looking out from down under

The Silicon Beach Wollongong Mascot - he'll be in the middle of the table at our meetups

Just a quick note to let you know that we’re kicking off a regular Silicon Beach Drinks here in Wollongong. After kick-starting the tech entrepreneur scene three years ago, and playing a massive part in bringing together a really strong community, we thought we’d have our own regular drinks here in Wollongong.

Key details:

• Thursday nights at Hotel Illawarra, the corner of Keira and Market Streets Wollongong.
• Kicks off at 5:30pm, we’ll probably be there until 8pm, and sometimes roll on for dinner, so if you’re one of our poor long suffering commuters who only gets back into town on a 6:30 or 7pm train, don’t be afraid to swing by!
• If you’re new and don’t know what our regulars (Nathan, Tristan, Louis, etc) look like, just have a look for our cute mascot, who’ll be sitting in the middle of the table where we are – don’t be shy to come and introduce yourself!

While our Melbourne friends have beaten us to the punch, the fact Wollongong is the third city in the country to kick them off really says something about the amount of startup and tech activity going on around here (no small thanks to the Uni of Wollongong  graduating 1 in 7 IT students in the country).

Feel free to come on by and say hello – whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur, working in or on a startup, or a wantrepreneur who’s looking to find a great cofounder/idea/opportunity, you’re more than welcome.

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Aside from my work as an entrepreneur with Internetrix and Hiive Systems, I’m also pretty active in my community as a board member of Regional Development Australia (Illawarra).

The Board of our RDA is made up of some pretty impressive people from lots of walks of life, leaders and achievers with very diverse and interesting perspectives. For a range of reasons, I’ve generally focused my efforts around projects related to technology, entrepreneurship and to a lesser extent youth issues (I’m the youngest face around the table, but at 31 I’m not what you would call representative of youth anymore unfortunately).

Anyway, I’ve been invited to speak at a few things around the traps recently as a bit of a champion of the sector, and often people want to know a bit about the shape of the sector. While the team at IRIS have great statistics, the perspective they’re looking for from me often relates to how they can help, work with or engage with the sector – they’re more interested in colour, experiences and challenges than numbers. Over the course of doing a few of these lately, I’ve come up with the following way to explain the 5 Pillars of Tech from my perspective, at least as they apply to a regional setting like here in the Illawarra.

1. The Smiths
2. The Firemen
3. The Suits
4. The Scientists
5. The Startups

The Smiths

The Smiths, as in “Blacksmith”, are generally speaking services companies. They are labour intensive, are based in the region, are privately held and your classic example of an SME. They derive the majority of their revenue from the area, and they range from one-man-bands through to more established local players like AVC, Unitech and Accent. They sell to businesses (because B2C is largely uneconomic in a professional services context today).

Because the barriers to entry of setting up an IT business are laughably low – you just need to know more about technology than whoever your intended client is – this sector often has difficulty playing nice together. It isn’t at all uncommon for a company to start out doing anything someone will pay for – websites, cabling, networks, custom application development, training, you get the drift – which creates problems because in a small market that has a reputation for being frugal, companies in this category are almost always fighting for scraps. The big money – what there is of it – usually goes to the Suits, or is kept in house to feed the Firemen (who often aren’t that capable at obtuse tasks, but the desire for job security and information asymmetry with management means this often doesn’t matter, or isn’t known until too late, if at all).

So, what can we do to help the Smiths develop their businesses and their contribution to the economy are? There’s lots of things, but the two that stand out are:

1. Connecting with potential clients – particularly the ones with budgets and an investment mentality that value advice – to get to know them a little better and to give them a look in on the projects they’re doing.
2. Fighting the hate – the fact so many of these businesses are fighting for crumbs and depend on new projects and clients to feed their families next month makes them very competitive. This is natural in markets, but the problem with IT (as opposed to other professions, like legal, financial, medical) is that there aren’t really anything that makes it clear you’re complimentary, not competitive. Also, since people are desperate and hungry when they’re getting started, the first time you find out about a new player is often when they’ve nabbed one of your clients (and then proceed often to screw up the project), or even worse, a loyal client shares the stories the new player has been telling to try and steal the business. This has happened to me a lot over the years, and with a first impression like that, it is often hard not to write someone off.

