Creating a blog is a quick way of getting noticed by GOOGLE!
Try it right now:
There it is! Right at the top of the page!
So if anybody out there GOOGLEs for Ian Paterson - maybe Ian himself! - and happens to know where he is, please email me as I want to get in touch with him.
Ian and I worked as accountants for PDF Holdings on Bougainville Island in 1973 and kept in touch for many years. After leaving Bougainville, Ian and his family settled at Nambucca Heads on the North Coast of New South Wales. When I asked him why, he said it had reminded him of Bougainville. Another bout of "Bougainvilleitis"!
He opened an accounting practice at Nambucca Heads, mainly doing the books for the cowcockies in the surrounding district. He even had a branch office in Macksville, population 3000.
On my way up north in 1979 to another assignment with Mount Isa Mines, I called in at his office, squeezed in between a delicatessen and a laundromat. We talked about his work and he suggested I should join him as partner. The proposition sounded less appealling after he told me that if it hadn't been for the shoe shop his wife had opened in town, he may not have lasted as long as he had.
Either things improved with his accounting practice or his wife's shoe shop was doing extremely well because Ian was still there after my return from Saudi Arabia in early 1985. Then, some years later, he wrote that he had finally packed it in and relocated to Brisbane where he had gone into public practice again at Suite 1, Level 8, 141 Queen Street. That must've been sometime before December 1990 because when I came through Nambucca Heads again on my first trip to Queensland since 1985, his office had already become an AMP Planner's office.
And that's the last I heard from him. Somehow the big city has just swallowed him up. If you are out there somewhere, Ian, email me. It would be good to hear from you again!
