Hedley learns from past to re-emerge in business
DARYL PASSMORE TRADIE- TURNED- TYCOONTom Hedley has a simple message for those on the financial rollercoaster: trust your instincts and keep your integrity.
“The biggest lesson is not to trust every bastard,” the 66year-old said. “I trusted everyone and that was my biggest downfall.”
Once touted as the richest man in Cairns, Mr Hedley was a working-class hero in the first decade of this century, going from a one-man plumbing business to heading a construction and hotels empire.
He employed 500 people, had apartment and resort projects across north Queensland and had pubs across three states in a property portfolio estimated at $750 million, although he says figures bandied around at the time were “bullshit”.
He sold 35 pubs and 102 bottleshops to the Coles Group in 2005, retaining the real estate which became part of the listed Hedley Leisure and Gaming Property Fund, which held more than 100 hotels.
The GFC brought escalat- ing interest rates, falling share prices, margin loan calls and a squeeze on debt financing. In August 2009, nine of his companies went into receivership.
“I got a lot of bad advice. Money was too easy back then (pre-GFC),” Mr Hedley says.
“I should have gone with my gut feeling. I’m not a highIQ person – I’m just a tradie who had a go and took a risk.”
Mr Hedley put his head down and worked hard, first in Papua New Guinea and then in country Victoria.
But over the past 18 months, “Barramundi Tom” has reemerged as a player in Cairns.
He launched his first apartment complex in nearly a decade and stands to reap about $10 million from a deal to pump spoil from the dredging of Cairns Inlet to his Holloways Beach quarry.