Geoffrey Grimwade

Gepp, Massy-Greene and McConnan all worked up from lowly positions to occupy the seats reserved for the mighty.  A career of this kind requires either outstanding natural talents or tremendous application, and probably both.  On the other hand, Geoffrey Grimwade was, so to speak, born to a director's chair.  At no stage in his life had he to worry about money and, from the beginning, his position in the scheme of things was virtually assured.

He was a member of one of Melbourne's wealthiest and most prominent families.  His grandfather, Frederick Sheppard Grimwade, belonged to a family which started the firm of wholesale druggists, Grimwade & Ridley, in London in 1843.  In 1863 Frederick Grimwade came to Australia to take up a position with the firm of H. & E. Youngman in Melbourne.  A few years later he bought the business in partnership with Alfred Felton.  The firm prospered, not only because of business ability but because Grimwade was the only man at that time -- and for many years after -- who had been trained in the wholesale drug trade.

Frederick Grimwade was elected to the Victorian Legislative Council in 1891;  he retained his seat unopposed for thirteen years when ill health compelled him to withdraw from political life.  About this time his three sons, Edward Norton (father of Geoffrey Grimwade);  Harold William (later Major General) and Wilfred Russell were admitted as partners of Felton, Grimwade & Co.

Alfred Felton who died in 1904 had no family.  He was a man of generous disposition and divided his wealth between charitable institutions and the National Gallery of Victoria, which, through the Felton Bequest, has been able to buy many paintings of world renown.

The business prospered under the leadership of Frederick Grimwade's three sons.  In 1929, in an endeavour to eliminate uneconomic competition in the wholesale drug trade, Felton, Grimwade combined with other leading druggists having an Australia-wide connection.  A holding company, called Drug Houses of Australia Ltd., was incorporated and acquired the interests of seven companies operating in all States in exchange for ordinary shares with a paid-up value of almost £2½ million.  Drug Houses, in 1964, had a paid-up capital exceeding £6 million and over ten thousand shareholders.

During the 1930's, competition from British, German, French and American interests was fierce and Drug Houses made only moderate profits.  But World War II shut out imports and provided the group with fresh manufacturing opportunities which it was quick to grasp.

Before the war not a single alkaloid product, such as quinine and morphine, had been made in Australia.  By 1945 there was a list of ten or eleven manufactured on a scale to permit exports in large quantities to the Allies, after local needs had been met.  Research work carried out in the Melbourne laboratories of Drug Houses provided the Allied forces with their sole source of hyocine for use in treating shock and preventing sea and air sickness in amphibious operations.  By the end of the War, Drug Houses had become one of the major world suppliers of alkaloids, hyocine and atropine.  Most of these developments came under the personal control of Geoffrey Grimwade as head of the developmental division.

He was first elected to the board of Drug Houses in 1942 following the retirement of his uncle, Major General Harold Grimwade.  He became chairman of the board in 1950 and held the position until his death in 1961 at the age of 58.

Grimwade's interest in research was not confined to his own company.  During the war he investigated the manufacture of optical glass in the United States on behalf of the Ministry of Munitions.  In 1958 he was elected President of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research.  After his death, the director of the Institute, Sir MacFarlane Burnet, said, "Mr. Grimwade's death is a tremendous loss both personally and for the Institute".

Grimwade would not have needed a running start in life to make a successful career for himself.  He would have finished well up in the race if he had started behind scratch.  Indeed, he might have done even better without the "advantages" of inherited wealth and established position.  He was fortunate not so much in these things as in his possession of far-above-average abilities and in his tough, determined, combative disposition.

I am sure that most of his acquaintances and friends would be the first to agree that he was a highly unusual member of the social class into which he was born.  He was, in a sense, "Toorak Personified".  His name figured in the guest lists of the Toorak parties.  He was a leading member of the most exclusive clubs.  He had precisely the right educational background -- he completed his education at Cambridge after attending Melbourne Church of England Grammar School and the University of Melbourne.  On the face of it, he seemed to belong, body and soul, to the wealthy, exclusive world, which used to claim a large share of the social columns of the popular press.

