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BEAUFORT, VICTORIA Pat and I had the idea in our minds of having our own business, a grocery store. We chased the advertisements and looked around at different possibilities. We looked in Creswick, Swan Hill, even one down near Wilson's Prom and finally settled on the one in Beaufort. It had been let to run into the ground and we felt we could build it up. I had done some training by working at Safeway and Pat had been working in the grocery business for years. I knew the computer, business end and she knew the customer side. We started in Beaufort in 1982; the store was a Foodmaster, which eventually became Foodworks. Our son Will was about twelve years old at the time and he moved with us but the others were older by then and didn't come except for lots of visits. Will went by bus to school in Ballarat. He stayed at home until he was about 16 and then he went to live with my brother, his uncle. Will is doing engineering now and he is bright. He is real bright! Our young grandson and Cheryl moved in with us and we took him on. We had a fairly full life looking after children! We built a house up there; it was a kit home down on a bushy property on a dirt road. It was very dry up there. The whole area around there had been gold fields; that was a busy gold mining area in its day. I love gemstones so we used to all jump in the car and go out and collect rocks. We collected agates but what I usually got were the very dark agates. I set up the Gemstone Club in Sale. I still have the tumbler and polisher to this day. Judy laughingly reminisces that she used to pick up buckets full of rocks for her mother and then her mother would quietly tip them out without her seeing; but not before Dad looked through them!