Back on November 14, Dick Smith addressed the Manly-Warringah Radio Society and his talk was videoed.

In this 1:18:00 session Dick "talks about how he got started, the early Dick Smith Electronics days, his round the world adventures in a helicopter, balloon, and plane, and how amateur radio played a huge part in his adventures and saved his life."

The first 25 minutes Dick discusses his early days, and it brought back some memories for me. I shopped many times for components at Kitsets Australia in Stones Arcade Dee Why, and I was served by Dick when he was operating his components business out of an old house at 10 Chandos Street, St Leonards.

I also recall many times queuing in line down the stairs at George Brown Electrical in Clarence Street during my lunch hour -- eating my sandwiches because it was going to take the full hour to get served.

It's a long video, but Dick is nothing if not a great raconteur so I think folks should find the whole thing fascinating:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fK2KBDo7ISY#t=127.

What a nice guy D.S. is.
Very interesting details of his early years and entrepreneurial motivation.
I had forgotten about Weston (sp?) two-way radios, but as I recall they had almost a monopoly on the taxi business and stuck with low band AM (the sound of those distorted radios in cabs) when the two-way industry had otherwise moved to FM. Having repaired and installed my share of 2-way's, I remember AWA not really even trying to crack the Taxi market, strange...

At end of video he almost concedes defeat on promoting Australian owned foods.

Recently he said Aldi will wipe out Woolies and Coles within 15 years:
"Both of them will go broke...We'll end with two of everything.."

So foreign-owned retailers will be selling foreign-owned processed foods & beer
(mainly owned by five Euro gigacorporations: Nestle, Unilever, Aldi, InBev, SAB).