My Story So Far

Marg's family grew up not far from the Scarborough Beach.  The family home in Innaloo is still lived in by her 91 year old aunt.  Marg attended local schools; her family all worked in the area and as a child she spent a lot of time at Scarborough Beach. 

 

Her interests since leaving the Scarborough area included growing wildflowers on a property that she and her first husband purchased just north of the city.  During a six year period they cultivated, processed, coloured and bleached wildflowers; as well as provided fresh wildflowers for overseas markets in Japan and The Netherlands. 

 

When interest in this waned her husband then set up a scuba diving business in Malaga where Marg was enticed into teaching students how to scuba dive.  She instructed students during the summer months, and then took the training course into schools where she would teach about 150 students per week to love the underwater world.  She said it was pretty amazing and loved the opportunity to be back at the beach again.

 

They bought a charter boat which they used to charter dive trips; and also to take people cruising up and down the river.  She was a crew member of the boat and the cook as well as doing the admin, bookkeeping and dealing with all the issues with staff.  They would take people out on dive trips - some of which took up to 5 days. 

 

One of the highlights at this time was the chance to travel to Vanuatu to dive.  One of the diving spots was actually a result of a liner running aground.  A luxury passenger liner had been converted to a troop carrier called the SS President Coolidge and carried about 5,500 troops on board.  It was hit by a friendly mine; and the Captain with great presence of mind managed to run the ship aground to enable people to safely get off the ship.  Only 2 people lost their lives as a direct result of the mine strike.  Fortunately/or unfortunately depending on which side you look at things; the ship slipped back into the channel so they were never able to salvage any of the equipment that was on it.  It is now a dive reef and a living museum; so Marg said when she dived there you could see jeeps, crates of machine guns, typewriters, even coke bottles from the 1940's all scattered around the ship.  Because it has been made into a museum no one can take anything from it, so it is all there for everyone willing to make the dive to see.

 

To get to the bottom of the ship she had to dive to 68 metres - the deepest dive she's ever done.  Normally the safe dive zone is about 18 - 30 metres.  She was pretty excited about having done that dive.

 

She and her husband spent about 10 years running the scuba diving school - until the passion for it ran out.

 

A friend of Marg's suggested that she might do finance; and at her suggestion she started in that direction in 2000.  At that time there were very few courses you could do and they were quite basic; so it was a case of sink or swim for Marg.  In 2004 she was asked to join the LJ Hooker Group as a Finance Broker and she looked after about 5 of their businesses in the northern suburbs - and in fact met Jeff Stephenson (another club member) there.  Several years later she left LJ Hooker and started her own business:  Beyond Tomorrow Finance.  Her aim was to bring new people  into the industry to make it much more diversified.  So she recruits, trains and mentors those that she has brought in to the industry.  Currently she is mentoring 3 people as she really enjoys the teaching aspect.

 

Her business is home based and employs someone to do the data entry which frees Marg up to visit with prospective new clients.

 

As a Rotarian she is hoping that she will be able to give back to the community; as she believes that this is important.  She is inspired by youth and that ignites her passion.

 

She is also very involved in her husband, Scott's Coffee van business and does most of the admin work, employment of new staff, and payroll which allows Scott to focus on stock issues.

 

Thanks Marg.  It is always great to hear about what journeys members have been on to get to where they are now.