CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ONE BIG HAPPY FAMILY

Ellis Blain: Do you manipulate people?Gordon Barton: Yes and I’m quite good at it . . . talking people into doing things . . . That’s one of the things I can do well . . . Generating enthusiasm for new projects. Without that nothing gets done.

By mid 1979, Barton ‘wanted me beside him to help set up IPEC in Europe’, Mary Ellen reflects. While the children were looked after by Frances Knight in Sydney, she joined her partner in Holland so they could assess the possibilities for their melded family.

They decided it would be great fun for the children to come over from Sydney to stay at the castle for the two-week school holidays. In August 1979, amidst great excitement, the couple met Cindie, Geoffrey and seven-year-old Kate at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. Mary Ellen remembers they were still open-minded as to whether she and the children would return to Sydney. They told the children nothing, but in the coming two weeks the pair visited Switzerland to see if they could locate a school both liked. The children remained at Kasteel Ophemert.

They inspected fourteen schools in just a few days. They both hated Le Rosey: ‘The Headmaster name-dropped and generally exhibited the most appalling values in terms of the wealthy elite of Europe’, Mary Ellen recalls. The couple ran for the nearest exit.

In Chesieres-Villars, in the magnificent mountains above the lakeside city of Montreux, they found something quite different—Aiglon College. The students looked healthy, happy, had beautiful manners, spoke many languages and it was co-educational. There seemed to be a great respect between the sexes. Barton and Mary Ellen both felt it a wonderful place for the two older children to start an exciting, if unexpected, new chapter in their lives. If they had enrolled in a local Dutch school Kate, Cindie and Geoffrey would have to learn a language the couple felt irrelevant to their futures.

Back at Ophemert, it was the sixteen-year-old Cindie who took the phone call from the Aiglon College principal to finalise details of the children’s enrolment. Her father and Mary Ellen had not yet returned.

Cindie was furious. On their return to Ophemert a day later, Kate Ayrton recalls Cindie insisting ‘she was going to handle it’. All three chldren were in the back of the car with their parents in front when Cindie announced, ‘We got a strange call today about some school in Switzerland’.

Barton and his partner looked at each other. Mary Ellen turned back to the children and with a big smile on her face and her usual positive spin, countered, ‘Yes, darling. Isn’t that wonderful! You’re all going to school in Switzerland.’ Cindie promptly burst into tears, sobbing that she was going home.

‘No, you’re not’, she recalls her father saying.

To Geoffrey and Kate, the sudden change of plans was pure adventure. All they could think of was not having to go back to school in Australia. Nine-year-old Kate loved her own father Tony dearly. The decision meant she would see very little of him in years to come.

Tony Ayrton was devastated. Nonetheless, Barton would fund an education which Kate’s loving father could not afford. Kate admits now: ‘I really got the best of both worlds. From my father I got all the love in the world . . . and from Gordon I got all the support and education . . . Gordon took care of me in all the ways that my father couldn’t.’

Ultimately Kate, Cindie and Geoffrey would spend the next year in Swiss boarding schools. These three children, carried along in their parents’ wake, would never return to Australia as anything other than visitors.

Once they were resident in Europe, Mary Ellen says of her relationship with Barton, ‘He asked me to become his wife and to now call myself Mary Ellen Barton and Mrs Gordon Barton. We did not choose to do it [formally].’ While Barton wanted Mary Ellen to be ‘his woman’, he was adamant, Mary Ellen points out, that ‘he didn’t want the church or the state to be the reason for it’. The pair would never marry.

Gelders–Sayer would soon be renamed IPEC Europe. Barton lost little time in seeking out a businessman greatly revered throughout Holland— Rien van Marwijk Kooy, who had impeccable high-level contacts in the world of Dutch banking. It was not long before Barton had charmed van Marwijk Kooy into taking a place on the board of IPEC Europe. The pair would come to count each other as respected friends and colleagues.

The fact that IPEC had little in its war chest didn’t worry Barton. He was a master at making other people’s money work for him. With a salary bill for close to 1000 staff, IPEC could not afford to wait 30 days for customers to pay their invoices. Barton would do what he and John Konstas had done years before with Rex Trucking—factor their debts. The interest was expensive—nearly double the bank rate, but if growth was to be financed, there was no alternative. It meant success would be difficult and expensive.

