![]() Tom was enormously proud and supportive of his wife of 23 years – he’d travel with her all over the world on her crazy long distance swimming adventures. His big plans, her long lists – in every sense, it was a marriage made in heaven. Tom went looking for the good in people, Anna kept a tally of any wrong-doings. Just as capable but a lot less voluble, Anna was the Ying to Tom’s Yang, the scientist who complemented – completed – the story teller. One of the primary reasons Tom Strachan could blaze the trail he did was the support and strength he had around him. He helped people be the best versions of themselves. The bastard was relentless – used to check in every month to see how I was going. Never would have done it if he hadn’t challenged me. “How’dja know Tom?” “Didn’t know him that well but pushed me to set up my own blah blah blah. This spirit of abundance was a consistent theme of the discussion during the festivities that followed the formalities at Eagle Farm. ![]() “You can have everything in life you want, if you will just help other people get what they want” – Zig Ziglar. His constant eye-out for others underpinned his approach to business. ![]() Tom believed in people, more than they believed in themselves.” He stretched people, he took them outside their comfort zone, had them take on challenges they would have never even contemplated. “His enthusiasm, his determination, his courage, it was contagious. In his eyes, every day was a cracker,” Shearer Smith reflected. “Ask Tom how his day was going, and the response was always the same – ‘never had a bad one!’ he’d say. Tom Strachan was on his way.Īs his cousin and best mate Andrew Shearer-Smith told the gathering, “Straco never saw problems, only opportunities, and pursued them with unquantifiable passion and energy”. Within four years, he was at the helm of a booming business with some 2000 contractors on its books. In no time at all, AWX would also have tentacles in the mining, construction, health and hospitality industries. Returning to his rural roots at the end of high school, in 2000 he co-founded AWX, a labour hire firm initially conceived to address employment short falls in the agriculture sector. You couldn’t have your boots that full and not leave a footprint. He was not a spiteful teenager, just excessively spirited, a wild kid with an even wilder imagination, and precious little regard for boundaries.īut there was never a teacher who dared utter the words, “you’ll never amount to anything, Strachan” because even in the context of his unruliness, it was abundantly clear, Tom the terror was destined to make his mark somewhere, doing something. In his time wearing the light and dark blue of BGS, he spent a good portion of his days in detention. ![]() It was more than a little ironic that one of Tom Strachan’s most recent (and by accident, public) deeds was to donate $500,000 to his old school, Brisbane Grammar, to help fund rural bursaries. Yes, Tom Strachan was an utter force of nature, a category one cyclone with the power and preparedness to challenge the status quo, even tip it on its head. “Shit – he did all that in 49 years? I’m struggling to get my socks on in the morning without putting my back out….” You could sense the men in the grandstand, squirming a little uncomfortably on the wooden bench seats, harbouring pangs of guilt and adequacy. Did he ever stop? When did he sleep? And are we sure there was only one Tom Strachan? Perhaps he had a couple of stunt doubles? Then of course there were his most important roles – proud and involved father of Bella, Noah, Lewis and Rosie, loving husband of Anna, loyal brother to Helen, Scott and Margo, dutiful son of Roderick and Glen. Ground-breaking businessman, entrepreneur, cowboy, philanthropist, mentor, mate, larrikin, lodge man, red neck, gentleman, marathon man, spear fisherman, hunter, heli-skier, skipper, story-teller extraordinaire – the list was extraordinary. They filled the members’ grandstand and for two and a half hours, listened intently to the heartfelt tributes, the songs and poems that had been penned in his honour, speakers scrolling through the different dimensions of Tom’s life, and reflecting on his astonishing list of achievements. And what a turnout it was, an eclectic mix of local business heavyweights, captains of industry, graziers, gardeners, stock agents, busted arse ringers, Brisbane Grammar old boys, and of course a heaving mass of family and friends, gathering to celebrate the comparatively short but gale force life of Thomas Anthony Strachan, AKA Straco, AKA Straight Jacket. The celebration of Noah’s life had been held several days before in the same venue, the popularity of the pair – perhaps more accurately the Strachan family – necessitating a larger than normal memorial setting. ![]()
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