Business on the River Torrens

I’ve just returned from a three-day retreat in Adelaide. Every year, my EO (Entrepreneurs Organisation) forum goes away to spend quality time together, learn from guest speakers, and undertake some professional development. Over the last four years, we’ve travelled to Wellington, Hobart and Queenstown. This year, it was South Australia’s turn.

Once again, I was tasked with planning and managing logistics for our retreat. The group decided to make this year’s event an intensive professional development event. As a result, we spent most of our time learning to apply Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools in our day-to-day business and revisiting business fundamentals during an intense session with one of South Australia’s most successful entrepreneurs.

We flew into Adelaide on Wednesday morning and based ourselves for two nights at SkyCity, Adelaide’s new casino and hotel complex overlooking the River Torrens. Before getting down to business, we made the most of the sunny weather and spent an hour walking a circuit along the river. We walked from the Riverbank Precinct Pedestrian Bridge as far as the Albert Bridge and back again.

After a full afternoon of meetings, we went for a drink at SOL rooftop bar, enjoying nighttime views of the River Torrens, Elder Park and the Adelaide Oval. We then walked into town for a superb degustation meal at Fugazzi Bar & Dining Room. The service was impeccable.

Thursday was given over to a full day of intensive AI training. I kicked off my morning with a serene walk along the river before the training began. At 5:00pm, we went to the Malt Shovel Taphouse, a nearby microbrewery, for a meet-and-greet session with members of the EO Adelaide chapter. We then went for dinner at Jolleys Boathouse, a landmark building overlooking the river. Sadly, the meal was nothing special despite the stunning location.

Yesterday, the group relocated to Glenelg, where I’d booked a meeting room overlooking the beach. We spent three hours learning from Richard Turner, a successful entrepreneur who has grown several billion-dollar companies. His presentation was a timely reminder that everything gets easier in business if you can achieve scale and build a team to share the load.

We finished our afternoon with a walk along the Glenelg promenade before making our way back to Adelaide Airport and heading home. It was an intensive three days. However, our location on the banks of the Torrens River was a superb choice. It gave us plenty of green outdoor space to explore between all the academic activities.

Central Adelaide certainly is a beautiful location. Although, we all agreed that it’s a rather sleepy town compared to Sydney or Melbourne. I will say one thing in its favour. The flight path into Adelaide Airport took us directly over the central city. We enjoyed us a superb view of our hotel and the surrounding parklands as we came into land, with the Adelaide Hills providing the perfect backdrop. It’s as good a view as the final approach over Sydney harbour.

Making a beeline for Bowral

My EO Forum has just completed its annual mini retreat.  This is our overnight event where we go away as a group to bond, learn together and experience something new.  Once again, I was our retreat organiser.  I’d set myself a high bar after a memorable event in Queenstown in June this year. I’m delighted to report that I successfully delivered on the brief once again.

This time we travelled to the Southern Highlands, about 90 minutes south of Sydney. After staying in a large homestead in New Zealand, the group was keen to do the same again. After a little research, I stumbled across a fabulous old sandstone homestead on a small acreage a few miles out of town near Mittagong.

Booking the homestead required a minimum two-night stay. As a result, I went down on Wednesday afternoon to do our group grocery shopping and prepare the homestead for our time together. This includes resetting the dining room as a boardroom, preparing the outdoor courtyard as a breakout space, preparing for breakfast and so on.

I also took advantage of our proximity to Bowral. Garry and I needed to purchase some unique gifts for two special occasions, including a 50th Birthday celebration last night with Liz Benson (dinner for four of us at Gowings in the QT Hotel) and Zoe Hollis’ engagement party tomorrow. I found a couple of superb gifts for both events in some of Bowral’s popular upmarket gift boutiques.

We gave Liz a pottery cottage that doubles as a tealight candle holder (or incense holder), and I found a large wooden cheese board or serving platter that Zoe and Ben can use for hosting guests in their new home. That’s the pottery cottage in the image above.

