Client Profile: Julie & Graeme Agnew

Graeme has kindly written the article below on his family, working life and his relationship with GFM since 1973. We greatly appreciate his contribution to this edition of Trade Secrets.

We are 3rd Generation Clients of GFM Gruchy & GFM Wealth. And both our adult children are now 4th Generation clients.

Julie and I were young when we first met in 1958. We went through Balwyn High School together; we holidayed at Wye River together every summer; we surfed and skiied together, but ostensibly we were never linked romantically. But, some observed our relationship beyond the superficial and forecasted our ultimate union.

I was conscripted in 1969 and ended up in an Infantry Platoon in Vietnam in 1970. Made very aware of my mortality, what was important in my life regularly featured in my thoughts, and Julie always featured very highly in them. I subsequently decided that Providence told me I should marry this girl!

When Julie left high school, she pursued an Arts Degree at Monash University and a Diploma of Education at Melbourne University. She first taught at Echuca High School in 1972 and 1973, when she kept saying “Maybe” to my marriage proposals. Fortunately, Julie finally said “YES”, and we married in late 1973. She taught at Mitcham High School for the next 23 years and at Canterbury Girl’s Secondary College for the following 21 years. At the latter, she taught the daughters of GFM’s staff members Geradine and Leanne.

The History teacher in Julie had her research both our families histories. It fascinated her that my family’s interest in flour milling had spanned nearly two centuries. My great–great–grandfather had built the first windmill in the fledging Port Phillip Colony to mill flour, which was in short supply. In the 1840s, he built a larger steam mill on the Yarra at Heidelberg. My grandfather William returned from WW1, farmed wheat near Nagambie and later moved to the City to form a milling and blending business handling mainly non–foodstuffs, but still organic, materials. My Father continued in the family business during WW2 and beyond.

Julie and I progressively took over the business in the 1980s. We had been too reliant on milling a single product for a single Company for some time. When, in 1983, we lost this client, we were in trouble.

I credit Julie with finding the solution, viz. ‘That we should go back to the stability of milling a range of foodstuffs for a range of clients’. Julie had gone to the pantry and came out with a jar of whole peppercorns and said: “These need to be ground”. Serendipity had us contact a spice importer and a specialty grain processor currently looking for a ‘Miller’. Within six months, we were not only out of trouble but expanding.

One thing was constant through all these changes of the last 80+ years: our accounting firm Gruchy’s, which was now morphed into GFM.

After visiting Jimmy Dancer in 2004, I accepted an offer from a larger company to purchase our quite profitable business. At age 54, I retired in 2005. Julie retired in 2017, having given 50 years of service to the Education Department.

GFM’s successful management of our Superannuation has contributed significantly to our being able to travel widely and frequently. We rarely had pre-booked accommodation when we arrived in places like Longyearbyen, Agrigento, Curia, Chau Duc or Bukittinggi. We call it ‘playing Mary and Joseph”. Sometimes we would have to sleep in a manger, while at other times, we’d sleep in a palace. We have been lucky to have travelled to many remote places like Ittoqqortoorrmiit on the East Coast of Greenland and the middle of our Simpson Desert.

When not travelling, gardening and beekeeping have kept us closer to home, enabling me to give time to Box Hill RSL Welfare Department. I visit elderly war veterans and their spouses in their homes or Aged Care Facilities. I find such volunteer work extremely rewarding.

We are not GFM’s archetypical client … It took engaging GFM to correct our misconception that a ‘diversified portfolio’ was one in which we had a share starting with every letter of the alphabet! As flippant and unprofessional as this may sound, it was not unsuccessful, but GFM’s approach has been much more successful!

We now regard GFM/Gruchy’s as another family and have taken a familial interest in Sullivan, our advisor Sam Eley’s latest addition to his family. We have also become very fond of one of GFM’s latest staff additions, Jade. I commend engaging GFM to one and all. They have deservedly earned our explicit trust.