He would say it all the time, “When you live here, heaven is just a local call away.”
He was what I would call a stubborn advocate for our local community.
As our small family grain business grew and increasingly dealt directly with customers overseas, he was stubbornly deaf to suggestions that we may need to move the office to Melbourne.
He would insist on having customers meet us at the office, then once they were here, he would drill them about “Why would I live anywhere else?”
I’ll never forget one time when he leaned in close to one of our Vietnamese grain buyers and insisted that he “pack up shop and move here”.
Ray refused to let visa issues, the fact that Mr Vinh couldn’t understand him or the fact that Mr Vinh had an entire family back in Vietnam, stop him from advocating the benefits of our community.
Growing up watching this parochial local advocacy has remained with me and was a large part of the reason I returned to this area after 11 years selling grain overseas.
As I travel throughout the electorate, I have come across outstanding people and businesses, exporting world-class products from sheds in towns such as Yarroweyah.
I’ve seen local businesses building infrastructure in Melbourne up against the big guys.
And I’ve seen small businesses provide increasingly complex products once they access global markets through the internet.
When I was going to school 21 years ago, there was an attitude that if you wanted to ‘succeed’ you had to go to Melbourne.
It was not just for university, but friends of mine who worked in trades thought that going to Melbourne was the epitome of success.
There was a false view that those who remained at home hadn’t ‘made it’.
As a teacher at a local country school, I spent a good deal of my time trying to show our students some of the world class businesses operating right here in our community.
That you didn’t need to be in Melbourne to ‘succeed’ and that, in fact, there are great opportunities in our own backyard.
COVID-19 and the push to ‘work from home’, has led many in the city to realise what my grandfather started saying decades ago, and the move to country areas continues.
I urge young people looking around and considering their future to look at the opportunities locally.
As someone who has lived and worked around the world, and now returned to live and work, I can say — hand on heart — that I have never been happier.
I stand for championing our region and showcasing the world-class businesses that operate in our community.
I stand for defending our first-class lifestyle in this part of the world.
Encouraging entrepreneurial spirit in our youth to back themselves and have a go.
Because it should be our hard work that determines our choices in life — not our postcode.
Stephen Brooks is the Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Nicholls, a pomegranate farmer, former grain trader and secondary school teacher
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