But Grimwade did not enter into whole-hearted enjoyment of the way of life customary among many on whom Fortune smiles at birth.  While he took pleasure in his social position, his clubs and privileges, he did not, for a moment, regard them as sufficient, as fully satisfying.  There were other more important things to do.  There was achievement for its own sake.  He wanted to show, when it came to the point, that he could work as hard and was just as good at business as the next man.  Naturally he availed himself of the opportunity of a university education.  He took a Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Melbourne and then added to his academic laurels by becoming a Master of Arts at Cambridge.  Clearly he had no intention of frittering away his time.  He wanted to be something in his own right.

My grandfather first met him in 1943 when the preliminary steps were being taken to form the Australian Institute for Public Policy and a committee, under the chairmanship of Sir Leslie McConnan, had been selected to draft a set of objectives for the Institute.  A year or so later Grimwade was appointed chairman of a committee (known at first as "The Industrial Committee") which soon became largely responsible for the administrative, editorial and other activities of the Institute.  My grandfather was surprised to see him among those on the McConnan Committee chosen to frame the objectives of the A.I.P.P.  His name was well known to my grandfather, as it was to most people, but he did not associate it with the kind of progressive, liberal objectives which many of them believed the Institute should adopt.  My grandfather was soon to be disillusioned.  Grimwade showed himself to be fully aware of the need for advanced, forward-looking policies and exhibited a surprising and commendable readiness to jettison outmoded conceptions.

The task of preparing a draft set of objectives for discussion fell, in the main, on two or three people (of whom my grandfather was one) appointed to act as economic advisers to the Committee.  The objectives that they advocated represented a rather radical departure from long-accepted and deeply entrenched business notions.  This draft document, not unexpectedly, led to some frank, outspoken discussions at meetings of the McConnan Committee.  In these initial discussions, Grimwade revealed an inclination of mind and a firmness of view which suggested that he could be a source of strength and inspiration to the Institute in the years ahead.  This proved to be so.  My grandfather's business association with him, which began so promisingly at these meetings and which continued for nearly ten years, was one of which my grandfather had the happiest memories.  It remained throughout one of complete mutual understanding and trust.

These were times of fierce controversy.  Ideas, both political and industrial, were in the melting pot.  Everything was fluid.  The mould of the post-war economic and social system had still to be shaped.  The old order of the pre-war world was clearly doomed.  But what was to take its place?  Increasing numbers of people were accepting the socialist prescription if, for no other reason, than that there was no constructive alternative to which they might be persuaded to give their allegiance.  At gatherings of intellectuals, those who threw doubts on the ideas supported with almost religious fervour by the socialists were regarded either with unconcealed suspicion or with pitying contempt;  they were looked upon as out of touch with the realities of modern thought or as people with a selfish, vested interest in the old order.  Free enterprise was hard pressed, under bitter and often unfair criticism.  Some businessmen, shocked by the intensity of the attacks, harboured grave doubts whether the free enterprise system would eventually survive.

Industrial relations were in a disturbing, almost chaotic state.  (In the years round the end of the war the loss of time from industrial disputes was reaching scandalous proportions -- it far over-topped time lost from strikes in any of the other English-speaking countries.)

No one could be certain where they were heading but it was clear that great changes in the economic and social system were in the offing.  Were the new demands for "full employment" and the "welfare state" feasible?  The socialists said that they could be achieved only by government ownership over a wide field of economic activity, centralised planning and the continuation into peace of the detailed government controls introduced for the purposes of war.  At a crowded conference in Canberra towards the end of the war, one of Australia's most eminent economists, not regarded as a socialist, named a number of leading industries as ripe for immediate nationalisation, and concluded with the ominous suggestion that "the field appropriate for this treatment will doubtless expand significantly in the future".

Looking back from the comparative political calm and widespread affluence of the present, it is hard to conceive of the intensity of feeling in those days and the yawning, apparently unbridgeable gulf between representatives of divergent political and economic beliefs.  Emotion was in the saddle and sweet reasonableness in the discard.

