As to my heritage, I was born into a lower middle-class family in Tauranga, New Zealand, where we were not rich but well off enough to keep four kids fed and watered. But I call Hamilton my home city, where I spent most of my younger years before I left, or more accurately, was kicked out of home at 16, and then left Hamilton at 17 years old in 1974, and joined the Army, not being interested in the soldier side, but more the career side.

The police had rejected me, I was too old for the cadets, too young for the regular force, so the army called and gave me a cooking apprenticeship. On my site www.chefwilli.com all the periods of my cooking career, activities and travels are there for your viewing! I must admit I was a pretty bad soldier. I used to walk to work behind the buildings so I did not have to salute any officers on the way and even turned up one time to the practice firing range in shorts and got kicked up the backside for that! After a couple of years, I received one stripe on the sleeve, so a Lance Jack it was, but I still continued to drink in the Privates bar, with the Navy boys next door and also in the Corporals bar! Needless to say, I left the army after four years officially classed as a secondary alcoholic, not illness, but just quantity! I did not need a whisky for breakfast, or have ever had that urge for a breakfast drink all through the years. Not bad for someone who joined as a teetotaler, non-smoker god-fearing young man!

There is a lot of “the trouble was” in my journey through life and with the army it was being seconded out to Waitangi Hotel for six months, and as I was the pure and wholesome person back then, I was placed in charge of the staff bar in the attached staff. However, the trouble was, as I was getting closer to leave Waitangi and head back down to an Army camp, I was getting more and more depressed, so a rum here, a rum there, a couple of cigarettes and I was on my journey of drinking and smoking for the next 40 years and counting! It was on this trip back to camp and when I was 20 that I came across a horrific accident in which a young boy burnt to death in front of us. There were two people in first car to arrive at the accident and then myself and we just could not free this 8-year-olds foot from being jammed before the cars caught fire. A younger driver had sped past and then swiped this older couple’s car with the kid in the back. The two cars collided and then caught fire. I pulled the dead grandfather out and the first two took the injured grandmother and the non-injured younger driver out, but we could not get to the boy before he perished. Since that time, I have always carried a fire extinguisher in my car. First time I had handled a dead body that one was.

Also, while in New Zealand I did a lot of hitchhiking around the country plus worked in a few areas for holiday jobs, such as in Milford Sound and so got to see a fair bit of my country. I met some great New Zealanders on these trips and always remember being picked up by one Māori family while hiking around the East Cape and spending the night with them at an old whaling station, eating damper bread and a leg of lamb broiling over the open fire! Great people!

My first car was on old Morris Minor that I learnt to double the clutch its crash gears on, then a 350 Suzie bike that I toured the North Island on, and learnt how to pull it apart, but never learnt how to get it together again – I ended up selling it for parts! Then came an Oxford Cambridge that was sold for rust and driven into the curbs on different sides of the road to straighten the steering on, which it never did! Then onto the big Aussie cars. I loved the Statesman that I had and the Ford Falcon, loved even more the 500/4 Honda bike that I learnt how to avoid all other vehicles with but not the slippery corners – luckily no damage to me or the bike! Mind you, I even came of a racer bicycle once also going around another slippery corner!

The next stage was when I left the army, slightly short of my apprenticeship goal, but it has never slowed me down yet! A short stint up at Waitangi, highlighted with 240 liters of stock spilled on the floor and so I decided Australia beckoned, rather quickly too! April it was, so just before my 22^nd birthday. Dave and I traveled together, and where are you now Dave? Many years of lost contact!

Brisbane was my stop and I always still consider myself a Brissie boy and a Bronco fan! Small city, big town back then and it is where I met my late wife Marg, where she worked at a licensed restaurant on the ground floor of the Crest International and I worked a basement New Orleans restaurant in the same hotel. However, I started early and finished mid-afternoon, so the bar always beckoned. She did hate me, thought me stroppy and, well, just a stroppy bloody kiwi. However, as fate would have it, one night we both headed out to the same social venue with our respective groups, which slowly whittled down during the night until only Marg and I were left on the dance floor, finger dancing mind you, and the rest is history as they say. She could not get rid of me after that!

Girlfriends can now be discussed here, and I will always remember Joanne as my first true girlfriend in Hamilton, Asme in the Army, Sheryl from Waitangi days, then Jean, my first girlfriend in Australia. All with some story attached and it seemed that once I landed in Australia, all my girlfriends from Jean onward, tended to be married!!  Finally, of course, it was Marg that was the one who came along and brought me back into line! Well, for a few years anyway and working around the world I had some great girlfriends, usually one in each country I lived in and all helping in the saying of work hard, play hard! I used to work tremendous hours in high stress jobs and the girlfriends helped in letting off some stream and pressures from the work, even if it was just late-night drinks mainly on Friday nights. This is where my friend Ab Jan comes into it, as when he arrived in Singapore at the same hotel, he always thought he could drink, but admitted when he was leaving that now he knew he could drink!!! Sunday was always family day. It was the same hotel and after Ab Jan left, that Steve arrived and joined as F&B, and we have been friends since, working countries and cities fairly close to each other until I now live in the same community in Malaysia as he does.

