Eulogy at Bill Casimaty’s funeral tells of his lasting legacy

Turf king Bill Casimaty has been farewelled at a packed funeral service. Here is the eulogy which was delivered by a family member.

Bill Casimaty with one of the machines use to harvest the turf on the StrathAyr farm.

TURF king Bill Casimaty was farewelled at a packed funeral service on Wednesday. Here is the eulogy which was delivered at his funeral by a family member.

“Firstly on behalf of Bill I would like to thank you all for coming, especially those who have travelled from the North and from interstate.

There is a great number of people that have flown in from all over Australia and this is great testament to the number of people’s lives that Bill has impacted over the years.

He would love to be the centre of attention in such a large gathering.

Bill was born in Hobart in 1935 to his Kitherian migrant parents Gregory and Katina and was the fourth born of six.

They were the first Greek family in Hobart, and this created many challenges for Bill.

CASIMATY REMEMBERED AS THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN

Bill Casimaty with one of his world-class turf strips at StrathAyr, near Richmond, in 2004.

He attended school here at what was Hobart High School and talked fondly of his time being the only migrant family. He quickly learnt how to fight and proudly told us the bear hug was his go-to move.

He was determined in all his endeavours here becoming a school leader.

He was part of the first rowing four which he said went undefeated, captained the Tasmanian schoolboy’s hockey team and was also a keen sailor.

Rather than involve his sons in the family fishing business Bill’s father Gregory bought Bill and his older brother George a farm each and as George had first choice Bill ended up with the StrathAyr property at Richmond.

Bill attended Dookie Agricultural College in Victoria so he could learn how to farm where he made many of his lifelong friends and in 1957 starting farming StrathAyr.

He married Janet Pease from Burnie in 1961 and they restored the convict-built hop kiln on the farm and made it their family home.

However, life on a dryland sheep and cereal farm in the Coal River Valley at the end of the ’50s wool boom was not much of a life, so Bill started on his quest for other business and farming opportunities.

A gate at the StrathAyr farm near Richmond.

He built a farm dam to commence irrigated cropping and started growing mushrooms.

Bill won a Nuffield farming scholarship in 1967 and this was a huge benefit for him and helped him with his foray into the many different agricultural ventures.

The 1967 bushfires went through part of the property while he was away.

However, as Bill was a man of foresight and had seen fire devastation in Victoria while at Dookie College, he had been instrumental in setting up the Richmond Fire Brigade in 1965, and so when the 1967 fires came Richmond council had the only fire tanker truck in the state.

On his return from his Nuffield trip he founded the Coal River Products Association based on a farming group he visited in England.

Coal River Products was, and still is, a unique farmers organisation that under Bill’s leadership was instrumental in lobbying for the South East irrigation scheme which has turned a dust bowl into a rapidly growing horticultural centre that all other irrigation schemes in Tasmania since have been trying to emulate.

Coal River Products is still going strong today and Bill was still attending meetings right up to last month.

Bill was also very active in the very early days of the poppy industry and as chairman of the poppy growers association he presented to hearings in the United States that ultimately opened up the US market to opiates from Tasmania.

He received an Order of Australia medal for Services to Agriculture in 2009.

Bill Casimaty with his product at Colonial Stadium in Melbourne in 2000.

Regarding his own farming, on returning from his Nuffield Scholarship one of the crops he planted was turf.

Tony Trumble, who was a friend from Dookie, was growing turf in Victoria and suggested Bill look at turf while he was away.

Soon after Tony closed his turf farm and Bill bought his equipment and started growing on StrathAyr.

Bill had immediate success particularly in selling to the mining towns on the West Coast.

However, he soon realised the small size of the Tasmanian market and started growing in Victoria in 1972.

Not content with the domestic turf market Bill looked to the sports turf market looking for problems to solve.

In this field his innovation knew no bounds and the quality of sports fields and racetracks all over Australia today are thanks to these innovations, including washed turf, reinforced sand profile, ready to play turf replacement and drop in cricket wickets.