In this situation, fraught with menace, it was clearly the task of those who supported the free enterprise system to show that full employment, social security and a "new deal" in industrial relationships could be achieved within the framework of the traditional business system and without resort to the extreme measures proposed by the socialists.  This was the goal the Institute set itself.

The gestation period leading to the birth of the Australian Institute for Public Policy covered the latter part of 1942 and about the first half of 1943.  This was the time when the outlook and organisation of the non-labour political forces were giving rise to serious concern among those opposed to socialism.  At the 1943 elections the Curtin Labor Government was returned to power by an electoral landslide.  This came as a stunning surprise to some of the chief strategists of the opposing forces, who had confidently anticipated a comfortable victory.  These people showed themselves to be blissfully unaware of the magnitude of the changes in public thinking brought about by the war;  their plan of campaign had little constructive content and was concerned mainly to pour ridicule on the ideas of the socialists and to build up absurdly exaggerated fears in the minds of the electorate of what the return of a Labor Government would mean.  They showed little faith in the good sense of the Australian people, and as a consequence did their cause incalculable harm.

The 1943 electoral debacle completed the disintegration and sounded the death knell of the ailing United Australia Party.  Grimwade was one of the bitterest critics of the political insensitiveness and lack of foresight which had led to this unhappy state of affairs.  He seemed to feel that business had been let down by those who, in a sense, represented it in the national political arena.  After the 1943 landslide election he wrote in a memorandum:  "The political forces opposed to socialism suffered two great handicaps -- parties and leaders which were short of a policy and out of touch with the people and with reality, and controlling party organisations which were virtually defunct and discredited".

The A.I.P.P. was still in its early infancy.  It had still to make up its mind what it was going to do in life.  The general view was that it should be a non-political animal, but the desperate weakness of the anti-socialist political opposition and the aggressively socialist attitude of the Labor Party led to some conflict of opinion among the members of the A.I.P.P. controlling body.  There was a strong feeling that it should assist in the regrouping and reorganisation of the non-socialist political forces and endeavour to breathe new life into their thinking.  Many people at the time feared that socialism was just around the corner and that the end of the war would be the signal for the Labor Party to move forward with giant strides towards its cherished goal.  These fears proved to be exaggerated, largely because they overlooked the hard core of individualism in the make-up of the Australian character.  Nevertheless, the A.I.P.P. was, almost inexorably, sucked into the political arena before the elections of 1943 and during the Powers Referendum of 1944.

Grimwade was out of sympathy with these activities.  He held firmly to the view that the Institute could function effectively only by keeping apart from politics and by holding fast to its original intention of being a non-political body, without financial or other connections with any political party.

After the 1943 election the Institute altered course in a non-political direction.  It was at this time that the Grimwade "Industrial Committee" was appointed with the specific assignment of producing a detailed post-war policy for industry, a programme which would hold out a practicable alternative to the policies being advocated by the socialists.

This was entirely in accord with Grimwade's notion of the Institute's function.  Some months earlier he had written:  "The pattern of reconstruction, the shape of the 'new order', call it what you will, is much in the minds of the electors at the moment, and as peace draws near their attention will be increasingly focused upon it. ... If industry is to contribute anything to the rapidly changing social pattern it must act quickly and constructively instead of defensively opposing the forces of change in what is obviously a losing battle. ... We have trained young men on our staff and until they can produce, with our guidance, a 'Code for Industry' sufficiently liberal to appeal to the mass of the people and sufficiently sound to be incorporated as the centrepiece of the policy of a re-created or entirely new political party, our aspirations are so much wishful thinking.  Above all, let us give these young men a full measure of authority in drafting this Code for, despite anything we do, or omit to do, their generation will have the final say."  After months of concentrated work, the Grimwade Committee produced its prescription, which was eventually accepted by the full controlling body of the A.I.P.P.