The Smiths play a really important part in the ecosystem, particularly in the Illawarra, in that they provide a great way for people to get started. Often businesses you’d class as a Startup are actually running off the profits or at very least revenue earned by the founders being part time Smiths, part time Startups.

The Firemen

The firemen are technology professionals who work on a full time basis inside companies large enough to have IT departments. As with all larger organisations, there’s a fair degree of difference between the awesome world class experts on one side, and the plodders who’re just there for a paycheck on the other.

One of the unfortunate things for the Firemen is that in almost all cases, they’re seen as a cost centre in the company, someone who works hard to keep the lights on and the business running, but they don’t get showered in praise for corporate performance, they’re rarely seen as strategically critical to the business and if things break or stop, everyone looks at them like they’ve screwed up. In this sense, they’re more like the firemen on a train than the ones on a big red truck (but they’re often racing around the organisation putting out fires – Lulzsec anyone?)

How can we help the firemen contribute to the value our sector provides to the economic base? It is a bit tricky, since they’re not driving the trains they work on, but there are probably two things that can make a difference:

1. Skills/knowledge development – if you’re part of a small team – or all by yourself – in a larger business who doesn’t really care about IT until it all goes wrong, then you tend to be pretty professionally isolated. Technology moves really fast, and even if your business doesn’t, staying sharp and current can only be good for your organisation, as well as your career prospects. Regular lunch style events, especially where you get exposed on a professional and social level with the other parts of the industry can help reduce the isolation and will hopefully spawn new ideas that add value to the company.
2. Helping the best ones become startups – there are some people who’s skills and talents are that could, that potentially world class, that keeping them shovelling coal in the cab of the steam engine isn’t the best result for the industry and the region. Things like Startup Weekends (where the top quality folks can have a taste of what startups are all about without having to burn their boats), and encouraging participation while they’re Wantrepreneurs at things like Silicon Beach drinks will be critical.

While the plight of the Fireman isn’t very glamorous, firemen, scientists and to an extent suits have all been critical to the development of world class, high performing technology sectors. Boulder Colorado has lots of firemen working in their aerospace, health and education sectors, many of whom spin out and join things like TechStars to build their own startups.

The Suits

The Suits have a lot in common with the Firemen, but have the distinction that they are working in technology focused businesses who’s clients are mostly (all) based outside the region. This sector contributes a lot of grow the economic base of the region – because they’re bringing in income by exporting expertise of their local staff – and most of the time, these sorts of businesses are imported, not built. Local examples include CSC (who now earn >50% of their income from clients other than the BlueScope and OneSteel operations here) and the new Mphasis operation that the University of Wollongong has worked so hard to bring to the Innovation Campus.

When asking how we can help the Suits to grow the economic base of the region, the answer is simple (since we have so few of them): we need to attract more of them. In this sense, there’s probably three different things that can be done:

1. Hunting them – this is where the University of Wollongong, the Council and Industry and Investment, and the efforts that they make on an ongoing basis at great expense (is Craig Peden in the country? Probably not – he’s out hunting in the subcontinent).
2. Welcoming them – if one hunters (who we should now think of as suitors, since they will never close a deal without bringing them here to “meet the family”) brings home a new date, we should make sure the city and its industry is in a position to roll out the red carpet. Focus on the positives. Tell the good stories. Don’t take them to Bellambi. All the basics. And whatever we do, we need to make sure we never whinge, bitch and moan about our own lots in life when we’re trying to help one of our brothers impress a girl with how cool the new (potential) family is.
3. Evangelising the city – in our own work and our own technology circles, we should do what we can to evangelise the city. One of our big advantages is our beautiful natural environment. Take photos and try and make people jealous. Beat the drum for the city when appropriate (my Silicon Beach friends are groaning right now at mentioning this. Again). We live in a beautiful city. You can walk to work, and if you commute, it will almost certainly take you less than 30 minutes. Our staff turnover in this city is 10 times less than Sydney. Our University turns out one in 7 technology graduates in the country. We’ve got a lot of be proud of and legitimately evangelize. Get out there and spread the word.

The biggest problem with the suits, unfortunately, is that we’re not the only ones hunting them. The competition is fierce, and as a country we’re suffering a nasty bout of Dutch disease. While the amazing efforts by our hunters need to be applauded, to assume that we’ll be able to have Suits alone transition our city from a coal and steel town to a high tech powerhouse would be very very dangerous and naive.

