Allan Gillespie: A life of zest and gusto

TWO years after Allan and Fran Gillespie sold their business, Allan still would load the van up with ginger beer and a mattress and head off to festivals.

He was at the Taste of the Huon in March and at Easter drove to the National Folk Festival in Canberra.

On Tuesday, May 11, Allan, the friendliest face behind any stall at any festival, died of liver cancer the day that was slotted for his and Frans departure to drive across the Nullarbor to Perth.

I met Allan and Fran before they started Gillespies Ginger Beer, in about 1992, when they were boronia and kangaroo paw growers at the Gorse Hill Farm at Gordon (which could just as well have been called Bracken Farm).

Allan was born on December 20 1940, in the same street in County Durham in England where he was also schooled. His choices on leaving school at 15 were to become an electrician or a fitter, and then go down the mines. He became a fitter, but as soon as he got his ticket at 18, he joined the Merchant Navy.

After his stint in the navy he would work on boats for six months and then travel for another six going to India, New York, Ceylon, New Zealand and Mozambique. In 1972 he was marooned in Melbourne without a ship to join, and came to Tasmania to kill time, but fell in love with the place, particularly a 4ha block at Gordon, south of Hobart.

By this time, he had become a Buddhist and a strict vegetarian, and went off to work in the Pilbara mines for two years to earn the money to buy the block. Fran says he relied for sustenance on a huge wheels of cheese that were delivered to the canteen.

Back in Tasmania with his land purchased, Allan sought company by placing an ad in the personal columns of the Mercury: “Man 36, seeks lady to go to concerts with. Vegie.”

Fran answered the ad, and a year later, on October 30 1978, they married. Frans 12-year-old daughter, Francie, was bridesmaid.

Fran says they had no understanding of farming and Allan even welcomed gorse as a legume that would benefit the soil. At first Allan planted kiwifruit, but they got phytophora, then he planted the flowers and did a postal run.

They had a Jersey cow Lucy, and “because we a cow we had to get pigs”, and there were turkeys, said Fran.

“I had an Everhot slow-combustion oven with no thermostat and had to cook by the seat of my pants,” she said. “Before, I had always followed every recipe by the book thats how I cooked.

“I had never cooked completely vegetarian before, but I learned, and then I cooked that better than anything else.

“I expanded Allan’s food horizons, and then pointed out it was cheaper for us to eat meat than anything else, seeing we had lambs and pigs. That was the ploy I used that he was costing us money; I wanted to get some iron into him.”

Allan’s cooking skills also picked up from days when he would live on rice.

On Fran’s 60th birthday he cooked a five-course lunch of eight of her women friends. Their son Robbie remarks that he “was very good a flat things”, pancakes and pavlova in particular.

In 1979 their son Geordie was born 25 weeks prematurely, and died the same day.

“It was cataclysmic”, said Fran. “Immediately after Geordie died I had a heart attack4 and Alan was loathe to risk another pregnancy.”

But Fran said she felt very strongly “that Allan’s genes shouldn’t stay with Allan. I felt he ought to have a child for the benefit of society”. And on April 27, 1982, Robbie was born.

As Robbie’s ninth birthday approached Fran says they were in “one of our austere phases” and she decided to make ginger ale for the birthday party. She did, and very soon there were 12 ginger “plants” lined up on the window sill.

Allan and Robbie took some of their “backyard brew” to the 1995 Taste of the Huon at Snug, where David Thomas, then of Taverner’s Products suggested they ramp up to commercial production. He offered his Glenorchy bottling plant and found a yeast to replace the ginger “plants”.

Robbie thought he was saving for a CD Rom when he bought piglets, fattened them up and sold them for about $900, but that in fact became the seed money for the business.

Robbie, then 13, and the only one in the family with any business sense, did a business plan. An accountant showed Robbie how to set up the books. The idea was that the business would pay for Robbie’s university fees.

When I interviewed him in 1996, Robbies aim was to be an astrophysicist; in the event he became an aid worker, and now works for Save the Children in the Solomon Islands.

Robbie said people were amazingly supportive of the young entrepreneur, none more so than his dad, who did all the leg work.

“Dad also is better at sales patter,” Robbie said at 13. “I like the working out the costs. Dad enjoys contact with people and the selling.”

Allan delivered Gillespie’s Ginger Beer to shops and cafes but always his favourite outlet was festivals. On one trip to the Woodford Folk Festival in Queensland they passed through Burpengary, where there was a straw manufacturer Fran had been “bullying” over the phone for some time.

She wanted waxed paper “barber’s pole” straws that were long and would stay above the rim of the bottle no matter what level the ginger beer was at.

The owner of the factory was determined he was not making any more long straws, but Fran was more determined, and they ended up paying $7000 for four pallets of straws, the only quantity the factory would turn on the machines for. The job provided employment for two men for a week.

A stockpile of ginger beer shattered in 1993, when a bushfire ripped through the hillside at Gordon. Fran was away in Western Australia, but neighbours thought they both were away and the fire brigade concentrated on homes that were occupied.

So Allan, surrounded by flames 13m high, trusted to the roof sprinkler installed only a couple of weeks earlier, and raced around beating out spot fires.

When help finally arrived, a completely blackened Allan was boiling up a billy on the embers of the fire and reading a book of Buddhist poetry. He waved off a TV crew who wanted to film him.

“Allan never had a business bone in his body; he worked on trust,” said Fran. “When it came to selling the business he worked on who he wanted it to be sold to, not how much money hed get for it.”

He was pleased to find Sammy and Alison Loney, who bought the business (and a stock of long straws) in 2008, but Allan still was the face of Gillespies Ginger Beer at festivals.

“Allan was so appreciative of my cooking,” said Fran. “He always insisted I cook the Christmas pudding I made when I first met him. It was in a Women’s Weekly pull-out for 1978 and I still make it Irish whiskey plum pudding.”

And Christmas cooking features in Allan’s last wishes for his ashes. He wants some of them put into an hour glass.

“Put them where you can see them,” he told Fran. “And use them to time the Christmas cooking.”

“The funeral director seemed to think it could be done,” said Fran. “He didnt turn a hair at this request.”

As you might expect, Allan Gillespie’ s funeral on May 16, although sad, was not solemn. The venerable Choje Lama Shedrup conducted the Buddhist service, mourners brought cake, and sang along with Always Look on Bright Side of Life.

Allan leaves his wife Fran, Francie Wastell and her husband Alistair and children Rohan 11, and Niamh 18 months, and Robbie and his partner Lucy Watt.