With washed turf he set up a global group of turf growers who were washing turf called the StrathAyr team.

This covered such countries as England, the USA, Canada, Japan and Austria as well as the eastern states of Australia.

The group met at many and varied locations for many years not only to exchange ideas but to have a lot of fun.

Freshly harvested rolls of StrathAyr turf.

Bill was always up for a good party wherever and whenever.

In marketing terms, Bill had no peers in both innovating market techniques and sheer persistence.

His optimism and persistence are legendary, and he persisted in marketing products that any normal person would have given up on long before, and in many cases this persistence paid off.

One of his proudest marketing achievements was selling turf to Hong Kong.

He heard that the Shatin track was being rebuilt and so on a visit to Hong Kong with Janet he decided to take a couple of rolls of washed turf in his suitcase.

He showed this to the Hong Kong Jockey Club engineer and soon after ended up with a contract to send 80,0000m2 in 20 jumbo loads to Hong Kong in 1988.

Following this StrathAyr started its unique brand of all-weather racetracks and sports fields starting with the MCG in 1991 and Moonee Valley racecourse in 1995.

Many of the top racetracks and sports fields in Australia and Asia can now thank Bill's persistence in those early years for the quality of their playing surfaces now.

Bill would have loved to be around for the first race meeting at Elwick that we are constructing at present.

Bill was never content with any one business venture and so he was always looking for new crops and business opportunities.

TurfBill Casimaty also ventured into viticulture and winemaking.

He became involved with many diverse ventures including Peppones takeaway in Sandy Bay, Argyle Cook gear, Featherstone Interiors and the New Town Squash Courts.

At the same time the range of vegetable, seed and essential oil crops he tried increased and he also ventured into wine grapes with the Glenayr and Tolpuddle vineyards.

Business and marketing were Bill's real passion and he was involved right until the end, whether we liked it or not.

Nothing could stem his passion and enthusiasm.

However, Bill was not all about business and community.

Family was very important to him and was very proud of his three children and eight grandchildren.

He has always been involved with the extended family as well and he was always very free with advice and help to anyone in the family, whether they wanted it or not.

He was very conscious of the impact his long work hours and many trips away had on his family and so he always made sure we had lots of family holidays.

Every year we have a week at Janet’s family shack at Sisters Beach but there were always other trips away such as trips to the Cretans shack at Swansea or trips to Partridge Island.

Partridge Island was a favourite and very unique type of holiday which we had for many years but how we survived many trips in big southerly swells across from Dover in the grossly overloaded family runabout is a minor miracle.

Bill Casimaty on the Strathayr farm with his son Frank. Picture: MATT THOMPSON

In his 40s Bill decided snow skiing would be a good family endeavour.

We had countless family trips to Ben Lomond, and this is still a favourite sport of the entire family.

Bill never really mastered the finer points of skiing himself but like all his endeavours his passion and dogged determination made up for his lack of finesse.

He also took us to Europe and around Victoria and on various fishing and boating trips.

We can thank him as a family for having a go at a huge variety of sporting and holiday pursuits.

Bill was of course very charismatic and outgoing and had a keen sense of fun.

He loved a practical joke and made full use of April Fool’s Day.

Many he tried on the family were fairly lame but from time to time when he put a bit of effort in, he had some great successes.

One of his greatest successes was when he got his practical joker mate Neville Moane.

Neville was desperate to get his sheep shorn in the middle of the shearers’ strike so Bill arranged for someone to call Neville and tell him that he would shear his sheep, but he had to get the sheep in that day.

Neville spent all morning rounding up his sheep out of his rough bush run and as he was coming over the hill with his mob of sheep and covered in sweat at noon on April Fool’s Day he looked up to see Bill waiting for him with a huge grin.

People with Bill’s energy and enthusiasm and sense of fun for all aspects of life are a rare thing indeed and he has indeed left a lasting legacy.

Bill Casimaty passed away on the weekend.