The Scientists

The Scientists are a particularly interesting group. We’ve got some incredible researchers at the University of Wollongong, and if you look at places like Waterloo in Canada, a lot of their strength and growth has come through commercialising, if not pure research, then by smart research minded folks going out and becoming The Startups. In our region, I can only really only think of one example – iTree Software – who you’d consider as being in this category so far.

The path to commercialisation for a university is a very very very tough one. The reasons that someone chooses a career in research – and the way they’re rewarded and recognised, by sharing rather than protecting knowledge – create some very strong tensions and limit the ability for a lot of scientific endeavour to be able to make a difference to the economic base of a region in the short or medium term. This isn’t to say we shouldn’t try – we definitely should, and it is fundamental research that led to the initial successes of Silicon Valley, the birth of Cochlear here in Australia, etc – but this is more of a long term play where better research, and perhaps even a spin-out company that commercialises it and employs lots of people can happen, but like the Suits, it is a bit out of our control the speed that this happens with.

The Startups

The last pillar of the tech industry as I see it is the Startup. While the Startup could look to an outsider to be the same as one of the Smiths – and often they moonlight as a Smith to pay the bills – a Startup is a very different creature.

Unlike the “services” focused nature of a Smith, a Startup is product focused. They’re often developing software (although hardware is still possibly, it is at least an order of magnitude harder to do, and requires a lot more capital than you can usually find in Australia.

The Startup is globally oriented – they might not be selling internationally, and their first 4 clients might be companies who share the same building as them, but generally speaking, your startup is trying to solve a niche problem in a new way.

By being product focused, often software-based with a zero marginal cost of production, a Startup is also highly scalable. With more than a billion people online now, and the growth in smartphones and their associate app marketplaces, distribution has never been easier or less tied to your geographic location. In this sense, being a city of a quarter of a million, in country with only 22 million (which makes us a flea on the back of a Chihuahua riding on an Frigate) doesn’t have to be a critical disadvantage.

The region actually has a reasonable track record of producing Startups. Infocomp, a true startup that developed and licenced software to some of the biggest names in global finance is just one example. They managed to live through the incredibly long sales cycles and risk aversion of their target market, selling a very very important software platform to conservative companies, all from Wollongong. Another example is the team from Oasis Asset Management, who built an incredible tech focused business, also for the financial services sector, all from here in Wollongong. While they’ve had to move to the US to raise funds, Stuart and Anthony, UOW alumni started Grabble and are kicking goals and showing that a couple of local lads can stand tall amongst the best in the world in Silicon Valley. I’m working on my own startup, and things are coming along well with our product, AffinityLive.

When it comes to the role that Startups can play in contributing to the economy of the region, the best thing about them is that they’re easy to start, they harness the things we have – smart people, lowish costs of living – and their development and cultivation is within our control.

They’re also great job creators – 20 companies with 10 staff creates the same opportunities of one Suit that the hunters bring in – and even if the companies fail, the experiences, lessons and skills developed by getting out there and doing it are incredibly valuable, whether the founders choose to do another startup, or join the ranks of the Firemen, Suits, Scientists or even switch back to be a Smith while they come up with their next idea.

What sorts of Startups should we be encouraging here in the region? My criteria/list for the ideal startup to be cultivating is as follows:

• Globally oriented – we’re in a small market. We can use our local region, or our proximity to Sydney to help in the early stages of validating an idea and set of business hypotheses, but unless your Startup has a globally oriented mindset – you want to be the best in the world, and see the world as flat – you’re just not doing it right.
• Highly scalable – as they say in The Social Network, “A million dollars isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? A billion dollars“. If we’re trying to really move the needle, we should be aiming high. The Startups we cultivate should be highly scalable.
• Capital efficient – one thing that the region – and in fact the entire country – suffers compared to other places to build a startup is our access to capital. Raising seed or early stage money in a nation where our wealthy investor types know a lot about rocks, retailing and residential development means high-risk, early stage technology struggles to attract much investor interest. So, whatever Startups we cultivate, we need to accept that they will need to live in a capital constrained world.

