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Meet member Graeme Walker

Graeme Walker was a pioneer in the area of air freight in Australia, and was recently recognised for his work with an Order of Australia award.

Preston Probus member Graeme Walker began his working life as a copyboy at the Herald Sun where his father, Arch, was a sports reporter. Arch got his young son on board to help receive all the sports scores via telephone on the busy sports days.

“My father also reported on the first royal tour as press liaison, where he met the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh,” Graeme says.

But in 1966, in Melbourne, Graeme would change careers. He joined a small air-freight forwarder, and that would lead to a 47-year career in that area – a career that finished when he retired from DHL.

At the most recent Queen’s Birthday awards, Graeme received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for “services to the international air freight and transport sector”.

“The job involved a lot of travel. I would go to the UK for board meetings twice a year, and to New Zealand a lot, as it was ‘under my wing’,” Graeme says. “On my last visit to New Zealand, I realised it was the 157th time I had visited.”

He also travelled extensively in Europe, America and the Middle East, where he was part of an Australian-Arab trade organisation.

“In the final years I was looking after Commonwealth Serum Laboratories. We were handling all the air freight of their vaccines – in fact, DHL still does that; vaccines travelling around Europe and USA. We were moving anything up to 400 tonnes a week during flu season and also their blood plasma operation, handling all of the inbound blood plasma.”

After retiring at the age of 68, Graeme did some consulting work before finally stopping work altogether almost a decade later.

At the same time, Graeme was working tirelessly doing charity work for hospitals, a feat that also formed part of his OAM.

He used to work at Royal Melbourne Hospital and still works at John Fawkner Hospital in the northern Melbourne suburb of Coburg. “I have been a patient at both of them. Ten years ago I had a triple-bypass operation at Royal Melbourne, and I’m going along strongly still,” he says. “So I am what they call a ‘consumer’ on several hospital committees.”

On the day he received the award at Melbourne’s Government House, Graeme had his wife, Shirley, with him, and his daughters. Mandy is a cinematographer working on the Disney live-action remake of Mulan in New Zealand, and his other daughter Melinda is a criminal solicitor in Melbourne. Also in attendance was his great nephew, who was named after Graeme.

This year was a big year on the marriage front too, as Graeme and Shirley celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.

Name

Graeme Walker

Club

Preston Probus Club

Age

83

Time in Probus

3 years