Andy Royal

2004Best to start at the beginning.

First choice, on leaving the hallowed halls/playing fields was to do medicine at Sydney Uni (a la J Cahill). Next choice vet science (a la R Meischke. One A and the rest Bs not good enough, Royal! Finally accepted into agricultural science (along with Dick Coates). Seems they’d take anyone.Quite enjoyed myself, once I got into it. Dick, however, jumped ship soon after we started and did Arts ... far more his thing (wasn’t it, Dick?).

Also enjoyed many long evenings, pre-breathalyser, at the Adderley manor (out the back) attempting to create music (failed) and provide an outlet/inlet for flagons of Penfolds rough red (succeeded). Don’t remember it all. But who would/could? Too many brain cells deleted out of too few to delete.

Really started to enjoy Ag Science, especially the prac work out in ‘the bush’: roping and branding/marking calves (if you can call a 300kg steer a calf),harvesting oats (some of them quite wild) ... and sowing some as well, as I recall. We students basically provide cheap (free) labour for cockies in exchange for some rough, raw, on ground experience. Taught us a lot about what we didn’t know about farming.

During term time, also overly enjoyed places like the Forest Lodge and La La Rook. Come to think of it, however, (and I do), no beer ever tasted so good,though, at least in my memory, as my first illicit (under age) schooner at the Blue Gum when Greg Hancock took a group of us there for liquid lunch just before the Leaving Cert. Can still taste and smell it. Weird! So where is Greg Hancock these days?

Also lusted after a few of the limited number of ‘ag bags’ on offer over the five years (yep, five, see later) but never made much progress.

Ultimately, too much lusting and lager saw a dramatic fall off in performance in Third Year. Ended up having to sit for a ‘post’ exam in genetics (ie, only JUST failed) in late January, 68, but never really prepared for it. Had a schooner or four at the Forest Lodge after the exam, then onto the trusty Honda 175 and,five minutes later, at Rozelle, went straight into the side of a car driven by some goose trying to cross Victoria Road in front of a bus. Next thing, I am lying on the road with a priest bending over me about to give me the last rites.

Six weeks in Balmain Hospital, in my own room (with leg tied up to a sling) gave me the opportunity to get personally acquainted with a lovely little night nurse. Wonder what ever happened to Gillian? I was still laid up (know what I mean?) in hospital when I heard I had flunked the ‘post’ . But Gillian cheered me up!

Back to Third Year again, initially on crutches, and,this time, did a lot better. Found Animal Nutrition to my liking and spent my last year out with the vets at the Uni Farms at Camden, riding home to St Ives at weekends on the patched up Honda. Cold wet nights, as I remember, were not so much fun, no matter how much ‘wet weather’ gear I had on.

When I finally finished Uni, I was tied to the Dept of Ag (scholarship). The ‘powers that were’ in Farrer Place headed me up to Wollongbar (between Lismore and Ballina on the far north coast) at the beginning of 1970 to try and encourage dairy cows produce more milk.

From January 70, I flatted with newly arrived pommy dairy officer, Mike Morgan, in Ballina, and proceeded to give our livers an horrendous time of it. Mike remains one of my best mates/drinking/golfing buddies and, as the founder and CEO of Herrmann International Asia (the home of Whole Brain Thinking) is also a valuable client (actually, they all are!).

Half way through 1970 (30 June, to be precise), was invited to an end of financial year party held by this little blonde (bottle plus sun) bombshell, Judy. Judy did Pharmacy at Sydney Uni the same time as I was going through ag science. We shared, it seems, a lot of lectures in first year, although I never really recalled seeing her on campus.

Importantly, Judy ... who hailed originally from Lismore (ie, a Lismoron) ... managed a local (Ballina) pharmacy. A pharmacist, I thought, may well be able to keep an impoverished agriculturalist in the manner to which he would like to become accustomed! And she might just be able to save my liver, too!

Lust quickly turned to love. I proposed three days after meeting her and got knocked back. After being posted back to Sydney to do my Masters degree, I tried it on again on a visit north in October. This time, Judy saw the light(or was blinded by it).

Judy’s maiden name, by the way, was Noble, and more than one unkind soul pointed out she only married a Royal because she was a social climber. Boom Boom.

We married, in Lismore, in April 71, attended by J. Adderley (best man ... along with his lady in waiting, the lovely Angela) and R. Coates (groomsman, who nearly rolled my Renault 16TS at the Raleigh bridge on the way up the Pacific Highway from Sydney!). Also there ... to keep things on track ... were A Bruce and B Newlands. Any others? I can’t recall? (It was a big night!)

Judy and I lived in rented digs in Eastwood until I eventually finished my Masters research work and then headed back north to write it up (only took five years) while continuing with the moo cows at Wollongbar.

Before we moved back, we bought an old house in Goonellabah, the mezzanine suburb of Lismore, and, over the next 12 years, gradually turned it into a home.

As happens when one is married to an incorrigibly fertile lady, Emma came along in 1974, David in 76 and James in 79.