So, what do we need to do to help this sector to grow and contribute to the economic base of the region? There’s a few things:

1. Evangelising the opportunity to potential entrepreneurs – what did you want to be when you grew up? I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an entrepreneur. If I had a dollar for every time some guy in his mid 40′s looked at me, sighed, and said “I wish I’d started my own company when I was in my early 20′s, when I didn’t have financial responsibilities of kids, when I had more energy and youthful ignorance”, I’d be rich by now. Our education system, because of its roots in an industrial-age economy, is designed around creating employees. This is fine – because entrepreneurs are a small subset of the people who need to come together to make something happen – but the problem is that is almost never talked about or evanglised to our best and brightest. This needs to change. We need to get this story out in front of our best and brightest, show them how others just like them have done it, and then we’ll increase the number of people starting out on this journey.
2. Supporting the early phases of startups – much like an infant child, and new Startup is a very very fragile. They are also very fast learning. They need advice, nurturing, and in some cases protection. If the barriers to starting include entering into a 5 year commercial lease, signing complex licencing agreements and spending thousands on professional advice and company registrations, you’re going to turn a lot of people away. A new breed of incubator, that is focused on incubating people and ideas, not selling square metres of office space is revolutionising the seed stage of startups around the world. Watch this space for more in the near future.
3. Creating a startup community/culture – the other thing that we need to do is connect our Startups together. Being an entrepreneur is lonely. You face all sorts of challenges, and the usual places you go for advice – friends, family – are probably not going to be much help in the same way as if you had a problem with a bad boss or relationship hassles, the sorts of things most people have experience with. Creating a community of entrepreneurs, bringing them together to share their challenges and successes is critical to Startup success.

The Startup sector, more than any other, promises to be the most likely and most achievable source of the kinds of change our industry needs to help drive and lead in the region. The challenges are many, but the costs and barriers of getting started are relatively small. As they say, we need to JFDI.

Conclusion

The technology sector, even in a relatively small and tightly knit place like the Illawarra, is a very diverse creature with lots of needs amongst its actors. With our small undeveloped land area, strong university and international linkages (Mascot is close, and we have a very multicultural background which is great for being globally oriented), the technology sector – along with tourism and financial services – is where we need to be leaning to ensure our city has a strong future.

What do you think? What do you need? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments or email me directly – [email protected].

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A quick one that hopefully my geeky friends, followers and random Google searchers will appreciate – a way to restart all services being managed by the popular Daemontool’s supervise package on Linux.

We use supervise extensively for running our various custom daemons that power AffinityLive, and because we’re doing very rapid development releases we’ve recently been seeing some problems with module code at the heart of our app being updated, yet our various daemons not being kicked, and thus using out of date code. There’s the great svc command that you can use to kill a particular process, but doing them all as bulk doesn’t work (unless you’re in as the fully fledged root user, but that isn’t a smart thing to do on live production systems).

To solve this, I wrote a one-line bash script. While not tricky or complicated, the tight permission controls over the supervise directories made it a little more fun than the hello world examples out there.

So, if you want to restart every single process being supervised on a particular server, here’s how:

for i in `sudo ls /var/lib/service/`; do sudo svc -k “/var/lib/service/$i”; done

Of course, if you don’t want to be so brutal as to kill your supervised process, and instead want to send it a HUP or an ALARM, or, if you want to stop all supervised processes for some reason, you can sub out the -k for the other arguments detailed on the svc man page.

Hope that is useful to someone else out there sometime!

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Amazingly, it has been almost 6 months since I last wrote a blog post. There’s probably been a million things go through my mind that I’ve thought about blogging about, of which 0.1% would have been worth sharing, but it is still a bit of a disgrace that there’s been such a hiatus. Promise to make more of an effort in the weeks and months ahead – there’s a lot going on, which perversely makes blogging a much more legitimate use of limited time; it allows for processing thoughts and sharing in a more meaningful or deep way that a Facebook status update allows.