For the first time in Europe, freight rates would be formally published. Some massive obstacles still needed to be overcome. Barton would later summarise these as: ‘multiple languages, currencies, legal systems and regulations. Finding the right people (preferably multi-lingual) who could adapt our system to the European environment. Arranging the facilities: depots, local pickup fleets, communications simultaneously in several countries. Obtaining licences. Overcoming the problems of border delays and customs clearance. Organising an administrative system to cope with the complexities. Arranging the marketing to enable the new system to attract traffic as quickly as possible.’ Many in the industry insisted that such a to-do list was impossible, particularly given the different cultural mindsets in each country.

Barton announced that IPEC Europe express trucks would leave their Dutch base at the same time every night to each of a number of cities. Many Gelders managers didn’t believe such a guarantee was possible. IPEC Europe was faced with not only having to convince prospective customers but staff that road could be quicker than air. Only then could its premium charges be justified. Despite these challenges, Barton was predicting turnover of more than $100 million in the company’s first full year of business.

An essential source of capital to keep the business moving ahead was the A$500,000 that the Australian business would be providing each month. (Fortunately the group’s mid-city Sydney retail site was soon to be sold for A$18 million.) The persuasive Barton had also won the support of ABN, Gelders’ original lenders, and had arranged a massive 2 million guilders overdraft, which managers were encouraged to utilise.

Dr Harry Langman, the former Dutch finance minister, headed up ABN bank in Amsterdam. Barton knew this was a vital relationship to nurture. Langman soon became a regular dinner guest at Ophemert, and a personal friendship grew between him, Barton and Mary Ellen. Langman would develop a great respect for Barton and what he had already achieved. He for one believed in his overnight freight concept for Europe and took a great interest in his plans. The banker soon lent his considerable support to IPEC Europe’s financial needs. Mary Ellen recalls Barton was often thinking of Langman in particular when he spoke of ‘our brave bankers’.

ABN could not believe it, recalls IPEC Europe financial controller Jon Sedgwick, when Barton capitalised the firm’s losses (at one stage these totalled $17.5 million). It was clearly not standard practice, and something impossible to get away with in a public company. Barton argued that the costs of getting the business running should be viewed as capital investment and shown on the balance sheet as an asset rather than as operating expenses.

During April, Barton seconded three more Australians to IPEC UK to streamline processes. He and John Konstas were faced with something of a problem in their employment of local European country managers. While each of their recruits was competent and bright, European management training had drummed into them that they were personally liable for any breaches of the law by IPEC Europe. This fear quickly killed innovation and lateral thinking.

To Barton the solution to changing this mindset was to embed freethinking Australian IPEC staff beside the Europeans. Barton would bring over a team of Australians who had lived and breathed IPEC’s ‘can do’ culture. They would be the cement binding the ‘six very independent bricks’ of each country in the network, spearheading the required cultural change.

Barton needed these Australians quickly and it would be essential that they worked together closely. They would require focus and brazenness in the face of objection from their conservative European counterparts. By mid-July six Australian IPEC staff had been recruited. Each received a letter from MD John Konstas which read in part:

Things here in Europe are very, very different. The differences will either add to the challenge . . . or will cause you the greatest hassles you have ever experienced.

Everything in Europe takes longer to happen.

Each country not only speaks a different language and has a different currency, but the people think differently, they do things differently, their attitudes are different.

The stakes for Barton and Konstas were heightened as they came to realise the huge costs involved in firing European staff. Employment laws favoured the employee. Depending on length of service, employers were faced with dismissal payouts of three to five times annual salary. IPEC Europe simply could not afford such amounts. If the pair chose staff poorly, they were going to be stuck with them.

Only an hour’s drive from IPEC Europe’s new Dutch headquarters, Lord Reay’s Kasteel Ophemert would be the perfect bunker for the Australian team. With its steep pitched roof and three chimney spires, it was really a chateau, a grand country home, rather than a castle. It was in fact its encircling moat that gave it castle status officially. With the assistance of Hugh O’Neill, an ongoing lease with the peer was agreed.

Ophemert would become home to each of Barton’s hand-picked Australian team for an intensive six-week orientation period before they were dispatched to work alongside one of six European country managers. They would return there regularly to debrief over the next nine months.

