GWJ 1991-2021
30 years, a retrospective
From the age of fifteen I spent five and a half years working for a bespoke joinery company in Botany NSW, a stone’s throw away from Sydney airport and on the shores of Botany Bay.
I used to get a train from Hurstville to Redfern, and then a bus all the way down Botany Road. I was just a kid, sitting on the bus next to men and women of all shapes and sizes who worked at various points along that inner city industrial road. As the bus moved into the Mascot end of the route the airport would come into view, its smell of aviation fuel was like a breath of fresh air, as was the proximity of Botany Bay.
As soon as I could I bought my first car - a leaky Toyota Corolla station wagon from a red headed Italian mechanic in Kogarah. I loved driving to work around the bay; no more trains and buses. The car was not built to carry a load but you should never let that, and plain old ignorance, stop you. One afternoon I picked up six sheets of heavy particleboard from Gunnersons on Botany Road. We loaded them on to my rickety roof racks that were bolted to my equally rickety Corolla and I drove out of Gunnersons and down the road to the sound of creaking. As I drove around the corner of one of the busiest intersections in peak hour Sydney the increasingly creaking roof racks and the six sheets of particleboard decided it was time to leave the roof of the Corolla and fly sideways, with vigour, across three lanes of traffic. Fuck!
They were hard years in many ways - working for a difficult man. He was an old school European who had learnt his trade through a form of indentured servitude (if I recall his description correctly). After migrating to Australia he had built a solid business through exceptionally hard work and great skill. He employed around six or seven people in his joinery shop, producing work of the highest quality for wealthy clients in the eastern suburbs. I can’t recall him (or his wife) taking even one day’s holiday in the five years I worked there. On many occasions I wanted to leave that employment, but I stuck it out. Despite the difficulties of that early experience I enjoyed being occupied and developed a good work ethic. They were prosperous times and placed me in a good position for the next step in life.
1990. I left the southern suburbs of Sydney and moved to Camden. In 1991 big things happened - I married the love of my life and I started working for myself (in the opposite order).
I have often looked back and wondered what the hell I was thinking, starting a business at the age of twenty one. I spent my twenties working really hard whilst many friends and people my age were doing all sorts of fun stuff. I have no real explanation other than it just kinda happened.
In August 1991 I started working for myself in a sunny, two car garage, on a hill overlooking grassy paddocks, a sometimes water filled creek and a dairy farm. With the smell of cow shit and fertiliser in the air and a Triton saw bench I began to work. I will be forever grateful to my Mum and her husband Bert for giving up their garage; for three years I existed in that space. The idyllic and peaceful setting in which they lived was often torn asunder at 7:30am by the god awful sound of a Makita router howling for satisfaction as it tore relentlessly through some horrified piece of reconstituted wood. It was a great place to work and one of the many good things that came out of those three short years was my re-engagement with music, in the form of my Mum’s piano.
Within six months or so of starting my little joinery business I met an interior decorator from Sydney’s eastern suburbs who was restoring a beautiful old home, and building a life, right across the road from my Mum’s property. Introductions were made to contacts in the city and it did not take long before I was delivering product back to my old joinery stomping ground in the heart of Sydney. In 1994 I won my first major joinery contract to fit out the home of a prominent NSW politician and his young family. I can still remember the phone call from the owner telling me they accepted my price - terrifying and exciting both at the same time. This complete home renovation and its joinery graced the pages of Vogue Living in 1995. It seemed my business was well and truly up and running, so I moved into a factory in a local industrial area. I was twenty four.
The next seventeen years saw me working for a some of Australia’s most successful business people, develop a fifteen year association with the best luxury home builder Sydney has to offer and work for some of the best architects, designers and decorators in the market place. It was a good run and would have continued if I had not decided that joinery was not exactly where my greatest inspiration and interest lies.
These years also saw the two most significant events in Lara’s and my life, the birth of our two children, Rhiannon and Nick.
2011. Twenty years after the 1991 business start I made a concerted effort to move away from inner Sydney installations and work fewer joinery hours. I found an amazing client in the Southern Highlands who was looking for someone with my skill set. I spent eight months renovating an old dairy, with no architects, builders, decorators or even people; just a brief - “make it fabulous” - and a generous client who understood that good things come from good people when you give them space to move. During that time I worked alongside a fox who would visit and tilt his head whilst trying to make sense of what was going on, some designer chickens called hamburgs and on one occasion a mangy looking cockatoo that was sick and needed life termination. I did the deed and threw him into the bushes; he got stuck on top of a big bush and remained there for a few weeks - chiding me for the indignity of his ending!
2011 - 2021. Ten years after starting work with that first southern highlands client I am still working at the property, it has a new owner and continuing development. A number of other new clients in the area have been satisfied by the delivery of product from my little joinery shop in Minto NSW. This decade saw a massive growth in my professional music performance activities - something which I had been working towards for a long time. Joinery inspiration was on the back seat but still providing an income stream to help me maintain the roof over my family’s head.
Over the years I have worked for great people; home owners, decorators, builders and architects. I have been very lucky. I have been able to capitalise on the good will of customers and steer my own ship. I think this has worked because of my commitment to give people my very best - it is a relationship.
I can trace a huge percentage of my business directly back to the interior decorator across the road from my Mum’s place; it is amazing how the web can start and that from one client so much can develop.
2020. My son decided that he wanted to take on an apprenticeship in joinery and work with me. The arrival of Covid meant that all my music performance activities had been cancelled, this enabled me to take Nick on and see if we could breathe some inspiration back into the little joinery shop in Minto. That is exactly what we did and are continuing to do.
2021. My son is making great progress in his learning of the skills required to work in the joinery market place. Time will tell whether he chooses to breathe more and more life into GuyWaltonJoinery, but for now I am grateful that we have work to do and good people to work for. The music work is slowly coming back and I am now able to leave Nick chugging away in the shop whilst I shoot off and do the gigs.
Despite the fact that many times I have wanted to run a thousand miles away from my business I am glad I have stuck it out. I reckon there are a few more years to come.
A happy customer is my greatest satisfaction.
