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Sail-World.com : Profile - True Believer
OCEAN, Australia's luxury marine journal recently profiled one of the icons of Australian sailing. This article, written by Rob Mundle is republished courtesy of OCEAN Media.
'We raise a glass, and a mug, to the baron of beverages, Bob Oatley.
Bob Oatley doesn’t need an introduction. His achievements in business and in his chosen sport say it all. Still, it’s worth being reminded that in sailing he’s best known for pioneering canting keels in Grand Prix level international ocean racing, leading Australia to victory in the Admiral’s Cup, owning the all-conquering Rolex Sydney-Hobart race record holder Wild Oats XI, and owning that piece of sailing paradise in the Whitsundays, Hamilton Island.
He’s never been one to seek the limelight. It’s only in the last decade where his success in the upper echelon of the sport and in business has turned the spotlight his way that this 79-year-old has come to public prominence.
His passion for sailing goes back to when he was a youngster playing around a boatshed at Balmoral, on Sydney’s Middle Harbour. He had bought a flimsy, canvas-covered canoe from a schoolmate for two-and-six then fitted it with a garden stake for a mast. The sail was a bed sheet cut up to suit, and he hung a makeshift rudder over the back to steer the thing.
Consider that and where he stands today as the owner of the world’s most technologically advanced ocean racers and it’s obvious that Bob Oatley’s life story is quite remarkable.
With sailing firmly in his blood he graduated from his makeshift canoe into 12ft skiffs at nearby Middle Harbour 16ft Skiff Club before going on to be a founder of what is now Balmoral Sailing Club. Then, some years later, it was a 30ft yachting World Diamond three-man keelboat that gave him his entrée into ‘big boats’ at Middle Harbour Yacht Club.
He left school at the age of 15, just before the end of World War II, and his first job saw him working as an office boy at Colyer Watson, a prominent trading company located in the heart of Sydney. His initial tasks had him filling ink wells in the office and delivering letters across the city 'because it cost less to hand deliver them than to buy a stamp.'
The head of the company, Mr Colyer, or ‘RA’ as he was known, took a shine to the young Oatley and before long the lad was locked into what he calls a ‘hands-on apprenticeship’. 'I was doing everything from unloading ships through to organising office paperwork, like customs clearances and bills of lading.'
Much of Colyer Watson’s business in the early 1950s was based in New Guinea. The company had stores in a number of centres that sold merchandise shipped up from Australia. Bob soon found himself traveling to New Guinea on regular intervals with ‘RA’, and it was from there that his remarkably successful business career started to take shape. He was destined to become a pioneer of the hugely successful coffee industry in New Guinea.
'There were times when some of the plantations couldn’t pay us for purchases from the store, so we bought produce from them in lieu of payment: a kind of barter system,' Bob explained. 'Coffee, which was in its very juvenile stages of development as a crop in the highlands, became one of the products that we bought from the growers, along with cocoa. They were only growing about 100 tonnes of coffee per year and couldn’t sell it on the market, so if we were to convert it to cash we had no option but to develop that market ourselves, and that’s exactly what we did.
It was 1958, I was 30, and I suddenly found myself the head, and sole employee, of Colyer Watson’s New Guinea coffee trading division – I was into commodity trading. In the years ahead we created the international market for the coffee, a business move that would prove with time to be extremely lucrative for New Guinea, Colyer Watson, and me. We were selling green coffee and cocoa to the roasters and the chocolate manufacturers of the world on the open market and then organising the supply.'
Some years later, when ‘RA’ decided to retire from the company, Bob seized on his offer for him to buy out the coffee side of the Colyer Watson business. It would become a booming operation, but with independence fast approaching for Papua New Guinea in the early ‘70s there was pressure coming from within the government to ‘buy back the farm’.
They wanted to nationalise companies, particularly those closely involved with the local people, so coffee businesses were an obvious target. By then coffee was their bread and butter product – it was their world.
At the time the Oatley company, Angco, was contributing 65 per cent of the gross national product to New Guinea’s economy.
If there has been a hallmark in Bob’s amazing life it has been the high level of consideration he has held for those around him, and the exceptional value he places on friendship. This was never more evident than when he sold out to the government in New Guinea. He couldn’t cope with the thought of disbanding the great team that had helped him grow Angco, so he turned his attention towards developing another operation where they could continue to be employed.
He always knew there was a distinct similarity between the agricultural skills needed to cultivate coffee and to grow grapes for winemaking, so he decided to head that way: a decision which he says was also influenced by his penchant for good quality wine.
He found a cattle property in the Hunter Valley in NSW that had all the credentials needed for the establishment of a vineyard, so he bought it. The name of the property was Rosemount, and if you link that to the label of what has been one of Australia’s most successful, and most highly awarded wine brands for the past three decades both nationally and internationally, then there’s no need to say more about the man and the wine industry. Rosemount was a massively successful program.
Even at 79 there’s still no stopping the man. Today, with the support of his two sons, Sandy and Ian, and daughter Ros, the Oatley family business continues to grow. They sold Rosemount Wines then discovered they couldn’t get the industry out of the system, so now they are back with an impressive new label, Wild Oats.
The Wild Oats range aims at the mid-market buyers while the highest quality is the Robert Oatley label. Much to Bob’s delight, it is already showing signs of high acceptance across the market place.
The other exciting challenge comes with their purchase four years ago of Hamilton Island, home of Australia’s most awarded and best known regatta, Audi Hamilton Island Race Week. Their vision is to develop Hamilton Island into one of the world’s best fully-integrated island resorts and residential communities.
Currently they are implementing an extensive upgrade in accommodation and the development of new facilities. A spectacular 18-hole golf course on the adjacent Dent Island (which they also own) is being established and construction of the stunning Great Barrier Reef Yacht Club is well underway. The first significant development under the new plan, a luxurious waterfront resort on the north-western corner of the island, was unveiled during Audi Hamilton Island Race Week in August.
Bob Oatley’s deep feeling for Hamilton Island goes back a long way: 'I suppose my love for the island started around 25 years ago when I sailed past and they were preparing the airstrip and building the harbour. I didn’t even go ashore but I said ‘what a great project that is’, never thinking that one day I’d own it. It’s incredible and I’m so proud.'
'If there has been a hallmark in Bob’s amazing life it has been the high level of consideration he has held for those around him, and the exceptional value he places on friendship'
By Rob Mundle
by OCEAN Media
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6:33 PM Tue 25 Sep 2007 GMT
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