We kicked off our mini retreat on Thursday with morning tea in a spacious, light-filled lounge room before retiring to the converted dining room for a two-hour training session hosted by Rachael Heald. Rachael delivered a brilliant session on change management principles and practices. The group loved it - several even said it was the highlight of their retreat. We then broke for lunch in an intimate cobblestone courtyard outside.

The rest of the day was spent on our monthly forum meeting. We then finished with wine and cheese before a shuttle bus collected the group and took us to Eschalot in Berrima. Here we enjoyed a private dining experience in an old sandstone cottage. More great wine and food were consumed!

On Friday, we enjoyed a sumptuous breakfast in the dining room before departing for Bowal Honey Farm for a once-in-a-lifetime experience (OIL). The honey farm operates from a national trust property near Bowral, which was once owned by the Fairfax family, founders of the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper empire. Owner and Master Beekeeper Hamish Ta-Me spent the morning with us delivering a special VIP tour.

Hamish normally conducts these tours for overseas groups and high-profile guests of Tourism Australia. However, he kindly agreed to do the same tour for us. Over the course of three hours, we learned about bees and their lifecycle, opened a hive while wearing a full-length beekeeping suit, held a handful of bees, collected a frame of honey, and harvested it to take home. We also spent time tasting a variety of honeys. I honestly never thought you could spend three hours talking about bees and love every minute of it.

It was a truly spectacular experience. Holding a handful of bees was exhilarating. We could literally feel them vibrating, an amazing sensory encounter, as they attempted to communicate—just as they do with their sisters within the hive. In the video below, my hand is in the middle on the right-hand side. Yes, I am holding a handful of bees! 

Here are a few fun facts we learned from Hamish. The average lifespan of a bee is approximately 60 days. 20 days as larvae inside the honeycomb. 20 days maturing inside the hive and a final 20 days foraging for nectar. Almost all the bees in the hive are females. Only 20-30 bees are male drones.

Queen bees live for five years. They mate only once. After hatching in the hive, they fly off to join male drone bees in a mass mating location. They mate with about 30 drones, gathering enough semen to continually fertilise eggs for five years. However, the mating ritual is a death sentence for the male drone. The act of copulation literally rips them open, and they fall to the ground dead. If the queen fails to mate with enough drones, she’ll be killed by the hive after her return.

The hive creates new queen bees by simply enlarging a handful of honeycomb cells and feeding nothing but royal jelly to the larvae inside. The first queen to emerge then goes on a killing spree. She kills all her unborn princess sisters before they can hatch. In other words, to become a queen, a princess bee must murder her siblings and inspire the manslaughter of dozens of males before she can live a long and happy life.

We concluded our time together with a relaxed farewell lunch at Franquette Crêperie, an upscale French crepe restaurant in Bowral. I was a bit sceptical about savoury crepes. However, our lunch was delicious. About 2:30 pm, we said our farewells, and I drove back to Sydney in time for Garry and me to venture out for dinner with Liz and Adam Benson.

Silly Season antics

We've completed another year of silly season antics. I honestly can’t recall such a full diary of events and invites in the countdown to Christmas. This year's party highlights started with a long lunch hosted by EO's Sydney Chapter at Taronga Zoo on 29 November. Here, we enjoyed a stunning sweeping floor-to-ceiling panorama of Sydney Harbour despite heavy rain most of the afternoon.  

A few days later, lunch was followed by an overnight excursion to Robertson in the Southern Highlights, about two hours south of Sydney.  Garry and I were there to celebrate the wedding of one of our staff at the heritage-listed Robertson Hotel. The service was an outdoor event that ultimately tested the limit for those wearing suits in the blazing Summer sun.  

On the way to Robertson, we stopped for lunch at the Press Shop cafe in Bowral. We both tried the pulled lamb salad on a beetroot hummus base. It was stunning.  So much so, that we revived the recipe for a Christmas party we hosted on our apartment balcony a week later. A dozen people joined us for a lengthy cocktail and finger food experience on our rooftop balcony before retreating indoors for dessert.

