WHEN Alan and Robyn Lewis decided to go into business in Heywood in the late 1970s things were a lot different to today.

Now, 42 years later, the time has come for them to move on – they have sold Heywood Plumbing Supplies and are looking to spending more time chasing the sun.

While they are stalwarts of the Heywood community – the SES and Wood, Wine and Roses are two organisations who have benefitted immensely from their efforts – it almost didn’t come to be.

Mr Lewis spent his childhood moving around regional Victoria – his father was a manager with Elders – and was at school at Coleraine and Hamilton before deciding the workforce was more his go.

“I did applied science in Year 10 and it got a bit difficult,” he said.

“I thought ‘this is not for me’.”

So he applied for jobs and the decision to become a plumber was one he made under a bit of time pressure in 1974 when he had the possibility of three different apprenticeships in different trades.

“I did an interview with the railways and missed out on a plumbing position,” he said.

“They offered me an electrical one and I had a few minutes to make my decision in front of the examiners.

“I made a split-second decision, but I’ve enjoyed it.”

Instead Mr Lewis moved to Portland to begin an apprenticeship with Price Plumbing.

On completing that, he moved to Hamilton where he had work for six weeks.

“The job I had wasn’t going anywhere, I could see that was a dead-end street,” Mr Lewis said.

“So I jumped in a car and visited Reg Price, the plumber that was here in Heywood, and I asked ‘what do you reckon, can I get a business up and going’.

“He said ‘come down tomorrow’  and that’s how it began (in August 1979).”

There were a couple of other things that helped him choose Heywood.

“I did a lot of work here when I was in Portland,” Mr Lewis said.

“I also became a member of the Young Farmers up here which I enjoyed.”

But there was an even more important reason.

“I had started going out with Robyn and she lived here,” he said.

“We started the business together and we’ll close it together.”

While the Lewis couple had run the business together, Mr Lewis remembers how it was meant to be his father, rather than his wife, by his side.

“My father and I had a dream of going into business together,” he said.

“But he died just after I finished my apprenticeship. We talked about him managing it and me doing the plumbing.

“He wanted to have a change of pace.”

When Mr Lewis first got to Heywood he worked as a plumber – the retail side of the business was started a little later.

“I worked as a sole trader for a few years and after we got married we decided to form a partnership,” he said.

The first shop was on the site of the current one on Edgar St – they lived in a flat behind a block of shops which were there and Mr Lewis used the shed out the back for about three years.

About 29 years ago they decided to branch into retail.

Initially that was in a shed behind the old service station on the highway opposite where Lowan Steel is now.

From there they moved next to the bottle shop on Scott St for a few years.

“Then we decided it was time for us to buy our own building,” Mr Lewis said.

“We bought the land (on the Edgar St site they began on) and built the shed – there was only a brick toilet block when we moved in there (the block of shops burned down earlier).

“We had to demolish that to build the shed – the old shed was still at the back and is still there now.”

Owning a supplies shop also meant he often had first crack at installing what customers bought.

Mrs Lewis said customers came into the shop to pay their bills, to buy supplies and for the oldest reason of all.

“Some were happy just to have a chat,” she said.

Another benefit was it was easier to have holidays when they employed staff.

“We always had one keen enough to run the shop,” Mr Lewis said.

“Now it’s too difficult, if we want to go away we have to shut the doors.”

Plenty of work

Mr Lewis said plumbing had “changed dramatically” in his time.

“When I first came here a lot of my work was repairing tanks,” he said.

“We expanded into a lot of areas. I always looked at other avenues to get into to try and promote the business.

“In Heywood you have different work for different seasons.

“During summer there’s a lot of windmills and farm work and in the off season it is general plumbing.

“We did get into a lot of new homes at one stage.”

While Mr and Mrs Lewis have run the business on their own in recent times, at its peak there were two tradesmen and an apprentice also with them – son Marcus was among them for about 10 years before deciding on a career change and moving to Portland as a truck driver (their daughter Rachael lives in Sydney where she is financial controller of a company running the M7 Motorway).

“When I first started I went over to the South Australian border, the other way to Bessiebelle, up to Branxholme and down to Portland,” he said.

“Over the years I brought it back.

“We had the contract with the timber mill at Dartmoor which was the mill and 16 houses.

“I’d have two or three blokes there two or three days a week just keeping up that work.

“Some days I used to travel more than I’d work. I’d be at the border in the morning and Bessiebelle in the afternoon.”

But while he has been the largest as well as the only plumber in Heywood employing staff, there hasn’t been a lack of competition in the trade.

“When I first came here there was a part-time plumber and there’s always been plumbers from Portland coming up here,” he said.

“We’ve never had it solo until this year and I’m the only working plumber in Heywood at the moment – one guy’s retired but still does bits and pieces.”

And it will continue that way for a while yet – while they have sold the business Mr Lewis will still be plying his trade when he’s around – like most tradespeople the pandemic has been extremely good for business.

“I still enjoy what I’m doing but I’m going to enjoy a little bit more time doing what I want to do,” he said.

“The next three months are going to be flat out catching up on the backlog, but I’ll probably never catch up.

“I think my client base will come back to Heywood people, with the shop they were coming from Gorae, Mount Richmond, everywhere.

“A lot of people because they’ve been home have probably found more faults and they couldn’t go anywhere so they just did jobs on their house.”

The sale “sort of just happened”, Mr Lewis said.

“Someone wanted the shop and was prepared to pay the right price and it’s given us the opportunity to semi-retire and chase the sun.

Mrs Lewis said she would miss the day-to-day interaction with customers – “42 years is a long time” – while Mr Lewis said a lot of customers had become friends.

“We’d like to say thank you to our customers for their support in the shop,” Mr Lewis said.

“We’re going to miss the retail ones.”

Serving the community

But it’s not all been about plumbing.

Mr Lewis joined the local SES in 1980, shortly after it was formed, and when he left it in 2016 he was a life member, having been unit controller over the years and a stalwart of its presence in Heywood along with Wayne McKindley.

He was also in the Army Reserve when he moved to Heywood and continued with it (based in Portland) after the shift.

But the 2006 Heywood Citizen of the Year is perhaps best known for his role with Wood, Wine and Roses, Glenelg Shire’s largest event.

A founding committee member, he remains there as vice-president – his contribution, and those of the other founding members, was covered in a story in the Observer recently.

Modest about those achievements, he instead points to a town he loves.

“Heywood’s been good to me,” Mr Lewis said.

“We’ve really had a good customer base, we’ve enjoyed our business here, but this is a new chapter in our lives.”