In 1979, a departmental upheaval (‘restructuring’) saw us with two choices: move to Wagga Wagga and stay in agriculture (with sheep); or leave the public service. As it turned out, a local pharmacist, who relied on Judy for locum work, also headed up an outfit called the Summerland House With No Steps (its headquarters are still out at Belrose). SHWNS was (and still is) a tropical horticulture-based vocational rehabilitation and training facility for young disabled people. They wanted a CEO to expand the operation and asked me to apply. I knew nothing about working with disabled people and bugger all about horticulture. I got the gig. Just shows you can fool at least some of the people some of the time ... or how desperate this guy was to keep Judy in town and on tap!

Five years at SHWNS were absolutely great. Learnt a hell of a lot about abilities which shone out, time after time, over so-called disabilities. Also learnt a lot about marketing, promotion, communication, lobbying, farm management, project management and heaps of other neat things, all on the run,by the seat of my pants. Established the first centralised tropical fruit packing facility in Australia plus a large wholesale and retail nursery, along with Australia’s (at the time) largest avocado plantation.

In 1984, moved back to the ‘smoke’ ... to Pennant Hills ... after I was offered and took a job with multinational PR firm, Hill & Knowlton, in Sydney.

In 1985, Judy and I set up a PR consultancy, Macnamara Royal and Associates, with another chap who’d joined H&K after me.

MRA grew quickly and we soon acquired two other consultancies, in Brisbane and Melbourne, to become MACRO Communication.

However, my partners started to become more conscious of image (Porsches, Mont Blanc pens, Rolex watches, etc.) than providing substance. Out voting me, they proceeded to turn MACRO into, what I call, a ‘marble and glass’ outfit, increasingly unaffordable to the types of clients I was mainly dealing with (in the ag sector).

Judy also thought they were a bunch of pricks, so we pulled the pin and set up Andy Royal Consulting right here, downstairs in our house in Gordon, in November 91.

ARC, while doing a few twists and turns along the way, has basically gone really well for us ever since. Must be doing something right! Problem is, it (work) interferes badly with my golf (well my golf couldn’t get THAT bad on its own!)

On the offspring front: Emma, who went through Hornsby Girls High and then Barker before B.Ed at UTS, has her own unit in North Ryde. She is in her ninth year of teaching (infants) at PLC Pymble and loving it. We suspect she would like to return from a current sojourn to Uluru and the Territory (on the Ghan)with her man, John, with a rock (a bit smaller than Uluru) on her finger. Last Friday, John asked me if it was OK to pop the question as he and I packed bags in car en route to airport, while Emma was still indoors ... so I suspect it’s’on’.

David is well and truly married and thriving. After B.Bus at UTS, started off in accountancy with KPMG but it bored him shitless. Four years back, got a gig with Merrill Lynch in investment banking and each year earns, in US dollars(even though he’s working in Sydney), more than his father and mother over five years. May he remember who cared for him as a little one! Next step, I believe, is ‘Vice President’ (what a wank these US firms are!). He and Jackie own a unit in Centennial Park but are likely to move when their gametes become joined.

James is the only one to follow in anything remotely like his old man’s footsteps, albeit a lot more successfully. He did Horticultural Science (first class honours and topped final year, majoring in turf management) at Sydney Uni and is now Business Manager Plant Protection with NuTurf, which supplies chemicals and fertilisers, etc. to golf courses, race tracks, bowling clubs, etc, around Australia. James has undergone something of a life change since he met Palla, a Cambodian lass who escaped Pol Pot with her parents 25 years ago and arrived in NZ. She came over here two years back and ended up working in the same firm as James. Immediately, he was besotted with her. He now meditates (with Palla), is into Kung Fu (with Palla), is almost a vegetarian (no ‘almost’ about Palla), and very happy with himself (and Palla). Looks like a Buddhist wedding coming up in Auckland in January.

Regrets? Only one, I think. Watching Jacki Weaver on ‘Enough Rope’ with Andrew Denton the other night reminded me of an enduring but totally unrequited lust I had for young Jacki, from first year on. Somewhat diminutive, as I recall, but amazingly well developed for her age (that bit’s indelible), she raised my testosterone levels beyond safe limits on the train from Pymble to Hornsby and back each day. Like most others, however, I languished well towards the back of a very long queue.

And then (ha! ha! to those who got closer to her than I was able to manage), pop singer, Brian Davies came along with his E-Type and blew us all away! Phew! That had better do, I think.

5 August 2016A lot of water (literally and figuratively) has passed under the bridge(s) since then, Chasps.

Was thinking of making a move out to the Central Tablelands way way back when I last posted my biog. Took us, though, seven years to finally agree on where and when.

Anyway, Judy and I are now here, since March 2011, sitting pretty at 984m above sea level, at Spring Terrace, on the headwaters of the Belabula River (a tributary of the Lachlan), 14km SE of Orange and 14km NW of Millthorpe, on 43ha of prime (currently waterlogged) basalt, running a fast growing herd of 31 ‘liquorice allsort’ cows and progeny. For those very few who may want greater specificity, the basic mix is Limousin, Charolais, Murray Grey, Aberdeen Angus … and a few by an alleged buck-jumping rogue bull whose progeny are stark raving mad.