The castle was like something out of a fairytale to the unworldly young Australians. Cherry blossom trees lined the private avenue that approached the grand home. Ducks and geese waddled around the lawns amongst ancient oaks and a rare white magnolia. In the expansive grounds were a tennis court and swimming pool with picturesque woodlands to one side filled with rare bird-life. The moats, including the one surrounding the house itself and navigated via a stone bridge laden in summer with pale pink victorian roses, sometimes froze over in winter. Even the whitewashed caretakers’ residence across the courtyard was far prettier and grander than most Australian homes. Beyond the tree-lined drive, the bridge led to a paved stone courtyard, with a smaller bridge leading directly to the front door. Immediately above it, medieval statuary of two armour-clad warriors looked down upon new arrivals. The compound could sleep at least two dozen.

In a 1974 interview, Barton had admitted:

I don’t travel first class, as a rule I travel tourist. If you travel first class you nearly get killed with the kindness. The food and the drinks . . . Secondly you tend to meet terribly dull people—I find that the most crashing bores are in the first class of aeroplanes—nearly always employed by governments because people who pay their own fares never travel first class.

Mary Ellen’s influence had changed Barton’s view. As she pointed out, he had uprooted his executives at short notice from their Australian environment, and considerable discounts with the major airlines were available to a transport company. So Barton would now spoil his executives with seats at the front of the plane. The Australian recruits to Europe, and most who followed, travelled first class.

None of the Australian team could speak a language other than English. Few had ever left the country before. For some the experience, while overwhelming in its intensity, would make their careers. Hugh O’Neill observed that Barton’s technique of putting each under maximum pressure was ‘concentrating their minds like death’.

Barton’s nephew Michael Hand was general manager of Jetaway at the time. Within a week he was in a first-class seat on a plane to Europe. He recalls landing in Amsterdam, where his uncle picked him up in the Mercedes. Hurtling down the autobahn at 130 kilometres an hour, Barton told him, ‘I want you to go to Germany’. His nephew did not even know in what direction Germany lay. Hand admits that it was very daunting coming from regional Australia, to be sitting in offices with men talking in two, three or four languages. He recalls, ‘We floundered for a long time. [Barton’s] mind was miles ahead.’

None of the Australians was provided with an employment contract. Barton’s word was good enough. When Ian Sayer insisted on a contract, it was pointed out to him that Gordon Barton always kept his word. Nonetheless, if Barton walked under a bus, Sayer wanted some protection.

Barton pushed his team hard. Michael Hand admits it was a 24-hour-a-day job, but one where the camaraderie was immense—the mood one of adrenalin-fuelled high spirits—with a determination to implant their ‘nothing’s impossible’ IPEC philosophy in their European counterparts. Once the team settled into a routine, their families joined them.

To the fun-loving Barton and his partner, this fifteenth century chateau was too unusual a setting not to exploit to its full potential. Their landlord Lord Reay’s taste was modern. This was reflected both in the chateau’s abstract modern art and the glass and chrome furnishings. With the owner’s agreement Mary Ellen had some of this dispatched to the enormous attic, whose ancient space revealed a generous collection of sixteenth century family portraits as well as rooms full of heavy, wooden antique furniture. Mary Ellen swapped new for old, bringing down and dusting off a plethora of medieval pieces. She soon had the chateau more appropriately furnished in the spirit of its earlier inhabitants. A barbecue was installed. Four Western Australian black swans, unheard of in Holland, had appeared, as if to make the IPEC team feel at home. The birds would prove as fearless and territorial as the imported Australians.

Mary Ellen released a set of house rules which covered everything from etiquette regarding meals to laundry instructions and house staff responsibilities. A caretaker and his wife looked after the gardens and grounds. To iron, do the laundry, make beds and run errands two village women were soon put on, overseen by a housekeeper. Pierre, a rather eccentric chef from Luxembourg, and his Dutch wife Kitty were employed to cook for all in residence. More importantly, Pierre was indispensable as the Bartons’ local dope dealer.

Pierre was loved not so much for his dubious cooking, but for his hot-headed personality. Barton would enjoy John Konstas yelling at Pierre, ‘I can taste the packet-soup!’ Pierre would storm into the room furious, gesticulating with cooking implements above his head. If Barton was lucky, the chef might spit out a rollcall of all the luminaries for whom he had cooked. Given his fiery temper and the heated arguments, Maria Vandersman, Konstas’ bilingual personal assistant, was never quite sure whether Pierre was slowly poisoning the household. Vandersman also recalls the Mothers Day soon after she arrived at Ophemert. Barton insisted all the Australians call their mothers. He would pay for the calls. If the calls hadn’t been made by the end of the day, he pressed his Australians to call that evening.