Many of the objectives in the field of national economic policy which the Institute advocated are in these times -- twenty years later -- universally accepted.  Full employment and adequate provision for social security are examples.  But two decades ago the practicability of the first and the desirability of the second were being hotly debated and their unqualified acceptance by a body representative of some of the largest employers in Australian industry came as something of a shock to many people.  The Institute also urged some strong advances in the arena of industrial relations:  a minimum of two weeks' paid holiday leave for all, the provision of machinery for consultation between employees and management, the wider application of profit-sharing schemes were just a few of a number.  Indeed, the Institute's advocacy of two weeks' annual holiday was perhaps the decisive factor in a determination by the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, a year or so later, which extended this benefit to employees.

Much of the medicine that the Institute prescribed was, understandably, not entirely palatable to some of those accustomed over many years to doing business in an entirely different economic and social setting.  Naturally enough, there were sharp conflicts of opinion among business leaders.  On this stage, Geoffrey Grimwade was destined to play a vital role.

Throughout, he stood firm for progressive, liberal notions.  He did not want the Institute to be associated in any way with attitudes which could be interpreted as even faintly reactionary.  There was an example of this as late as 1946.  During 1945 the Institute had published a long and comprehensive report on the economics of a 40-hour week.  The broad view taken by the Institute was that the introduction of a shorter work week, while eventually desirable, would be premature until the difficulties of the early years of post-war reconstruction had been overcome and until the scarcities and shortages brought about by the war had been made good.

When the union claim for a 40-hour week came before the Commonwealth Arbitration Court, the counsel for the employers' case approached the Institute for assistance and requested that its economic advisers should be made available to give evidence in the Court.  Grimwade strongly opposed the latter request.  He held that the Institute's part should be confined to elaboration and explanation of its completed report and should go no further.  He wrote:  "I believe that it is a matter of not the slightest importance which way the case goes compared with the desirability of preserving the reputation of the Institute, which has been laboriously built up over the last two or three years".

Grimwade would not have had the slightest hesitation in resigning from the A.I.P.P. if his conception of what it should do had been threatened with rejection.  But while there were, naturally enough, divergences of viewpoint among members of the A.I.P.P. Council over what the Grimwade Committee proposed, these differences were never carried too far.

I believe Grimwade's work with the A.I.P.P. provided him with an opportunity which he had, subconsciously, fervently hankered after -- to play a part on the large stage of national affairs.  Here there was a change to influence events and the trend of business thinking on national matters, at a time of great crisis, in directions which he believed to be desirable.

He threw himself into all their activities with great energy and enthusiasm.  On more than one occasion my grandfather thought he contemplated temporarily forsaking all his strictly business interests so that he could give his full time to a work which he believed to be of transcendent importance.

Grimwade exerted a tremendous, indeed a decisive influence on the affairs of the Institute throughout its early years.  They could not have done without him.  He had the three requisites necessary for the task he was trying to do.  First, he had a good knowledge of economics.  Second, he had a clear vision of what was necessary;  he was progressive, at times almost radical, in his thought;  he had no patience with the ultra-conservative school of belief.  And third, and not least important, he carried a name which commanded respect in board rooms, in clubs, and in wealthy social circles.  In other words, he was "accepted" by many of those he was trying to influence.

There was no looseness about Grimwade's approach to the work of the Institute.  It was severely businesslike.  As chairman, he insisted on meetings of his Committee at least once a week, and if for any reason a meeting could not be held, he seemed to be disturbed.  These weekly meetings were held on Friday morning at 11 o'clock and, without saying so, he somehow managed to convey his displeasure if any member of the Committee arrived a few minutes late.  He was also displeased if any one was absent.  As a consequence the volume of work, particularly of complex editorial matter, which the Grimwade Committee was able to get through in those days was considerable.  Pressure was maintained at all points, and not least on the staff.