Since the last post in November, a few interesting things have happened:

• My team took AffinityLive from a private beta to the public one; we’ve gone from a few dozen deployments (or end users) to many hundreds in the space of a few short weeks. Of course, our challenge now is to work out how to take the curious and turn them into clients who pay us money, but hey, at least we’re seeing people really responding to our message, promise and product If you’re interested in finding out a little more, check out www.affinitylive.com and especially check out the product tour at www.affinitylive.com/tour/ to see what this thing is all about.
• I’m starting the capital raising process for AffinityLive. While we’ve got sufficient funds to make payroll without any income (and we have income) for a couple of quarters, I’m actually looking to get plugged in, accountable and play on a global stage, and the more I think about it, the more I think that a key part of doing this is dealing in a hand. Since the days of Omnidrive I’ve been watching the scene and doing my thing, and I can’t help but think that a potential early-stage valuation bubble, combined with our desire to scale up to a global audience (which requires more headcount and payroll burn than we have now) will benefit from raising some money. That and I’m in a position to be flexible with where I live and what I do in a way that wasn’t really possible 6 months ago, because…
• As a first-time Angel investor and mentor, I was stoked to see the development and success of the StartMate companies. Particularly big shout-out to Niki for putting it all together, and the Grabble boys from Wollongong who are trying to do something very big, very audacious and which might just change the (retail) world.
• On a personal note, there’s been some changes on the home front, and for the first time in about 4 years I’m single again; painful, sad, but for the better I guess. While it wasn’t planned this way, still having Charlie Horse-Dog at home is great, and I’ve met some great new friends from all over the world via Couchsurfing and AirBNB here at Bungalow13.
• I’ve managed to lose about 16KG. Still have a ways to go, but feeling much better for making the effort to not die young. Jessica Irvine nails it here – having CardioTrainer and an Android device has made all the difference. Am really only half way to where I want to be, but things are tracking well and I’m looking forward to not only going for a ride tomorrow, but also doing my first triathlon; perhaps in the North American summer instead of waiting for October to roll around here down-under.

Anyway, hope to be back here a bit more regularly in the future

Geoff

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With the first StartMate applications closing in a few weeks, a few of the organisers and mentors are holding an information session this Friday evening in Sydney.

If you’re thinking about applying to Australia’s first Y-Combinator type startup program, but you’re not sure whether it is for you, come along this Friday to Bar 77 at the Grace Hotel to have all your questions answered.

Details:

• What: Startmate Info Session (brief presentation, Q&A with the mentors)
• When: this Friday, November 19th, 6 pm – ~6:30 pm
• Where: Bar77, Grace Hotel, 77 York Street, Bar77 is up the escalators
• Who for: Starmate applicants, potential applicants, mentors
• RSVP and event page: http://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Beach/calendar/15214990/

After the info session, you’re also welcome to stay around for the regular Silicon Beach Drinks, where you’ll meet a bunch of other entrepreneurs and enjoy two-for-one drinks.

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Since announcing StartMate – and its list of investors and mentors – back in August, those of us working on the project, particularly Niki Scevak, have been working hard on getting all the scaffolding of this new venture in place. And while there’s a lot of boring bits – including the legal work provided by DLA Phillips Fox – one of the more exciting bits has been getting our application form together.

The good news, we’re now accepting applications for the first cohort of outstanding startup founders to join the StartMate program.

If you’re a part of a technically focused founder and you’d like some help from some of the best startup executives in Australia to get started on building a great company, make sure you apply before the end of November.

The 5 lucky startups selected will benefit from awesome advice and support from the mentors, connections into Silicon Valley including a ticket to demo your startup at our launch event in San Francisco, and of course $25,000 to help you and your co-founders start building an amazing lean startup.

I’m really really excited and honoured to be a mentor and investor in StartMate – and I’m also really looking forward to working to help our lucky first cohort to build something amazing.

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A campaign, backed by donations from members of the Fix the Princes Hwy at Heathcote Facebook group, has gone live this morning, with a large display sign installed at Heathcote to let some of the 25,000 people who use the Princes Hwy a day what the so-called Minister for the Illawarra, Paul McLeay, as well as Roads Minister Borger have done by stopping the RTA’s plan to implement a clearway at Heathcote.

Update: The Minister has used his political influence to try and shut down our protest, with senior staff at the RTA telling the Traffic Signs manager at Kennards to remove the sign “or else”. Funny, I’m told the IGA – one of the noisy minority – was allowed to put a sign there advertising their business, but we’re not allowed to inform the public. Looks like the Minister doesn’t believe in people’s right to protest and wants to stop the people of the Illawarra from realising how he has actively intervened in the planned clearway at the expense of tens of thousands of his constituents.

Update 2: After being requested by the RTA to move the sign, the guys from Kennards went along to comply, but it turns out they were too late. No word yet on whether it was the RTA or one of the noisy locals who nicked the sign, but you can be certain that there’s some serious people who don’t want us to know the truth about how we’ve been betrayed and screwed over.

