“Holtieshouses”

BP Cavendish Road

Fork Street Coorparoo

As I set out on a new adventure, with the lady I loved but without the children I loved, there were obviously mixed emotions.

Julie and I arrived in Brisbane with only a vauge idea that we should use our skills somehow to make a living.

I had spent the major part of my life in the motor trade and Julie had office skills also associated with the motor trade.

I also had a good relationship with BP, so we applied for, and got, a service station to lease in suburban Brisbane, this venture and the renovation of the house we bought filled in the next three years.

We also had my kids for visits during school holidays, so in fact the time flew by and we were quite successful and happy in our new life.

Our trading hours were 7am to 6 pm Mon to Frid and 7 am to 12-30 pm on Sat, so this left us with some time available for pleasure and renovations.

We inherited two employee’s when we leased BP Cavendish Road, these two became friends rather than just employee’s.

There was a spate of petrol strikes during this time, twice we took advantage of the fact that we had no fuel to sell, left Noel and George in charge and drove 1000 miles (each way) to Victoria to visit Julie’s family and my kids for a few days.

John Street Rosewood

Another one I haven't been able to find a photo of!!

After the success we had at Bp Cav. Rd. we began to look around for a freehold service station from which we could make a living and a capital gain when we sold out.

The chosen location was at Rosewood, about 40 miles west of Brisbane, it consisted of the service station, a couple of large sheds, and a house all on a large block of land in the main street of town.

The site had been developed and operated for 12 years by a man in his late 50s, he had long since soured of dealing with the general public and was now regarded as a bit of a nut case.

We estimated that if we offered good service and really looked after our customers we would be able to build the site to acceptable levels in about 12 months.

In fact within 3 weeks of taking over we had about 80% of the town business, so in next to no time we had exceeded our target set for 12 months.

While we were here my number two son Marcus came to live with us as his mother was having some discipline problems with him.

Marcus spent four years with us and returned to Perth a changed lad and a delight to both his parents, meanwhile our next move was approaching fast as we had found a buyer for the business.