M O N E Y TA L K S
Life’s a lottery P H OTO G R A P H E D BY A N N A B R I G G S
Robert Fisher became a partner in Harcourts real estate company at age 28 and his ‘drought-prone sheep farm’ became the Cape Kidnappers Golf Course. He talks to John Bristed.
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obert Fisher grew up in Khandallah, eventually following his father, Heathcote (Hec) Fisher into the management of Harcourt & Co. Hec as a young man of 20 had arrived in Wellington from Auckland in 1923. Thirty years later Hec was a widower who had for a long time been a solo and ‘somewhat Victorian' father of two boys and a girl.
I never worked directly for my father. I worked for the accountant. There was a Chinese wall; my father never interfered with the work I did at Harcourts, apart from on the valuing side because he was the senior valuer. I did a valuation course, and then worked in all aspects of the company; a bit of administration, residential selling, and commercial selling. Only a few years after I joined the company, I was 28, my father said to me, ‘I’m retiring, I’m out of here in six months and off to Taupō.’ And I said, ‘What about these old fellows?’ – our sales people plus a couple of valuers who were all in their fifties. He said, ‘Either handle them or they’ll handle you. You can sink or you can swim.’ Probably the best advice anyone could give a son. They accepted me, I don’t know how, because my experience was pretty limited. The real-estate business was simple in those days. Everything was done by the shake of a hand, very seldom did anyone welsh on a deal. Real estate deals now need 17 pages of fine print. It’s gone 180 degrees from Let the buyer beware, to Let the vendor beware.
What was your father like? He came from the no frills school. He was a good man but pretty strict, particularly on my sister. He came from an era where you didn’t have bread, butter, and jam. You had bread and butter, or bread and jam. How did he influence you? He didn’t influence so much as direct me. We had arguments because he was an arch-conservative, but in the end he would always do what he thought was right and most the time it was. He gave us a discipline. I had a slight mathematical bent so I took some commerce degree subjects in my last year at Scots College. I have to say I was surprised when at university I found there was an education unit as part of the degree which was far more interesting than much of the dry commerce subjects.
You were an accountant anyway so it was going back to something you knew? Yes. The job wasn’t difficult. The accounting side I enjoyed because it offered variety. My previous experience had included doing the accounts for big companies. It gave me a very good background. I became a member of the Wellington Rotary Club. I learnt a lot from that; in my early thirties, I was the youngest member. Listening and talking to people like the head of Banking New Zealand, the
What was your first job? Harcourt’s accountant departed on extended leave and I got to look after the rather large trust account for a short time. After an OE year in the 1960s I joined Wilberfoss Harden, an accounting company, and subsequently Harcourt & Co.
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