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around the malls or hanging—just getting into trouble. In the Shire it was about challenging yourself to be the best, especially at sport.’
    At first, Greg and his brother Darren did everything together. Pat and Noelene took them to cricket, football, athletics, the beach. Then they began to specialise, and soon Greg’s running attracted the attention of Frank McCaffery, a World War II veteran who’d been a prisoner-of-war on Crete. Frank became a respected local athletics coach and co-founded the Nowra Amateur Athletic Club. He was mentor to a team of promising runners, including future Commonwealth Games 5000-m (3.1-mile) gold medallist and multiple City to Surf winner Andrew Lloyd. They trained at Wyatt Park, adjacent to Lidcombe Oval, and went on camps down the south coast, where they honed their cross-country skills and developed their fitness on the hilly tracks around the Shoalhaven River.
    Frank McCaffery died a few years ago, but he always maintained that if Greg had concentrated on running, he could have been up there with Australia’s outstanding endurance runners, Steve Moneghetti and Robert de Castella.
    By this time Greg had made up his mind that the Higher School Certificate was not for him, and so he decided to leave school in year 10. He’d always thought he’d do something in the building trade. He didn’t want to go into printing, like his Dad and elder brother Darren, largely because he didn’t want to be stuck inside. He’d done woodworking at school, and working in the fresh air appealed to him.
    In January 1981 he was offered an apprenticeship by a family friend. Noelene wasn’t convinced it was the right move.
    â€˜I thought Greg should have stayed at school on a sporting scholarship. Any time they wanted someone to represent the school at sport, it was always Greg who was first out. Greg played all the teachers at squash and beat everybody. He should’ve stayed on a sporting scholarship but we had friends in the plastering game who offered him a job, so he went to work for them.’
    Greg, on the other hand, was delighted. ‘It was a huge breakthrough to get an apprenticeship. It didn’t matter what trade it was. I would have taken anything. It was an apprenticeship and I thought, “There’s a future in an apprenticeship.”’
    G REG WAS BEAMING WITH PRIDE when he signed on as an apprentice plasterer with a small company, run by family friends. It was a major step towards independence. However, he couldn’t afford a car, so his employers had to pick him up on the way to a job or Greg had to get himself there by train—no fun when you’re lugging around a bag of plasterer’s tools.
    Unfortunately, Greg’s first flush of pride at securing his future didn’t last long. The family friends who’d given him the job found themselves in financial difficulties and had to put him off after only 18 months. To add insult to injury, he discovered they’d also underpaid him. It was a sobering reality check. Pat helped Greg take his case to the Apprenticeship Commission where he won his back pay. But he was still without a job.
    His luck changed during a squash game a couple of months later. ‘I was talking to this guy after a game where he’d beaten me in five sets and he said, “What do you do for a living?” I said, “I’m a plasterer.” He said, “I am too.” I told him I was out of work and I was still an apprentice, going to tech but I’d been put off. He said, “I’ll talk to my boss and see if we’ve got any extra work.” He was as good as his word and called me the next week, telling me to give his boss a call.’
    Greg made the call and Arthur Blizzard, owner of Plaster Linings of Loftus, agreed to take over his apprenticeship. Greg had struck pay dirt in two ways: first, Arthur and his wife Jan turned out to be wonderful employers and later