Ray Walker

It is quite a challenge to condense some fifty years of life experiences so here goes.

I enjoyed my time at Balwyn High School and afterwards went on to study Commerce at Melbourne Uni and became an accountant in various roles for over twenty years until I discovered ‘life.’ LOL. I blame ‘Pop’ Conlan for this.

In my mid twenties I lived abroad in London for three years with Tim Green. I had an absolute ball. It was also there that I realised just how insular and secure my life had been up to that point, recognising and experiencing first- hand the level of injustice, inequity and poverty, after hitching and travelling through Europe and Asia.

I left accounting after a lengthy period and ventured into marketing and ultimately into providing business advice and consulting services to small businesses. Part of that role involved giving back through teaching the NEIS program to help unemployed people develop a business.

It was during this time that sadly my first marriage broke up and after a period of reflection I married again to Verlie, my soul mate. We have three adult children from our previous marriages and three wonderful granddaughters. I feel truly blessed.

Later in our marriage Verlie developed a very debilitating illness. Nothing seemed to help until we discovered a natural product that not only provided a full recovery for her but enabled us to grow a large global business helping many others in the process. Through that we are on the Board of a charity that provides high quality nutritional support to malnourished children around the world.

Looking back it has been an eventful journey, some highs and lows, but there is still a lot that I want to do and contribute.

Reflecting back to my Balwyn High School days, as I said earlier I enjoyed my years there. We lived in a very stable, insular and disciplined environment so different to today. It was only “disturbed” by the fear and uncertainty of a potential world war three at the time, as a consequence of the Cuban Missile Crisis. A much larger issue at the time was the BHS “radical fringe” publication of the 3% newsletter! LOL. I reckon we should include here a blurb on this by the group.

For me the time was also about growing up, rock & roll, form parties, girls, sport, study,     ” bloody” maths and science, mucking about, holidays and boring school assemblies.

Thanks to the awesome ‘mob’ for a wonderful reunion. You look back and we had six years of close connectedness during our formative years, a bond that remarkably after all these years remains strong. In many ways the event was like coming home to a family reunion.