Born in Holland the eldest of seven children, I had to leave school and go to work at 14 due to my father's early death. Did a Radio Technician course part time and worked as such for a while. The whole family moved to Australia in 1952, and I worked as a radio technician in a number of jobs.

In 1954 went to AWA where I was trained as an Aircraft Radio Maintenance Engineer at Mascot, then worked there on aircraft for TAA, Ansett and finally Qantas. AWA had the contract to service the radio and navigation equipment for Australian aircraft, as well as on certain outstations. In 1956 I was sent to Singapore seconded to Qantas, servicing their aircraft as well as BOAC, KLM, Air India etc.

Came back to Sydney in early 1960. In that time I had realised that my education had been somewhat limited, so I did the Leaving Certificate part-time. Got some reasonable results, and decided to go to Uni for Electrical Engineering, where I met all you beaut blokes. I applied to AWA for a Cadetship but was judged too old at 26 to qualify, so I resigned from them.

After graduating,  I applied to Qantas for a job, as I had lots of experience on their aircraft, and got taken on. The first couple of years were great, lots of various engineering items, designing and re-designing circuitry to do what was needed for operations in and around aircraft. Having had much earlier experience, I was pretty good at it, and got promoted regularly. Unfortunately, each promotion brought some more paperwork, and after about 15 years, I was a Senior Electronics Engineer, was swamped in paperwork and was bored mindless. I thought perhaps if I knew more about running a business it might improve, so went back to UNSW to do an MBA, then newly being instituted. However, they gave preference to "business people" and lowly engineers couldn't get in. So I did the first year of the Commerce degree, as it covered much of the same ground. The following year I tried again, and still couldn't get in, so I did the 2nd year Commerce. The next year, the same story, so I gave up on the MBA and finished the Commerce degree majoring in Economics. It was interesting but no help with the boring paperwork. I couldn't resign because at that time Qantas was a good place to work for, I got long service leave, cheap travel etc all of which I would lose if I got out.  

Then I got lucky: Qantas got an American efficiency expert to go through the place, who recommended that 2000 people be "lost". No matter who, no matter where, just 2000 people. So in order to expedite the process, Qantas offered a redundancy package equivalent to a retirement allowance. I did my sums and left, in early 1982. Another lucky break: some years earlier, Sydney Tech offered electricians courses to graduate engineers - we were presumed to know the theory, and they taught  the practical work and the regulations, so I did that just so I could rewire my own house. So when I left, I put my "nickel-plate handshake" into some run-down houses and with my handyman brother, did them up and rented them out, then bought a few more. In the meantime, some friends and relatives asked me to do some electrical work for them, this multiplied and eventually it became a full-time job. I really liked it: always had liked working with my hands, and with my background, could apply some innovative wiring solutions. I did this some 25 years and at age 67, thought about retiring.

In 1969 I had hooked up with my current partner Terry, who had been made redundant around age 50 and couldn't get back to work, so he started breeding cats. When I decided to give it up, we wanted to get out of the noisy, dirty,  polluted city, sold off most of the rented properties and bought a place in the Blue Mountains, in Wentworth Falls. We set up the place for cats, and I semi-retired, doing some odd jobs for friends and neighbours so I could keep my hand in, and looking after some 20-odd cats. So we are very pleased with the way it all went. You can look us up on our website www.hasturcattery.info