At a weekend welcome party at the castle for Australian staff, billed as fancy dress, many present will never forget Barton and Mary Ellen being almost the only ones in costumes. Each wore neck-to-ankle leopard-skin leotards.

Only now and then did the team have a weekend off in the first few months. If they were not elsewhere inspecting freight depots, the Australians tended to spend long days at the Arnhem headquarters. None would return before 8.30 pm, so dinners were served late. If he was in residence Barton presided over these like a lord of the manor, ensuring a good red wine was on hand. It was here that he and his Australian lieutenants would discuss what they had seen or learned during the day just passed.

‘What’s his RC factor?’ Barton would ask. Resistance to Change needed to be low if you wanted to remain.

After dinner, as the frogs croaked in the moat outside, a fire would blaze in the massive fireplace while the team sat around drinking and finessing an ever-changing strategy.

For the Australians, their incomprehension of the complicated rigmarole of European customs worked to their advantage. Unencumbered by the baggage of history, they were able to see simpler alternatives. It meant they were at loggerheads with the Europeans regularly over enforcing change. Michael Hand walked into IPEC Europe’s Munich office one morning to find staff and drivers drinking steins of beer for morning tea. The custom was banned in the office, but it went against an age-old tradition for the Germans. In France the Australians had to battle against the tradition of drivers sharing a bottle of wine over lunch.

Each of the Gelders group’s six country offices had their own distinct cultures and idiosyncrasies which made giving directives difficult. Often meaning would become lost in translation. Financial manager Greg Boulton thinks that Barton and his team underestimated the cultural differences and how long organisational change would take to implement.

A revolutionary technology was beginning to appear in some businesses—the fax machine. The first models were huge in size and price—some £6000 each. Staff would crowd around the machines in wonder as documents miraculously appeared. Barton quickly recognised their potential, given they sidestepped the need to retype information into a telex machine. He asked each customs department to treat faxes as legal documents. His request granted, the business spent up, installing the new machine in every one of its offices.

The European Economic Community, although officially one market, was still in its early stages. Each country’s administrative borders were still very much in place. Customs clearances were painfully complicated, delayed by inefficient processes, which differed in each country. If express road freight was going to be viable, these would have to be stream lined.

Barton soon came up with a solution. He would deploy government customs staff at IPEC’s own depots. This worked for three countries. In Germany, customs officers were convinced to delegate their authority to IPEC staff and in France they agreed to set up a direct computer link to the IPEC hub. Crucially, each customs authority was convinced to accept the same standardised customs forms, pre-completed before vehicle departures for maximum efficiency. These forms would be faxed ahead. It meant that, instead of customs staff being faced with mounds of paperwork as trucks arrived through the night, by the time each truck reached the IPEC depot, officials had already scanned contents lists, checked paperwork and cleared everything except for the odd consignment they might decide to check. More importantly, Barton persuaded the Northampton customs depot to stay open all night (an unheard of idea at the time) in order to receive trucks from the Hook of Holland, process the freight overnight and ensure next-day delivery all over the UK. Margaret Thatcher was delighted.

The key problem with launching an overnight delivery service was going to be credibility. Based on past experience, potential customers were not willing to believe IPEC Europe’s claimed delivery times were possible. So Barton had Grahame Bunyan oversee the shooting of a promotional film in conjunction with Adidas, tracking exactly how and at what speed a parcel travelled from Germany to Scotland. With only one small van then available in IPEC colours, it was driven from city to city and photographed against famous landmarks. Half a million Australian dollars in advertising and a sales force of 80 backed up the campaign.

By December 1979, the airfreight industry was ‘deeply concerned’ about the threat to its business. The next February a journalist put IPEC’s contentious ‘faster than airfreight’ claim to the test, accompanying IPEC drivers with consignments from London across the English Channel and back. She found the 48-hour claim was a reality. Her successful test became the feature article in the March issue of industry journal AirTrade.

After one particularly boozy winter luncheon at Ophemert, Maria Vandersman recalls, someone came up with the idea to go skating on the frozen moat. A car was dispatched to the nearest store to procure skates for everybody. Most of the Australians, having never skated before, were very wobbly until someone appeared with a chair from the house to use as a trainer. Within twenty minutes Maria Vandersman had a strange feeling of being in a Fellini film as a dozen Australians skidded around the moat pushing dining chairs to steady themselves.

