What is your connection to Melton and Moorabool?
Over the past 35 years, my family have been part of the Gisborne, Melton and Bacchus Marsh landscape. We initially settled in Gisborne, put all our boys through Bacchus Marsh Grammar … later we all moved and settled in Melton West and Harkness suburbs. Melton is a progressive satellite city that is rapidly modernising to meet the needs of its community.
How long have you lived in the area?
In the region, 35 years.
What are you passionate about?
I am passionate about anything and everything I get involved in to make the community I live in a better place.
You developed the game Gossimo, which turns table tennis into a battle of two cities and a bid to topple a king. How did you come up with the concept?
My business partner and his wife teamed with my wife and myself to form a start-up company. He is the inventor type and we both played table tennis together growing up. He told me about a new game idea, showed me a homemade replica. There was nothing like it in the market in a 130 years since table tennis was invented in the 1880s in England. We spent many hours, days and nights developing the characters, the rules and Game Box for the market. Two and a half years later we were ready.
What’s the latest development with Gossimo?
In parallel to the massive time and effort in marketing in Australia, we are chasing a distribution medium for the world market. Beyond that, we have further game versions on the drawing board.
You’ve got to be an interesting character to develop a game. What would people be surprised to know about you?
I was the Christmas Lantern Man in the region for 19 years (1989-2008). Every Christmas, I would door-knock the community to get their neighbourhoods together as one on Christmas Eve, providing the glue – a lantern kit – to create a common purpose on the night before Christmas … when everyone came together at 8.45pm to light up the street roadside, it brought magic to the community. Some said it was even better than Christmas Day celebrations.
What is the best thing about living in Melton?
The majority of people are friendly, down-to-earth people that call a spade a spade. They say it like it is. I appreciate that.
If you could change anything about the area, what would it be?
Build some man-made mountains in the area – not as big as Macedon – to take away the flatness of terrain. If labour and toil built the Great Ocean Road, we can do that. Also, electrification of rail line sped up. We are the fastest-developing corridor in Victoria.