We've also hosted a leisurely lunch for staff and contractors at Mimi's in the Coogee Pavillon on 13 December. It's our third staff event there. Garry is somewhat infatuated with the venue. Afterwards, Garry, Mitch and I made our way to Bar Cleveland, up the road from our office. We encountered a group of friends at an outdoor table. We were joined by a long-standing, reputable champagne journalist who convinced each of us to order a bottle of champagne and embark upon a lengthy "tasting session". The rest as they say is history!

The following day, our apartment building hosted its annual resident Christmas BBQ. We made it down to the courtyard for a couple of hours to catch up with our neighbours, including Mark and Sue, who’d invited us for a festive lunch in their courtyard the previous weekend. 

We finished up our silly season antics on Thursday this week with my EO Forum's annual Christmas event. As the evening's organiser, I arranged a private seaplane scenic flight around Sydney Harbour followed by a leisurely banquet on the outdoor deck at The Empire Lounge. Our flight departure was delayed 15 minutes while waiting for one of our traffic-ensnared partners to arrive.  This resulted in some truly spectacular evening sunset images of the city's iconic bridge, one of which opens this post.

The flight took out from Rose Bay towards Manly, then through the heads and along the coast as far south as Bondi and Tamarama beaches. We then returned through the heads and made our way back up the harbour for a couple of dramatic sweeping turns in front of the bridge and opera house.

Last night we kicked off the first of three family events. We enjoyed a cocktail evening with all of Garry's cousins and their partners in Pitt Town.  We'll then repeat the cocktail experience on Christmas Eve with Zoe and Ben at their new home, before enjoying Christmas Day at Garry's sister's house.  We'll be well and truly ready for our two-week road trip to the Northern Rivers region starting 27 December.

Marsupial moments

I’ve just returned from my EO Forum’s annual overnight mini-retreat. Regular readers will recall that last year the group flew a hot air balloon in Melbourne, and visited Canberra in 2022. This year we stayed overnight on the Gold Coast.

I organised this year’s mini-retreat. As always, I was determined to deliver a memorable event. You’ll recall I organised our main annual retreat in Wellington in March last year. As I’ve blogged before, EO is big on developing the “whole person”. As a result, a great retreat needs to include people presenting on commercial topics, as well as people offering unique, or eclectic, perspectives on life. We also try to schedule a “once in a lifetime” experience.

This year I booked us into spectacular Sky Apartments at Peppers Broadbeach. Here we hosted a presentation by an old friend, Liz, who transformed her business from a physical operation employing more than 40 people to an entirely virtual organization that doesn’t maintain a single physical office.

Later that evening her husband, Adam, joined us to share his experience running their company, as well as inspiring the team with stories about their tree-change lifestyle living on a hobby farm near Ballina. Garry and I will be spending four days with them after Christmas.

We then spent Thursday afternoon at Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary where we touched and held a koala while enjoying beer and wine with a light charcuterie board. The photos we received were spectacular. This is the first time I’ve ever held a koala. They’re heavier than they look! The little fella I held was at least 10kg or more.

Many years ago I got a few photos of me with koalas in the wild. It was Easter 1990. Three of us drove to Portland to spend the long weekend with a friend, Dean, on his family farm. While there we ventured out to nearby Mount Richmond National Park in search of koalas. We eventually came across one high in a tree. We climbed the tree and briefly touched it. However, if truth be told, the poor animal kept climbing to the tree's highest point to escape us. 

We subsequently encountered a second animal sitting half along a sturdy horizontally extended tree limb devoid of vegetation. The koala was very subdued. One at a time, we gingerly shuffled out onto the limb, sat next to it, put our arm around it briefly, took photos, and left it in peace. In hindsight, the animal was probably deeply unwell, or near death, as its exposed location, lack of fear and immobility were very abnormal.

We finished our afternoon on the Gold Coast with leisurely drinks on the outdoor patio at Burleigh Pavillon. Our corner table overlooked the arcing white sands of Burleigh Beach. We then relocated for dinner in a private dining space at Social Eating in Broadbeach. Garry and I ate there when we visited the Gold Coast last year.  Although the food this time wasn't as impressive.