For young Allen Tapp, one of the Australian IPEC team brought over to transform the Gelders business, his funniest recollection at Ophemert was an early morning one weekend when Mary Ellen approached him before breakfast: ‘We’re going on a picnic! Do you want to come?’ Picnics in picturesque locations had always been a favourite pastime for the Barton family. If they were in Paris it might be in the Bois de Boulogne; on a drive through Northern Ireland it might be the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim, looking across to Scotland.

Tapp accepted the invitation, excited to be off on a weekend outing. Mary Ellen had a picnic basket and fresh croissants. Not until he was out in the driveway did Tapp realise it was to be just Barton, Mary Ellen and himself. He recalls following the couple towards their large Mercedes. Rather than get in, they kept walking.

Not more than a hundred metres down the lawn they stopped and Mary Ellen laid out the picnic rug. After eating, Mary Ellen and Barton began necking while Tapp sat awkwardly. It began to rain—not just sprinkle, but to pour. Tapp’s boss and his partner remained oblivious to him and the weather. He did not want to appear rude by returning to the house but neither was there the opportunity to interrupt. So he sat soaking for an hour before Mary Ellen deemed it time to return to the warmth of the castle. Tapp soon realised that from the castle’s upper windows the charade had provided his work colleagues with great entertainment.

During a school holiday road trip through Spain with Mary Ellen and the children, Barton commissioned a full suit of medieval armour complete with helmet and visor. Packed in a crate, it was lashed to the roof of the car, then checked in at the airport with their luggage. The children were delighted when Barton told Dutch customs authorities it was ‘the remains of a much-loved aunt, who had passed away on our holiday’. The armour was soon installed at the bottom of the spiral stone stairway leading down to Ophemert’s vaulted medieval dining room, where it seemed to reassuringly greet guests, some a trifle bemused, as they arrived to dine. It was certainly a step up from his chain mail outfit hired for the rather disastrous Sydney Harbour adventure a year earlier.

Some weeks later Barton was to host a group of Dutch bankers led by ABN’s Dr Harry Langman who were negotiating a crucial loan. A few hours before the meeting, Barton had begged Mary Ellen and Peter Janson, who was visiting at the time, to help him into the armour to ‘try it out’. The problem was that once he was inside, the pair were unable to remove him. As the bankers arrival approached, their efforts become more desperate. Ultimately it was Mary Ellen who would greet the Dutch bankers to explain that Mr Barton, while delayed, was expected very soon. Repairing with them to the upstairs salon, the charming hostess entertained them with the best champagne she could muster, well out of earshot of Peter Janson two floors below, who had by now set to work with a spanner and screwdrivers.

After a good 40 minutes Barton arrived upstairs beaming triumphantly— now resplendent in his favourite Savile Row suit. Mary Ellen recalls the delayed meeting was followed by a splendid dinner with the Australian Ambassador to the Hague, Sir David Fairbairn. On the way into the dining room, the guests paused to admire the imposing medieval suit of armour. It took all of Barton and his co-conspirators self-control to choke back their laughter. Still it was hard to miss the fact that the shoulders of all three were shaking uncontrollably.

As a respite from Barton’s intense work schedule and to take advantage of the castle’s unique ambience, Mary Ellen and her partner in crime Flash carefully planned a long weekend treat for early January 1980. Resident staff and their families were dispatched elsewhere for the period.

In Sydney, John Cummings recalls receiving a telegram from Mary Ellen instructing ‘Cynthia’ to pick up her return ticket to Amsterdam and to pack clothing ‘suitable for service’. Such invitations being once-in-a-lifetime, even Cummings’ wife had agreed that her cross-dressing husband would be mad not to accept. It turned out to be three days and nights like no other—at least two cases of Piper Heidsieck champagne were consumed, copious amounts of wine and (for some) marijuana.

Ophemert became the domain of a Baroness (Mary Ellen), a Baron (Flash), a cross-dressing Countess, an armoured knight (Barton), a cross-dressing maid (Cummings) and Foot the Irish butler. To make things interesting, characters would morph throughout the weekend as the mood changed.