In his work for the A.I.P.P., Grimwade had qualities of character that were invaluable.  He had more than the normal share of combativeness.  He was tough, hard-headed, terribly persistent.  While he stood for progressive policies, and positively recognised the desirability of change, he was the very opposite of what is conveyed by the term "do-gooder".  He would have hated to be regarded as an "idealist";  indeed he was unduly suspicious of anyone who fell into this category.  He respected the learned, the academician, but not the "academic".  Blunt to a degree, tact was not his strongest point.  He had few subtleties in his make-up;  once he had accepted an objective as necessary, he wanted to achieve it by the most direct and shortest route.  This is not always possible.  Sometimes delay, patience, a willingness to compromise, are unavoidable.  He did not find these things easy.  Nevertheless, his inflexibility and uncompromising attitude were valuable assets at a time when bold advance was needed.

But he had one quality which topped all the others.  He was transparently honest, direct, straightforward.  Once he had given you his support, he would never let you down -- not by an inch.  You could rely on him utterly.  He would never waver, never deviate.  Of how many of us can this be said?  Consequently there were few, if any, people who worked in close association with him who did not respect and like him, for the simple reason they always knew exactly where they were with him.  He never left them in any uncertainty about his own relationship with them or about what he expected from them.  This quality of absolute honesty and straightforwardness commanded the respect of other business leaders and was, I think, the secret of the influence he was able to exert.

I have written mainly of Grimwade's association with the A.I.P.P., not only because it is with that phase of his life that my grandfather had so much to do, but because -- and I am sure everyone connected with the A.I.P.P. would agree -- his important services in those years should be placed on record.  No one did more than he in establishing the Institute as a going concern with an accepted place in the Australian scene, and no Australian businessman did more in helping to work out and to gain acceptance for a new, modern concept of the role of private enterprise in national affairs.  His contribution was highly individual.  What he did probably no one else could have done because no one else possessed his unusual combination of attributes.

But this was only one aspect of his life.  As he grew older it was inevitable, with his background and qualities, that he should be appointed to the boards of various large and important Australian companies.  In addition to his chairmanship of Drug Houses, he was chairman of the boards of two smaller companies, Carba Dry Ice and WrightceI -- the former was largely his own creation.  He served also on the boards of Courtauld's (Australia), Commonwealth Industrial Gases, Cuming Smith and Co. and Lincoln Stuart.  He was a prominent figure in the insurance world.  He was appointed to the Victorian branch board of the A.M.P. Society in 1939 and became Chairman in 1945.  In 1957 he was appointed to the principal board of the Society in Sydney.  He was also a member of the board of the Victoria Insurance Company.

Grimwade's inherited advantages would no doubt have ensured him a seat on numerous company boards, irrespective almost of his personal qualifications.  But his fellow directors were quick to appreciate that he was the very opposite of a "light-weight".  His conscientiousness would not have permitted him to accept any position where he felt he was unable to pull his weight.  He was a board member who "did his homework".  He came to meetings well prepared and informed on the matters listed for discussion.  To the problems with which boards of directors have to deal he was able to bring a trained, incisive intelligence, an innate business acumen, sound judgment, and an unusually wide knowledge of national affairs.  He was thus exceptionally well-equipped.  One close business associate writes of him:  "In the course of a board meeting he would always ensure that he thoroughly understood all the implications of an issue even though the seeking of explanations might perhaps have at times been embarrassing to him.  He did not pre-judge a situation, was always approachable, never too busy to listen and always strove to see the merit in opinions other than his own.  His conclusions were sound and logical;  his counsel invaluable;  he was a good leader setting a fine example".

As he began to rise in the world and to assume positions of high responsibility he found he was increasingly called upon to speak at public or social occasions.  But this was one attribute he had never taken the pains to develop and for which he had no special natural talent.  Comparatively late in life he decided to try to overcome his deficiency by taking a course in public speaking.  With characteristic determination, he was able to acquire reasonable proficiency in an art for which he had little real liking.  He became, indeed, quite noted for his after-dinner speeches on more or less informal occasions.