We held our normal monthly business review meeting on Friday morning, followed by a leisurely lunch at Miss Moneypenny, a local institution. I ordered the truffle and mushroom risotto, which was mouth-wateringly good. Then, it was straight to the airport for our flight home.

Yesterday’s weather in Queensland was horrendous. The rain absolutely bucketed down. More than once the minivan taking us to the airport had to gingerly weave its way around or through localized flooding. Flights were also chronically delayed. Although, by sheer luck, our Jetstar flight was on time. All this was in stark contrast to the glorious weather we enjoyed flying in and out of Sydney.

However, everything I hate about Jetstar was borne out by my experience at the boarding gate. They weighed my hand luggage, declared it 4kg overweight and promptly hit me up for a $75 “gate upgrade charge”. Had I checked in my bag they'd have charged me nothing. Same bag, same weight, but loaded differently on the aircraft.

As the years pass, my love for Qantas slowly erodes. Year after year the airline quietly eliminates or downgrades benefits for Platinum frequent flyers while maintaining a Machiavellian Chinese Wall between its full-service airline and budget offshoot.

It’s happy to consolidate Jetstar’s performance as part of its annual results, while completely negating any frequent flyer benefits for Platinum members by declaring Jetstar “another airline”.  For example, my booking - completed on the Qantas website - included a Qantas-branded flight to the Gold Coast. This wouldn’t gall me as much if it wasn’t simultaneously pulling Qantas-branded aircraft off routes and replacing them with Jetstar alternatives.

Entrepreneurial excursions

Last weekend my EO Forum spent four days on retreat in the Hobart region. As a group we go away together twice a year, once for an extended period and once overnight. I organised last year’s event in Wellington where we meet inspiring business people and speakers offering unique life perspectives.

This year we flew into Hobart from Sydney early Thursday morning. Our first day was primarily a boardroom session focused personal and professional challenges. We then took a walking tour of the harbour side district, learning about the colourful characters and historic events that shaped Tasmania’s early years.

Dinner that evening was booked at Aloft, a restaurant located on the upper floor of Brooke Street Pier. The venue delivered a stunning view across Hobart harbour, accompanied by an awesome degustation menu.

The following morning we drove north to scenic Coles Bay. Here we met with Declan Brown, the owner of Oyster Bay Tours, a family business offering tours of the acclaimed Freycinet Marine Farm. Declan and his wife established their tour business six years ago.

At the time the farm was receiving regular enquiries from people seeking to experience the exclusive oyster farm tour offered by Saffire. Garry and I enjoyed one of these behind the scene tours in 2013. Declan had previously worked as a private tour guide for this exclusive resort.

Declan shared with us the experience of establishing and building his own business, before taking into the water to harvest fresh oysters straight from the water. We then learnt to shuck an oyster, a skill that’s always eluded me. We also sampled freshly cooked mussels from the farm’s nearby ocean concession.

We stayed the night in cabins at Freycinet Lodge, enjoying a hearty meal at the lodge’s Bay restaurant. Afterwards we sweet talked an unsuspecting staff member into opening the reception gift store so that we could raid its ice cream freezer.

The following morning we rose before dawn to hike up to the Wineglass Bay lookout in Freycinet National Park. The view was just as spectacular as I recall it a decade ago. We then made our way back to Hobart, stopping briefly at the Killara Distillery for a whiskey testing. The distillery owner, Kristy Booth-Lark, later joined us for dinner and shared her entrepreneurial story in establishing a business it a traditionally male dominated industry. 

We finished our day with a couple of hours at MONA before heading back into town for dinner at Franks on the waterfront. The following morning the rest of the group headed for the airport while I caught the high speed catamaran back to MONA.

I’d decided weeks earlier, I’d like to revisit MONA as it’s always been one Tasmanian venue that Garry steadfastly refuses to visit whenever we’re in Hobart. I booked tickets for two of its new mind-bending visual and auditory exhibits. Both were phenomenal experiences. I particularly enjoyed Event Horizon, by James Turrell, a pulsating light exhibit projected in an enormous white auditorium with seamless, curving walls.