As usual, the theatre was finely tuned. Disguised as an Arab in turban and robes, Barton was instructed to pick up Cynthia from the local train station. The Arab deposited his charge not at Ophemert but at the edge of a wood. It was dark and the mute Arab indicated with gestures that Cynthia was to proceed towards the distant light of an oil lantern. She stumbled forth over the hard frozen ground in high heels. As she neared the light a mysterious monk seized her roughly, hastening her towards the castle, where a light burned high in an attic window.

At the castle moat, Cynthia was hurried into a small boat and rowed across the partly frozen water. After some knocking and thumping at the castle door, Mary Ellen finally appeared in a leopard-skin jumpsuit. Meanwhile, after a costume change, the Arab was now a medieval knight, amusing himself by hiding for an hour in a curtained alcove in the living room. The encased knight was soon to become a spirited tiger, mauling the guests before taking refuge under the dining room table, from where he refused to emerge. The improvised madness continued all weekend. The ‘tiger’ was diagnosed as being possessed by devils—its slated exorcism to be the highlight of the following night’s festivities.

For the Saturday night exorcism, the group was joined by four gay leather-boys from Amsterdam. Cynthia appeared in a leather maid’s outfit. Not to be outdone, the Countess descended from her room in a green evening gown of clingy jersey, setting off an auburn wig. Barton was presented for the ceremony thoroughly bound. The combination to the lock on his ankle cuffs forgotten, much of the following day would be spent trying possible combinations to avoid the embarrassment of calling a Dutch locksmith.

As the weekend progressed, Foot the Butler would re-emerge as a vicar; Barton would morph into Poppy the vengeful maid; and Cynthia would transform herself into Lady Fiona. By the final dinner, the outfits had become increasingly preposterous. Mary Ellen appeared in a black fur bikini, long studded gauntlets, black high-heeled boots and a long black cloak. The Countess dined in a pale green caftan while the Baron chose a brocade jacket, gym trunks, black boots and a floral mob cap. Waiting table, Poppy amused herself pouring the Baron’s carefully prepared gravy down the sink, lacing the soup with mustard and ruining the coffee by using the potato water and cloves.

When IPEC staff and spouses returned from Paris next day, the encircling moat had frozen over once again, leaving only a lone rowing boat and a few telltale champagne bottles locked in the ice.

Barton’s belief was that a business couldn’t sell a service that was not up and running. He would run empty trucks if necessary until the market saw he was serious and reliable. It would mean a huge investment in the first six months of setting up.

In July 1980, Barton finalised a loan of US$15 million using Midland and International Banks Ltd (MAIBL), a consortium bank specialising in medium- and long-term finance of particularly large or otherwise difficult transactions. The Wrest Point Casino was put up as security and three of the group’s companies nominated as guarantors. The European business had three years—until July 1983—before repayments on the principal needed to commence. The huge cash injection meant that by August IPEC Europe had invested in a sales force of 100 across six countries. The loan would also assist in financing the Wrest Point convention centre.

By September 1980 Grahame Bunyan was asked to come up with a campaign to increase awareness of IPEC Europe and its new express road freight concept. His provocative ‘Faster than Airfreight?’ campaign ran as colour advertisements in newspapers and magazines across Europe. Over the next eight months £200,000 was ploughed into advertising. John Konstas claims that without it, growth would have taken many years longer to achieve.

With months of this high exposure advertising, IPEC came to owe a lot of money to its UK marketing supplier—£6 million or so, Allen Tapp recalls. At one stage an Englishman arrived at Ophemert demanding payment. Barton poured him some Scotch and kept filling up his glass, until he was fairly drunk. He then disappeared upstairs, changing into his red night shirt and matching pixie nightcap, before returning to the table. Sozzled, the marketing man’s eyes widened. Pointing at Barton with a shaky arm he had mumbled, ‘I’ve worked it out. You’re all funny. You’re all funny!’

‘Get rid of him,’ Barton instructed Tapp quietly.

‘You’re Barton’s hit man, you’re Barton’s hit man!’ the fellow yelled as the stocky Australian picked him up, hoisted him over his shoulder and took him out to his rental car. Tapp put him in the passenger seat and drove 200 metres down the road into a dyke. He left the fellow there, passed out, the keys in the ignition to make it look as if the Englishman had run his car off the road. Returning to the castle, he confirmed to Barton that he had got rid of the fellow.

‘Not permanently?’ Barton asked, alarmed.

‘You told me to get rid of him. I got rid of him,’ Tapp replied stone-faced.

The marketing director was never heard from again, although IPEC’s marketing debt was eventually paid off.