Back to Marg and as told on Marg’s Page, she did not like me at first, as I was still drinking quite well in Australia and it was her restaurant bar that I hit each afternoon. Luckily, I was given a chance and she kind of got used to me. Just as well I suppose, for there was Scrumpy nights in England, Capriana and vodka nights in Singapore, Maotai in China, the great Munich beer festival and countless other evenings when the enjoyment of a few drops of liquor was probably a few drops too many! Can the Army be blamed for this, where with the spirit of comradeship and cheap booze meant that a person just let loose and had a great time? (One trip we got up to was to travel down the road with a mini tanker hooked behind and the hose into the back window for beer on mobile tap! You cannot do what we did then now of course, but in the middle of nowhere, we got away with a lot!) I did leave the Army able to handle my whisky quite well thank you very much, and did not actually stop until Marg and I bought the house in Australia.

We moved in together in her apartment and we got to know each other. At one stage I took off to an outback farm as a driver, working a 40,000 odd acres farm called Duaringa, located outside Rockhampton somewhere, but the trouble was, while I can drive anything, cars, trucks, bulldozers, harvesters, tanks etc., I am just not mechanically minded, and as a driver you are meant to fix things when they go wrong. Anyway, after I blew up an arc welder generator set, it was decided it was better I returned to Brisbane. However, the trouble was, it was Easter weekend, they gave me a cheque and the banks were now shut! Hitchhiking it was and I was lucky enough to be picked up by a guy in a ute with a broken wind screen. He had to drive in the wind and chill, while I hunkered down under a blanket and kept warm for the trip. So back to Brisbane, back to my old job and back to Marg. By the way, the first night up there was the ONLY time I have ever felt homesick in all my travels, or more precise, wondering what the hell was I doing there. Curtain-less windows, bare floors, middle of nowhere and sand and dirt all around. Next night I was fine again. It was after this that Marg decided she needed to go back to Britain, being Scottish born and a Glaswegian lass, with a trip she had planned for some time – and I followed her there. Our story in Britain can be found on Marg’s page.

Back in Australia and it was the time when we visited the Sunshine Coast and the Gold Coast, the Great Barrier reef and Port Douglas along with Cairns and all places in between. We sailed on Gretel 11, the Americas Cup challenger and swam over some fantastic corals, steam trained up mountains and sped down empty highways. We also decided to buy a house and at that time we used a credit card cash advance to pay for the deposit and a refinance of the car. Inner city Brisbane, probably worth millions today, but then was good value for A$40,000. We had no money at that stage and so bought a pick and shovel as the place was totally overgrown, and then spent seven years renovating and landscaping it up. There were many nights that I worked at 11 PM bare-backed and under the spotlight getting more done in the garden, or Marg coming home at 12 midnight to find that the windows are missing from the bathroom, – the room is decidedly drafty and airy – as they have left to be sandblasted! So, house brought, good jobs, small car and everything going well, – what next? Time to get married and that’s what happened! We shared a lot together and went to a lot of places, we knew each other and I must admit, that it was Marg that kept us together! Hard to imagine we were together for over 28 years until she passed away in November 2006 while we were in Chennai. An end of an era, and what an era it was!

We did a lot of that work on the house ourselves, just the two of us, except for electrical, gas, re-stumping and re-flooring, and made a great job of it, finishing it just before we left for Germany, but very satisfied that we completed it. It was the time of pushing the work, for after one trip to hospital for leg vein removal, the old stumps had to be broken up, so, promising myself to only bend at the waist, I took a sledge hammer to them and wondered why everything swelled up! Luckily it all went down just before going back to work, and just in time to whip a wire into my leg from the brush cutter! Seemed to have had a few accidents around that time, with the main one in nearly losing my finger to some damn chicken neck I was not cutting properly, but luckily, I have never had any car accidents yet.

Sure, I have backed into a tree stump outside a girlfriends place one night, spun the old Morris a few times, even come off the back of a bike as a pillion and scrapped myself down pretty well, but in hitting another car in a speed situation, never! Thank goodness too, as it must be the worst and I hope it never does happen!

Marika, my Russian Princess, came along in Chennai and we teamed up from 2008 onwards, then married in July 2013. Marika’s story is told on Marika’s Page on this site and there is quite a bit there as well! I Tiffany fan, we have just celebrated our 11^th wedding anniversary and I am truly thankful I have her to share my life with now. You can love two people who you plan to spend your life with, one does not detract from the other, and while Marg was my soul mate, Marika is the love of my life! Marika has brought meaning and purpose to my life, we share wine together, we have the same cooking interests and she keeps me young, being 25 years younger than I am. All The Pets She loves our two dogs and was the reason we have them in the first place, as she wanted a little white bundle of a German Spitz called Twiggy that we brought from Calcutta, and then a year later I got Brando as a pup in Chennai to keep Twiggy company! Photos from my Youth These are the photos I have from my very young days, school and Boys Brigade! Check them out!