With James Delahunty
by Sam Regi
In a financial legacy session with James Delahunty, we recorded three conversations with a man who has built pharmacies, manufactured products, purchased city buildings, failed, recovered, and built again across more than fifty years in Brisbane. Most of it came from instinct, stubbornness, and a willingness to be wrong.
Recorded over a single sitting, the session produced three episodes that form a course for James' family; on how wealth is built, how decisions are made under pressure, and what he hopes will outlast him.
Press play to listen to an extract from the conversation with James
Episode I. What Shaped the Thinking
James grew up in a hotel.
His mother ran the Grosvenor Hotel on the corner of George and Ann Street - a working men's pub with barristers in one bar, solicitors in another, a ladies' lounge upstairs, and a judge's room with white tablecloths and silver. His father, orphaned at fifteen, became a pharmacist and rose to lead the national pharmacy profession.
James watched his mother break up fights in the public bar after the five o'clock swill. He carried food to prisoners at the Supreme Court across the road. He poured beers before he was old enough to drink them.
His father's path pulled him into pharmacy. He failed first year, by his own account, from too much rugby and too much student politics. But he didn't resist the pull into pharmacy because he admired what his father had become. A man who started with nothing and was treated with respect.
"I wasn't broad enough to be a doctor. But I saw that managing people and managing new projects was a way of accumulating some assets. Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. I've lost plenty," James said.
That phrase, 'sometimes you win, sometimes you lose' appears in almost every conversation with James. It is not a cliché in his mouth. It is a philosophy he has tested repeatedly, at real cost.
"Number one, always have a smile on your face. Listen carefully. And shut up. Don't talk too much."
An article we wrote about James.
Episode II. What the Decisions Looked Like
The story James returns to most often is the purchase of Empire House.
James was running a chemist shop on the corner of Queen and Wharf Street, the shop his father had started in 1932. Upstairs, in the same building, a Greek milk bar owner named Nick Kubis and a Sicilian barber named Giovanni LaMotta ran their own businesses. The three of them were tenants. They became friends. Then they became partners.
"We asked the solicitor and the accountant if they wanted to come in with us. They said yes. Then they said no. So it was the three of us - a chemist, a milk bar owner, and a barber - buying a CBD building."
Australia was in recession. Interest rates had reached twenty-eight percent. They borrowed anyway. Saturday afternoons, after closing their shops, the three men would meet in a tiny office on the top floor around a desk with a old jeweller's safe and run the numbers.
"We knew we had made it when we could hold our meetings during the week instead of Saturday afternoons. That was our family time. When we got that back, we knew it was working."
They painted the building pink, James' mother had painted the Grosvenor pink years before, because it stood out and slowly filled the tenancies. It took three to five years. Then offers started coming in, substantially more than they had paid.
But the moment James tells with the most energy is the one that nearly ended it.
"Mr Adams was my ANZ bank manager. He was across the road. And one day he came over to the chemist shop and said, 'James, would you mind throwing your chequebook away for a while?' I was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars over my overdraft limit," James said.
He did not know he was over the limit. He had been expanding into manufacturing products, running sales reps across Queensland and northern New South Wales, buying stock, backing ideas. The money was going out faster than it was coming in.
"I did what he told me. I stopped writing cheques. But I want my kids and grandchildren to understand that I had a go. You might suffer. But life comes in waves. When the big waves come, you duck down, let them go over the top of you. And then you get up again. And you smile."
Alongside the banker, James credits a real estate agent named Rob Walker, with whom he lived for a time after leaving home at twenty-eight.
"Rob showed me how to borrow five grand and turn it into twenty-five grand. I never forgot that. I was never in business with him. But I watched, and I learned."
Episode III. What He Hopes Will Last
When asked about legacy, James does not reach for sentiment.
"I certainly hope my grandchildren eventually do come back to our stories. I don't think my kids give a toss about it at the moment. But I believe that when they look back, like I've looked back at my parents, they'll see a reasonably happy, stable childhood. And they'll see someone who accomplished certain things."
He wanted to pass on the instinct, the have a go attitude, more than the assets. He found that harder than building the businesses themselves.
"I did want to instil in them a have-a-go attitude. And I found that reasonably hard to do. They've got to get used to having a go and losing. Not always winning. Otherwise you're kidding yourself."
He tried through stamps and coins, the collections his own father had given him. The children were not interested. He pivoted to supporting their sport. He adjusted. He led by example.
"My leadership, I suppose, is by doing it myself and letting them observe. And if they want to have a go, I'll support them."
There is a time capsule buried just inside the gates of the Brisbane City Botanic Gardens. A forty-four gallon drum, donated by BHP, sealed through Rotary, set to be opened in 2088. James arranged it. He has left a codicil in his will directing his grandchildren to it.
He knows they may never look.
But it is there. And so is this recording.
"What's it going to do for me? It gives me some peace of mind that maybe it'll give them some guidance. Maybe preserve something. We're all human. We all walk the earth and eat the same food. But that's why I hope there is some recognition by my family in a hundred years' time."
James Delahunty's conversations were recorded at his office in Spring Hill, Brisbane. This is a Talking Stories Financial Legacy product.