By now most of the Australian IPEC staff in Europe had moved into their own accommodation. Lord Reay wanted Ophemert back as he and his new wife planned to spend more time there. Barton and Mary Ellen were happy to return to London. When he needed to, Barton now took a room in a beautiful old family-run chateau in the nearby woods. It had been occupied by the SS during World War II. IPEC Europe senior executive Freddie Van Gaever often stayed as well. He recalls arriving late at the chateau one night with Barton. Only one room was available. Barton was happy to share. ‘I was so surprised,’ the Belgian businessman chuckles, ‘in the same bed as Gordon. He was a very special man . . . He was a very easygoing man.’

At staff Christmas gatherings, Barton would prepare a speech in Dutch (he had retained a little from his childhood). Local staff appreciated such inclusiveness immensely.

To Van Gaever, Barton was a visionary, years ahead of his time. ‘He was too progressive at the time with many of his ideas . . . Some people were thinking Gordon was a lunatic . . . He was always saying Europe would become one, [saying] today we have problems with all the different currencies—that will all disappear in the future [with] one currency. All the borders will disappear. Today we have problems with customs clearances but that will all go away . . . It all happened the way he said.’

Because he was travelling between Holland, London and Sydney frequently, Barton liked to keep a car in each city—near-identical, large white Mercedes. To him, white was the safest colour because it could be easily seen on the road. He would leave his Dutch Mercedes at the airport to take the short flight to London. On one occasion he flew out of Rotterdam. His return flight came into Amsterdam instead. Forgetting he had flown from Rotterdam, he searched in vain for his car. It was weeks before a staff member finally located it.

Given the shortage of funds in both Europe and Australia, the group was now borrowing against forecast future income. These extra borrowings were compounding its problems. Every time an asset was sold, the proceeds were immediately dispersed to pay out loans. The $7.7 million raised from the sale of the Mid City Centre vanished within ten weeks. Nine million dollars, mostly in loans, needed to be paid out to DAC, to external lenders, to IPEC Europe. There were Southlands re-insurance debts, as well as huge bills for travel and accommodation.

IPEC Europe had racked up over 6 million guilders in losses in six months—4.8 million more than budgeted. Cash flow was becoming impossible to assess or control. One senior executive calculated that IPEC Europe was going to be short some 5 million guilders in the following three months.

While Barton was in Europe, Greg Farrell had also been busy. Construction of the Alice Springs casino had begun and Darwin would soon follow. It had been clear since late 1979 that construction costs had been badly underestimated. Another $4 million would be needed in the coming six months. Six months had been spent planning a new Wrest Point convention centre for 1600 and 100 new bedroom suites. Barton had been kept out of the loop.

When he read the Wrest Point proposal in early June 1980, Barton became concerned about the costs of construction. He was too late, however. It was already a done deal, the Federal board—including Nick Aboud and Graham Cooke—having approved the project. The builders—Jennings—had guaranteed costs would not exceed $10 million, a necessary limit to ensure viability. Like Barton in Europe, Greg Farrell painted a deceptively rosy picture of profit forecasts from the three casinos. However, Peter Wolfe, Federal’s director responsible for gaming, was starting to see a black hole. The Northern Territory casino projects were going to need $50 million in construction and set-up costs. Costs for Darwin alone had almost doubled to $20 million, and the interest rate was severe. Worse, the casinos were unlikely to show profits for some years. Wolfe and Farrell began to squabble behind the scenes. Barton would be proved right. Like Darwin, Wrest Point construction costs would balloon—to $20 million.

In mid-April, IPEC Group general manager Nick Aboud wrote to his European counterpart John Konstas to ensure he dropped any further expansion plans and cut expenditure to the bone. Three months on, the Australian head office simply could not spare the $500,000 it had been sending each month to Europe. Farrell was getting testy at Barton’s reckless development of a European sales force. He wrote: ‘For immediate future have been forced to adopt survival measures here . . . The position is extremely grim.’

Barton was angry at IPEC Europe being starved of funds. Farrell, having calculated that IPEC Europe would need millions of dollars to repay loans in the next few months, wrote again to John Konstas. He insisted that a new loan of A$11 million would be needed almost entirely for casino repayments. Even if their investment in DAC and Traders Prudent (an insurer of televisions Ipec Insurance had purchased in 1969) were sold as planned, they were still going to be short to meet their European repayments.

