Moments of Heightened Awareness

Life is a never-ending journey, says a man who dumped accountancy for adventure. Now men’s fashion retailer Bob Nelson is refocusing his destination.

Words: Kate Coughlan  Photographs: Matthew Williams

IT WAS MIDNIGHT on a beach in the Greek islands when Bob Nelson realized that he should never have been an accountant. He was in his 20s, somewhere on the hippy trail – Morocco, the Balearics, Scilly Isles, Greece, Spain maybe. He was tuned in, turned on and happily dropping out.

This wasn’t how his sponsor, Sir Frank Renouf (a leading New Zealand financier of the day), imagined it when he sent young Bob off from Wellington to London for a two-year apprenticeship in the world’s finest financial institutions including Rothschild Bank. “He designed a kind-of study tour and organized work for me with the idea that I’d come back to his broking firm, Daysh Renouf & Co, or NZ United Ltd, the merchant-banking sister company. I reported to a friend of Sir Frank’s in London.

“It was Swinging London, 1969. I couldn’t face the thought of another 18 months going to work every day in the City so I jumped ship.

Bob couldn’t be more different. He’s given no such advice to his two now-adult sons, Ben (a landscaper) and Ted (starting at the bottom in the family business Satori). “I don’t really go along with all this goal-setting, career-planning stuff. I think life is much more interesting if you respond to what’s happening around you. If you are too committed to your goals you may not be receptive to alternative information coming at you and you might miss opportunities that are in fact better suited to you. Today many young kids are too goal-oriented and then they feel they have to stick with their goals even when they would be better to reconsider their options.”

“I’d like to be handpicked by one of the most influential men in New Zealand, who will arrange jobs for me at the grandest financial institutions in the world and provide me with a personal mentor in London. Then I’d like to drop out and spend a few years on the hippy trails through Asia, Africa and India, occasionally going back to contract accounting in London to fund the next lot of travel.

“Then I’ll go to live in the Scilly Isles, give up entirely on accounting and become a leather worker. I fancy living in a crofter’s cottage and being given a barn to work in. I’ll sell my wares to a local shopkeeper and have a great time hanging out with lots of interesting people my age. I’ll meet a man in a pub on the Scilly Isles and sail in a catamaran to the Canary Islands and then on to North Africa and Barbados.”

“New Zealand was pretty much a different planet in those days; the revolution hadn’t got here. Beards and long hair were frowned upon. I was depressed at the thought of having to live here. I walked up Lambton Quay and saw the same people walking along at exactly the same time of the day they’d walked there three years before. They were probably even wearing the same clothes. I knew I could never live in Wellington.”

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