Update 3: The Minister says he didn’t ask for it to be moved, but that isn’t to say one of his flacks didn’t on his behalf. By trying to disable the sign with hammers and towing it without unchaining it, the RTA have done a few hundred dollars worth of damage – morons. Anyway, after a few day’s worth of repairs, and getting permission to put the sign on land that the RTA doesn’t own, we’ve got it back out on the road for the next two days. All in all, a good dress rehearsal for next March.

The messages on the sign-board are as follows:

1. Labor: Illawarra comes 2nd
2. McLeay Rejects Clearway
3. McLeay Rejects South Coast
4. Sick of Waiting? Blame Labor
5. Clearway – common sense!
6. Tell McLeay what you think of decision 9548 0144
7. Give us back our highway!
8. Join the campaign online @ heathcoteclearway.com.au

Unfortunately, this probably won’t be our last action on this issue because very few of us have any confidence that McLeay has any courage at all to do the right thing and reverse his crazy decision. If the situation at Heathcote drives you mad too, join our Facebook Group.

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My Pop passed away earlier this week. While very sad for all of us, it wasn’t tragic, as he’d been going down hill a fair bit over the last couple of months – his heart had finally had enough, and just quietly, I think he had too.

Mum – his oldest daughter – asked me to give the Eulogy, and since Pop never had anything to do with the internet or online, I though it would be fitting to leave a little footprint of his life here on my blog.

Rest in Peace old boy – we’ll all miss you.

Pop used to love a bit of a flutter.

He had a greyhound when he was younger, and he and his mates would drive from Tamworth with a few mates down to the track at Newcastle to watch the dog go around and put a few bob on.

Later, he enjoyed taking his daughters to Harold Park Paceway to see the trots.

So reflecting on his life, I don’t think he’d mind me saying that to have made it to the ripe old age of 89 was beating some pretty tremendous odds. But more about that later.

Pop was born on the 10th of February, 1921, the youngest of 6 into a family that lived on the land – a dairy farm at Loreton, not far from Taree.

Upon leaving school, Pop only had a couple of choices, and since he wasn’t keen on working at the Bank, he trained to be a teacher, studying at the Teacher’s College in sunny Armidale, right on the eve of WW2.

When war broke out, Pop tried to enlist. Fortunately for him – and the rest of us – the army wouldn’t have him because of his flat feet. The air force wouldn’t have him because he was colour blind. And the Navy was out of the question… because it was the Navy.

Pop’s contribution to the war effort then was to apply his training as a science teacher at Farrah, near Tamworth. There he taught the many young men from 460 Sqn destined for the battles of Europe and the bomber command as much physics as he could in the time he had.

It was during his time in Tamworth that he was introduced by a mutual friend to his future wife, Molly, who was working with the local newspaper.

They fell in love and married on the 5th of May 1951 – they were due to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary early next year.

Now married, Pop had to leave his bachelorhood as a Hall Master at Farrah behind, and he and Nan moved to Tumut. They had Anne and then Trish shortly afterwards, however it seemed both girls wanted to be a bit closer to the City. Anne gave everyone quite a health scare when she ate a bunch of delicious looking ant poison, and Trish was quite sick with some mystery allergies.

Putting his family first – a hallmark of Pop’s life – they moved to Sydney in 1957 to be closer to quality medical care for the girls.

Pop spent a lot of time working to provide for the family. He worked at many schools through those years as a science teacher, and even taught at TAFE at night to make ends meet.

Unfortunately, in 1975, his lifestyle caught up with him, and he suffered his first heart attack. At this point, the odds on a long life lengthened significantly, but with a stroke of luck, he was admitted into what was then an experimental procedure, and became one of Australia’s first heart-bypass recipients.

With his health scare, he decided to retire, and so he and Nan moved down to Kiama on the south coast in 1977 – part of the original sea-change brigade and ahead of their time.

After getting into the lawn bowls in a big way – it was kinder on the heart than squash, and besides, you could have a beer while you played – Pop and Nan decided to open a school holiday camp for their increasing brood of grandchildren. I used to think of it as “holidays at Nan and Pop’s” when I was a kid – I now know mum and dad thought of it as respite.

In any case, it was great when I’d go and visit to enjoy time with Nan and Pop.

