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JOHN AND ANNE TUNNICLIFF

John Tunnicliff, our guest speaker was born and spent his early years in Karamea, a small town in New Zealand's South Island on the coast southwest of Nelson. At that time, Karamea was very isolated being a three-hour drive over a gravel road to the nearest town.  John’s father, a rugby player who eventually became an All-Black, cycled both ways for football training. Karamea's population of 600 were primarily engaged in dairy farming, and saw milling.  John’s early passion was for fishing and he still returns to chase the fish in the river. The Murchison earthquake changed the town forever by blocking the harbour.
John went to nearby Nelson for a secondary education and a culture shock at a school with 1,000 pupils.  He developed his entrepreneurial skills by making and selling  ginger beer until there were problems with quality-control.  He started university at Lincoln Agricultural College but failed to complete a degree because he realised he no longer wanted to go back and milk cows. John came to Australia via a short stop in Auckland and took up a management cadetship with the Woolworths organisation at Australia's first Big W in Wollongong.  The 4 years he spent with Woolworths were a great training ground for his future career in retailing which started off as a retail  consultant with the Pharmacy Guild. Pharmacists at that time had few retail skills despite the fact that 60 percent of their business was retailing . John introduced the pharmacy business to supermarket techniques such as self-service and eventually started his own business in the same field.  John was involved in other retail ventures in Bougainville, a tropical paradise, and in fashion jewellery which did nicely during the 1980’s but became a victim to the reduction in spending of the 1990’s. John decided to come to Queensland and was briefly involved in business broking until he could no longer abide the tortured ethics. He studied for his real estate licence at TAFE and went into business in residential real estate because the product is clearly visible to and can be verified by the buyer. After a three year struggle the real estate market is now doing well. John and Ann have two daughters both studying at Griffith University. (Extract from Club Bulletin for 26 February 2002)

During 2006/7 International Service Director John Tunnicliff arranged for the Club to contribute $4000 towards the cost of new classrooms and  20 desks for The School of St Jude

John reported receipt of the following message from the School of St Jude dated 27 April, 2007:

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