Grimwade did not have the single-minded devotion to work and business of men like Massy-Greene and Gepp.  He had many other interests of a less serious character.  For one thing he was a considerable sportsman.  He enjoyed club life and was, at one time, President of the Australian Club.  In later years he had his farm at Rye, to the running of which he devoted a great deal of personal attention.  He was caught up in numerous social activities for many of which he had little liking;  he far preferred to spend his leisure time in the company of his close friends.  There were numerous distractions from the more serious things of life and he made no special effort to resist them.

Grimwade was one of those fortunate beings who seem able to master most things to which they turn their hands.  He excelled at sport not merely because he was a "natural" but because he brought to it the same tough, determined qualities that served him well in the more serious pursuits of life.  His attitude to sport was 100% Australian.  He played it hard, but fair.  He revelled in the competitive aspect and the opportunity it afforded to test his quality against that of others.  He would never take a sly advantage of an opponent;  equally he made very sure that no one would take an unfair advantage of him.

He was a first-class golfer.  He represented Cambridge University for several years and captained the team in his final year in 1927 when he beat the Oxford captain at the 41st hole in a game upon which the result of the inter-varsity match depended.  His ability at golf was probably even surpassed by his mastery of billiards.  He was an outstandingly good squash player.  He was a first-rate shot.

An opponent at billiards, surprised by his skill, once asked him how he had become so good.  He replied:  "Well, you see my father had a billiards table in his home and he made me play with him every night, when I wanted to be out chasing girls".

There are numerous amusing golfing anecdotes attached to him.  On one occasion he was playing a friendly game with the captain of a visiting English Test side.  The English captain was himself a well-above-average golfer and the match was square going to the 18th.  In addressing his ball for a short approach to the last green, the Englishman's ball moved almost imperceptibly.  As they came on to the last green the Test Captain raised the matter by saying, with understandable reluctance, "I do not know what I should do;  I think my ball moved back there".  Grimwade replied, "It's funny you noticed it;" whereupon his opponent picked up.

On another occasion he was contesting a stroke round play-off for the Metropolitan Golf Club Championship against a close friend.  It was not Grimwade's day and with only a few holes left for play his position appeared hopeless.  At the long 16th hole his friend pulled his drive into the rough from which he did not emerge until he played on to the green, after a large number of short, ineffective shots.  As he holed out with a long putt, Grimwade said, "Are you sure that that is your ball?"  There was always a chance that his opponent had played another ball (lost in the rough on some previous occasion) by mistake, thinking it was his own.  Holing out with the wrong ball would have meant his disqualification.  No one, however, would have been more uncomfortable than Grimwade if he had won the Championship through such an error on the part of his opponent.

The stories are rather typical of Grimwade's sense of humour.  The brand bore an unmistakable Grimwade stamp.  It had a caustic and, at times, almost grim quality.  In his later years he probably found his greatest relaxation in fishing.  Returning one morning to the pier at Rye with only a meagre catch, he and a friend were greeted by a benign, well-meaning clergyman with the cheery remark:  "I believe there are a lot of schnapper in the bay just now".  Grimwade, in process of berthing the boat, looked slowly up at the clergyman on the pier and said, "Yes, and there is b------ lot of water mixed up with them too".

The former Prime Minister, Harold Holt, related how in conversation with his intimates, Grimwade developed a somewhat esoteric jargon for which he became noted.  This was derived from a habit he had -- not in itself a novel one -- of describing an article in rhyming slang:  for example, a hat was a "tit for tat", a wife "trouble and strife", and so on.  But Grimwade managed to give the practice individuality by reducing the appropriate phrase to a kind of shorthand.  Someone dead, for example, was "roses red", but if Grimwade described some recently departed acquaintance as "roses", all his friends knew what he meant.  He loved to "wise-crack", but the "wise-cracks", unlike those of many, seemed to be of his own manufacture and he had an uncanny aptness for hitting the nail square on the head with a few unconventional words.

In committee he would often tell some funny story -- real or fictional -- which would elicit a roar of laughter from his fellow members.  But the merriment derived as much from something in the blunt manner of the telling as from the comic attributes of the story itself.  We came to expect these funny stories, which would invariably be told in a style that was somehow uniquely his own.  Yet he was anything but a "funny man" or a natural comic.