My memories of those years with Pop have three main themes – sport, newspapers and cards.

My father wasn’t much of a sports junkie, so I’d never really had someone watch a game with me and explain the tactics and crazy rules. Pop was surprisingly patient, and I remember sitting there for hours watching cricket and being taught to love the slowest game in the world.

When it comes to newspapers, I think Pop kept Fairfax in business for quite a few years there. Out the back in the sitting room was always a pile of newspapers – and I really enjoyed (once I could read) sitting there and pouring through News Review, Column 8, and realising that Spectrum was complete rubbish.

Then there were cards. Pop taught me Gin Rummy and many others, but I’m sure he was most proud when he taught me Patience – like Solitaire, but with cards. It kept me quiet for hours – he must have been stoked.

In the Christmas of 2001/2, Pop’s health took a turn for the worst. No one had expected the bypass to keep him going as long as it had – 25 years by this point – so when he had a bunch of other heart problems, we feared the worst. He’s already beaten pretty serious odds, but then he beat them again.

Pop spent a lot of time over that Christmas at Wollongong hospital, and I lived just down the road, so I in turn made sure I visited pretty regularly. We formed a pretty good bond and relationship through the period of fear, uncertainty and hallucinations, and being from the silent generation, I think he appreciated the fact I was now a man and he could talk to me, man to man.

I remember one occasion a day or so after he’d been put under, as he sat there recovering in the ICU. He was completely convinced that there were black webs on the roof above the bed, and that people were out to get him. We talked, I made him demonstrate how strong he was by shaking my hand vigorously, and then I told him firmly to be nice to the nurses and that no-one was going to get him because they’d have to get through me first. That seemed to calm him a bit, but when I raised it a bit later, it was clear he had absolutely no recollection of the whole experience.

But he always remembered that hand shake.

After coming back from the brink – again – in the early 2000’s, it was then time to look at better accommodation for he and Nan than their house in Kiama. His strong-willed daughters had decided that the best spot was a retirement village, but the old boy wouldn’t have a bar of it. I remember taking him for a walk, and after convincing him it was actually his idea, and that he wasn’t going to be bossed around in his dotage by girls, he went along with the plan.

Pop’s health had a few more close calls over the intervening years – he even managed to get a 2nd bypass operation, and this one was performed by the junior understudy from the first one! But in the last few weeks, he’d really started to go downhill.

You beat the longest odds anyone will get, you provided for your family in a way that makes us all so proud and grateful, and now it is your turn to rest in peace. It was your time mate, we’ll miss you but most of all we’ll never forget you and all you’ve done for us.

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As you’re probably aware, the Minister for the Illawarra decided to screw over the people of the Illawarra earlier this week when he over-ruled advice from the RTA to put in a clearway at Heathcote.

NSW Labor used the cover of the Federal election campaign to make their cowardly announcement, and they’re hoping the thousands of us who suffer a day will just silently put up with it and that the issue will drop off the radar.

We don’t want to let that happen.

To keep the issue up there, we’d like to hire one of those yellow electronic signs, and put it on the median strip for north-bound traffic to read,  reminding people that Labor has screwed Illawarra motorists over.

We’ll ask people to call McLeay and tell him what they think while they’re waiting in traffic. We’ll also try and get some newspaper coverage of the campaign, and the plan is to make this Facebook group the focus.

Unfortunately, hiring these signs costs money. About $650/week. To make it happen we need your support. If you care about this issue, please reply and let us know if you’re able to pledge $20 or $30 bucks to the cause.

While it is unlikely we’ll get a backflip (on a backflip on a backflip) from McLeay on this, we need Barry O’Farell to make an announcement that they support turning this side-street back into a Highway (70kph, clearway) before they get elected. Actions like this sign board and lobbying are all necessary to make this an issue – so, to make a change, we need your support.

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Given the NSW’s Government’s betrayal of Illawarra residents and their decision to make the Highway through Heathcote more like a back street, it only seems fair that us poor suffering motorists should treat the back streets of Heathcote like a highway. Here’s a map of just how to do that.

The map below details how by turning off at the start of the industrial park, you can drive along 50Kph back streets and avoid some of the traffic snarls that are commonplace during peak hour. While these streets are still slow and narrow, at least you’ll be sharing some of your suffering with the noisy locals who’ve forced this upon us all.

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