Farrell wanted Angus & Robertson Publishing sold and IPEC Europe’s profligate spending ‘drastically cut back . . . to the bone—reps, advertising, overhead costs, the lot . . . or we will lose everything’. Further, he suggested 20 per cent of the business be sold. Farrell assured Barton he had the backing of Graham Cooke and Nick Aboud.

Unwilling to give up any of IPEC Europe, Barton insisted instead that they sell half the equity in the casinos. He was adamant that the board meet urgently to discuss the escalating costs of construction in the Northern Territory. Barton was therefore furious to learn on 5 September 1980 that Farrell had gone ahead with a preliminary Darwin contract. His hold on corporate decision-making was slipping. He wrote to his partner:

It’s money down the drain if we are unable or unwilling to proceed. If Federal has decided to proceed whatever I say . . . then I think we have an impossible situation . . . I ask you again not, under any circumstances, to enter into further commitments re Darwin. A$20 m. project is not a $12 m. project . . .

It doesn’t do the IPEC morale much good when we tell them we can fund casinos but not transport acquisitions.

Senior staff were becoming well aware of the tensions. However, at Sydney head office, the battle for company funds was one Farrell was winning.

Richard Walsh had by now bedded down a team with strong camaraderie at Angus & Robertson Publishing. With the help of Rodney Hall, David Malouf and Les Murray, Angus & Robertson had even reclaimed the position as Australia’s leading poetry publisher. However, by mid-1980 cash flow was continually being sucked out to fund the casinos. The publisher was becoming so slow to pay that suppliers increased their rates to compensate. Authors were being paid months late. Prized authors began shifting to rival publishers.

For Walsh, watching the iconic publishing house bled for funds was distressing. He contacted Barton, begging him to sell Angus &Robertson before its proud reputation, and hence its value, lay in tatters. Barton agreed and asked Walsh to take responsibility for interviewing prospective buyers. It was a responsibility which attested to the enormous faith Barton had in his trusted lieutenants. Walsh made no secret of the fact that he was keen to remain managing director.

Given the financial strains on IPEC Europe, in October 1980 Barton and John Konstas began secret negotiations with Dutch national carrier KLM about a possible equity buy-in and commercial cooperation. IPEC Europe now employed 1400 and operated 34 depots in seven countries using four languages to service 30,000 business customers. Barton insisted there were firm plans to expand into Italy, Austria and Scandinavia.

By the start of December 1980, IPEC Australia had pumped some $18 million into the European business. Still, weekly losses were huge, reaching close to 30 million guilders ($A73 million) since start-up. A European recession had set in, which meant the previous year’s growth had been little more than half that forecast. Setup costs had gone unchecked. With no sign of an end to the haemorrhaging, concern mounted in Australia.

Konstas and Barton had no choice but to announce they were freezing all spending on advertising, increasing rates by 10 per cent and reducing transport costs. Already, extravagant Christmas hampers had been ordered for each of the hundreds of staff members. Country managers were instructed to put off staff or cut back on services. Barton’s letter to managers on 10 December ended on a note of desperation: ‘. . . I am very well aware that what I am asking will not be easy or pleasant for you . . . Please take the necessary action and please do it promptly, as a matter of extreme urgency. These cost cuts should be your personal top priority over the next few weeks and they must succeed.’

Managers were sent scrambling to report what they had spent on advertising in the previous six months. By New Year’s Eve it was clear six of seven countries had hugely overspent. The UK was the worst offender, its sorry state damned as ‘a consequence of lack of responsibility, authority and control being placed on any one individual’.

The financial crisis meant by year’s end IPEC was scrambling to find funds—any funds—to repay its loans, especially to its loyal bankers at ABN. Letters of reassurance were sent. A public float of the casinos was being discussed. ABN’s Harry Langman was assured that choice assets were up for sale—Angus & Robertson Publishers, a half interest in the Alice Springs and Darwin hotel projects, Direct Acceptance Corporation and/or half of insurer Traders Prudent.

Desperate, Barton asked both ABN in Amsterdam and AMRO in London to double their overdrafts. Despite his reassurance and Dr Langman’s high regard for Barton, the banks were worried. By 30 December 1980 they had released only enough funds to keep IPEC Europe liquid for another month. Like a gambler desperate to win back its losses, IPEC begged instead for an additional 5 million guilders. It was on the verge of collapsing under its own debt.