It is hard to distil the real essence of Geoffrey Grimwade's character.  Most people have apparently contradictory characteristics:  they have the virtues of their defects and the defects of their virtues.  But in Grimwade the paradoxical strain was more pronounced than in most.

There was something extremely elusive about him -- something difficult to pinpoint.  He had an evident strain of scepticism in his construction which gave him a disposition to challenge accepted conventions and established beliefs.  This characteristic had both advantages and disadvantages.  Without it he could not have played the part that he did in the formative years of the Australian Institute for Public Policy.  On the other hand, sometimes his attitude was too severely realistic, even perhaps verging on cynicism and intolerance.  He saw things and judged people too rigidly in terms of black and white.  He had little or nothing of the romantic or poet in his nature.

Many people, on a first acquaintance, might have been disposed to catalogue him as a hard man of business, lacking even to some extent in ordinary human compassion.  It would be easy to think of him thus.  Yet such an assessment would be far wide of the mark.  There was certainly a tough element in the metal of his character, but it was not "cold steel".  He was a man of strong likes and dislikes and such people are usually the opposite of the cold and unfeeling who have difficulty in giving real loyalty to people, ideas or institutions.  Grimwade, on the contrary, was an intensely loyal person with warm human emotions.  He seemed to delight in professing a certain "hardness" on the surface, almost as if he were concerned to hide from the world his innermost feelings.  My grandfather knew of no one who worked closely with him who did not have a high regard and personal liking for him.  Cold, unsympathetic people do not evoke these sentiments.

What was most admirable in himself -- his undeviating honesty -- he admired most in others.  Because he was so completely lacking in any pretence, he could immediately detect even the merest hint of "phoniness".  This he detested.  He was angered by humbug and abhorred artificiality and affectation.

One of the most estimable things about him was his robust Australianism.  Unlike some Australians who attend English universities, his years at Cambridge failed even to dent the hard core of his Australian spirit.  There was no trace of "snobbishness" in his make-up.  He respected people, not for what they had, but for what they had done and achieved, and he took pleasure in their company.  He had little time for those who "kow-towed" to him because of his established position;  he admired those who stood up to him and above all those who spoke their minds frankly, even though on occasions his ire could be roused by disagreement.

There were certain, not entirely admirable, tendencies in his nature of which he was well aware and with which he was constantly at war.  His directness and manifest honesty had their counterparts in a disposition to say exactly what he thought regardless of whether it might give offence and whether it could really do any good.  He did not give the impression of one who had any great love for his fellow humans, at least in the collective sense.  Certainly it was difficult to discern in him any trace of that general benevolence which marks the well-meaning or the social idealist.  To many people he must have appeared gruff, curt, unfriendly, even bad-tempered.  Yet his straightforwardness and his entire lack of any suggestion of deviousness, allied to his obvious desire to do what was right and fair, made one feel that there could be few men with whom it would be more satisfactory to have dealings.  Only perhaps in the intimacy of personal friendship did he reveal his best qualities.  But his complete honesty meant that he could not bring himself to "put on a front", to practise a cultivated charm, or to try to win friends and influence people by being something other than he really was.

His physical appearance conveyed something of his uncompromising disposition.  He was of medium height and his body, verging to plumpness, was set firmly on the ground.  His habitual facial expression was, at first glance, rather cold and distant.  He did not give the impression that he would welcome a casual advance of any kind, far less the intimacy of personal friendship.  But it was not the nose-in-the-air kind of aloofness.  With those whom he knew well and liked, whether a wealthy friend or the local postman, he was always approachable and generally good humoured.

He made a conscious effort to subdue the "anti-social" tendencies in his make-up.  But they would keep oozing through the crust of his personality and in his later years his control over them probably weakened.

