Peter Lovell

Interviewed by Trish Levido on 6 January 2010
Subject: Business, Spit Junction

Peter Lovell. He looked at quite a few stores in Randwick, Sutherland, and Gladesville. I remember going out to look at them. But that one was close to home, we were living at Balmoral at the time. He bought the house when they moved from the country. The Robert Reid’s business folded, the whole chain, he could see things were going wrong. The management wouldn’t listen to him. He tried to tell them what was happening but they wouldn’t listen so he decided to go out on his own. He’d worked long enough for other people to make money, so may as well make some money for himself.

Trish Levido. And that’s why he decided to buy himself a drapery store.

Peter Lovell. Yes, he’d been in that game since he was 14.

Trish Levido. Did he like it?

Peter Lovell. I think so it was the only thing he knew. He worked in it well into his 80s. He’d been in retail all his life. He started his working life as a 14 year old working at Wynn’s at Newcastle as a ticket writer. He then became a window dresser, then a merchandiser, and then a department head, that how he ended up in Cootamundra. It was after the Depression and before the war. There was a company called Cohen’s where he took a job there as a department manager. Then the war broke out, and after the war Broodland’s, a country store sold out to the Robert Reid group and they approached him to become the store manager. So that’s how he ended up working for Robert Reid, and then ended up in Sydney.