You don’t need much petrol in the tank to take the road trip of Frank Costa’s life.

In fact, you can visit all of his most important landmarks and memories in the glow of the fuel light.

Thankfully, though, there were no petrol stops needed as Mr Costa took the Geelong Advertiser on a cruise through his beloved home town.

The story of Frank Costa’s 76 years lies between East Geelong and Newtown.

If you travel west from his early-childhood home at 203 Myers St, you pass his first school, the St Mary’s Hall and, at the next intersection, the famous St Mary’s Basilica.

Mr Costa lived in Myers St between the ages of three and nine.

The war ended in that time. The delivery men of the day — the baker, iceman and milkman – delivered their wares by horse and cart.

Young Frank scooped up the trail of horse droppings left behind to fertilise the family’s vegetable patch.

From the gaol side of Myers St, Frank and his Catholic schoolmates would duck for cover as students at Swanston St Primary hurled rocks and invective their way.

They quickly learned to arm themselves with stones from their own school grounds for the inevitable daily duel with the ‘Swannos’.

When they got older the feuding was put aside and the boys turned their attention to girls.

On a Sunday night dance at the St Mary’s Hall, Frank met Shirley O’Malley. They married a few years later in 1960 up the road at St Mary’s Basilica.

“St Mary’s has been pretty prominent in my life,” Mr Costa explains as his Merc cruises across Yarra St.

“I was chair of the appeal to do the place up. My parents were married there, I was baptised there, I had my First Communion, first confession. Shirley and I got married there and seven of our eight daughters were married there. The eighth one was married up in Daylesford; she didn’t want a big wedding.”

As the car turns right on to Moorabool St past the new-look St John of God Hospital the Costa family has for so long supported, we learn about Frank Costa, the businessman.

The light towers of Simonds Stadium try to peer into the car through the rear-view mirror; a reminder of the football club that Mr Costa so famously loves.

But, while football might have made Frank famous to the masses, it was fruit and vegetables that made him rich, and here on Moorabool St was where it all started.

The Geelong Covent Garden food store and fruit shop is closed at the moment, but will re-open in the next year.

Mr Costa has owned the site for more than 50 years and it has been in his family for more than a century.

He lived above the shop as a child and later, briefly, as a married man.

It is where he grew his family’s billion-dollar fruit and vegetable empire.

But a short skip down the road, at the T&G corner on the Ryrie St intersection, is where he fertilised his business sense.

It was on this corner that 11-year-old Frank sold The Herald newspaper and a few magazines. It was a good earner and he was a good learner.

The Herald cost twopence – two pence – but the workers filing off the tram at the intersection were often happy to part with thruppence — three pence – so a smart paperboy could score a nice tip.

“I learned a lot about business there as an 11 and 12-year-old kid. I reckon I got some of the best lessons of how to service your customers and look after them properly when I worked on that corner,” he says as we drive past.

Although only 11, young Frank learned about the importance of recruiting the right staff.

He was making good money from the tram passengers, but he knew there was more to be had.

He reckoned the men in the local pubs would be just as keen for a newspaper or The Sporting Globe as his customers, but his only problem was he couldn’t vacate his post.

He also knew there was a ready list of wannabe paperboys waiting for a job.

Frank selected the three most likely types and, with his boss’s blessing, effectively made them his subcontractors.

The Costa Crew met each night, collected their quota of papers from Frank and went off to different pubs while Frank kept business in order on the T&G corner.

He wasn’t the only member of his family doing business in the Geelong CBD.

The Costa kids could walk freely around the Geelong central business area, knowing they had uncles and aunts on most major streets.

Uncle Mick would load them up with sweets from his confectionary store next to the Regent Theatre as they trudged back up the hill from their morning swim at Eastern Beach, and the narrow alleys of central Geelong, including Baylie Place behind the fruit shop, were the scene of epic cricket and football matches and plenty of mischief. In later years, when the eldest sons — Frank and Adrian — bought the shop from their father, this alley was where they made the leap from retailer to wholesaler, transforming their business and their industry and building their family empire.

But before that, this backblock was the scene of an incredible heartbreak, when, in 1949, young Rhona Costa was hit by a car in Lt Ryrie St.

“She was four years and eight months, and she used to walk along here to go up to my uncle’s place (at the Gheringhap-Myers corner) and they used to look after her. They used to love her,” says Frank, who was 11 at the time.

“She was walking along here (Lt Ryrie) and there was a brewery truck (at the hotel) ... and she couldn’t get past, so she stepped out around the truck and got hit by a car coming the other way and unfortunately it killed her.

“I remember running up with Mum ... and she was conscious; we took her to hospital and they had to remove her spleen and she died.’’

Back on Moorabool St, the conversation turns from the past to Geelong’s future.

Revitalising the once-bustling CBD and completing the cultural precinct on Little Malop St are the priority projects, according to Mr Costa. But he says the city’s leading groups need to do more work to establish their priorities.

“They all need funds ... if we don’t have a concentrated effort from all the major players together you’re not going to get the reaction you need,’’ he says.

“We should get the top half-a-dozen players in the city to come together and put their priorities on the table, because they’re bound to have different ones, so let’s talk this through.

“Our CBD is crap, it’s not something we can to be proud of. You just need to drive up and down here (Moorabool St) to see it’s dead. The shops are either empty or you’ve got these $2 shops that cheapen the whole bloody place. Something solid needs to happen there and we need more student accommodation and shop-top living, like my family had when I was a kid.

“What sometimes doesn’t happen with our city is the collective strengths of Geelong should be all pulled together and should work together for the common good.’’

While concerned about the impending closures of Alcoa and Ford, Mr Costa says there is a lot to be excited about in Geelong

With loose plans to sell the Costa Group fruit and vegetable business before his 80th birthday, he will shift his attention to his property interests, largely in the Geelong region.

“I’ve got a property development business, which is something my girls can get involved in later on. It is much more suited, I think, for married ladies to be involved in than the fresh produce industry, which is terribly competitive and a hugely volatile business.”

Seven of Mr Costa’s eight daughters still live in Geelong.

They were raised in sprawling family homes in Newtown, firstly on Retreat Rd near their school – Sacred Heart College – and later in the Heights Estate.

Before we head in that direction, the car sweeps past Frank and Shirley’s current home at the Edgewater complex on the Geelong Waterfront, the Sailor’s Rest Hotel, which daughter Geraldine oversees, and up Cunningham Pier, which Frank bought from the State Government in the mid-’90s.

“I shouldn’t own the pier by the way,” Frank confides.

“It should never have been sold by the Kennett government to private people. It should’ve been sold on long-term finance arrangements to the city, because it’s an icon that should belong to the city.”

At The Pier, Frank’s daughter Gillian drops in from her upstairs office, while over coffee he expands on what is most important to him.

“One of the things I’m most proud of is that with eight daughters married ... there’s not any cracks in any of the eight marriages, which in this day and age is something to be pretty thankful for,” he says.

“My main priorities in life are health — and I mean whole health: physical, mental and spiritual — and keeping the family strong and united together.

“If you’ve got those two going for you, you can pretty much get over any problems, I reckon.”

This article was first published in June 2014