All this did not mean that he was devoid of innate charm.  Far from it!  But one had to know him well or to work with him to feel the force of his personal attraction.  Harold Holt, who was one of Grimwade's closest associates, writes of him:  "Perhaps one of the warmest tributes I could pay him is to record that the closer one got to Geoff. the more one liked him and valued his friendship".

As I have said, the paradoxical content of his character was most pronounced.  While he was absolutely steadfast in his personal loyalties, this commendable, indeed rather rare, quality, was not always accompanied by a full appreciation of the difficulties of those with whom he worked.  He could, at times, be over-blunt and hurtful.  He was not invariably solicitous of the welfare of others.  My grandfather remembered after eighteen months of high pressure work, involving almost continuous thinking and writing, he decided he was in need of a holiday.  Grimwade thought two weeks would be sufficient;  in fact, on second thoughts, rather more than sufficient for he suggested that, as my grandfather was almost certain to be bored after the first week, he could perhaps write an article or two in the second.  But here again there was a strange, contradictory element in his character.  He was particularly kind to younger people and would often go out of his way to help them in small things.  My grandfather himself benefited (and he knew of others who did too) on more than one occasion through his thoughtfulness and generosity.

He also had a very conscientious attitude toward his responsibility to staff and employees, and I can't imagine him dismissing anybody except for the best of reasons.  As chairman of the Victorian board of the A.M.P. Society, every Christmas, despite the festive business and social calls on his time, he used to go through the whole eight floors of the office and personally express Christmas greetings to the more senior members of a staff of some six hundred.

Although in some ways a careful spender, he was prepared to risk large sums in various forms of gambling, which had an irrestible attraction for him.  Indeed, quite early in his life, in his years at Cambridge, he had acquired a reputation for his skill as a gambler.  He achieved some notoriety among his friends for these activities, for which he was sometimes criticised.  But he seemed to look at them in a severely business light.  He was accustomed to defend himself by saying that he won more money than he lost.

He established a tradition, among his closest friends, of a post-Melbourne-Cup week at his home at Sorrento and, later, at Rye.  The week, which started on the Wednesday directly after the Cup, would be devoted to golf, swimming, fishing, cards, good food and good fellowship.  He became famous for a drink which his friends called "The Mallet".  This was the evening jug of pre-dinner martini mixed to his own formula and, judged by the results, very appropriately named.

Grimwade drove himself very hard.  In addition to his work at the A.I.P.P., his numerous directorships in important companies and, later, his membership of the board of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia (to which he was appointed in 1951) entailed almost continuous interstate travel.  By the end of the week he had exhausted his resources and it was his custom about 4 o'clock on Friday afternoons to leave for his farm at Rye, where he spent almost every week-end.  His life was very full.  Not only did he use up his energies in his business interests, but his vigorous club and social life took a toll.

In his essay on F.E. Smith (the Earl of Birkenhead) in his book, "Great Contemporaries", Sir Winston Churchill writes that he (Birkenhead) "burnt all his candles at both ends".  This phrase could have applied to Geoffrey Grimwade's mode of living and, no doubt, contributed to his early death, which came as a profound shock to those who knew him.  He had somehow established himself in their minds as a fixture, as a permanent, vigorous player in the game of life, and "death" something they did not associate with him.

A measure of achievement is the extent to which a man can break free of or overcome those limitations and restrictions inevitably imposed by early environment.  This applies as much to the man born in circumstances of affluence as to the man who starts his life in conditions of comparative poverty.  Many people, even though their material circumstances may alter substantially for better or worse, fail, throughout their lives, to journey far beyond the boundaries drawn during the early formative years of their experience.  They seem, subconsciously at least, to accept these boundaries as something laid down by an immutable Fate, impossible to pass beyond.  A select few on the other hand regard them as a challenge to be overcome;  the heavier the initial handicaps, the greater the challenge.  The handicaps in these cases serve to develop the muscles of character and mind in the same way as the muscles of the body are strengthened by pitting them against resistances.

In his response to this challenge, Grimwade was no less successful than, each in their different manners, were Gepp, Massy-Greene and McConnan.