an adjacent par-3 course because Japanese tourism operators told him there would be a huge demand for one. 'On the day a group made their official inspection three yobs started hitting balls all over the place and one of them smashed a spotlight. The glass fell all over the visitors' heads. They never actually came back.'
How much more could a man take? "G" just tugs at his bleached moustache and laughs. 'As human beings we are only capable of suffering to a degree before unconsciousness sets in. We are also only capable of a certain amount of sadness or pleasure no matter how rich or poor we are.
'We need to know our capabilities. Once you've decided your lack of education or achievement is such that you are unemployable, you have to realise you have to employ others.'
And there is the sunshine, the beauty of the great auditorium of blue mountains he gazes on every day; the sea rolling in beneath his patio at home. And the future - hopefully hand-in-hand with Lady Luck.
I've really enjoyed reading your short story about Gerard Timpson and would love his contact. I work as a feature writer for The Cairns Post newspaper and I think Gerard has a great story to tell. I'm hoping he's still in Cairns?
