Don Brisbane is one of those hardy, carefree characters for whom age has presented few barriers.
Hold tight - we’re checking permissions before loading more content
He got his first piercing — in his ear — at 60.
He bought himself an exotic sports car — a Chevrolet Corvette — at 86.
Now, at 88, he’s learning to speak Italian.
Rather than a lifetime of hard, laborious work incapacitating him, it appears to have extended his vigour.
That, paired with an active lifestyle and an avoidance of alcohol, may also have contributed.
Don was born in rural Katamatite; the oldest of four boys (one sadly now deceased) and one girl.
As his parents tossed around the name Graham to give him, shortly after he was born, the doctor said, “Don’t be silly, there’s only one name for him.”
He was referring to Don’s mum Dorothy’s maiden surname being Donald, so that is what their firstborn son’s name became.
Don went to primary school in Murchison and did three years at Shepparton High School before transferring to the then brand new tech school in Shepparton for a final year of secondary education.
When he left, he did a couple of years of a plumbing apprenticeship, but the call of the country — and a higher pay cheque — lured him back to the land.
He sought a job as a roustabout to get his foot in the shearing shed door, but pretty soon had an opportunity to show his potential skill as a shearer in “the main shed”.
There, his future career was written.
Or was it?
His family owned a soft drink factory in Shepparton, named Pura Cordials, when he got a new qualification.
“Somebody had to have a boiler ticket, and Dad said to my brother, Ray, and myself, both of you go to tonight’s school and surely one of you will pass,” Don said.
Don was successful in obtaining the ticket he then used for various secondary jobs over his years as a shearer; sometimes shearing all day, then attending boilers at night “catching a nap” whenever he could to make ends meet.
He spent two years working on the boiler at the local abattoirs, but that kind of work didn’t become his primary job until he hung up his clippers at 60.
Decades earlier, however, when the family’s soft drink factory was sold to Tarax, he continued working for the new owners.
He would take time off here and there to follow the bigger shearing bucks around, until both jobs were no longer simultaneously sustainable.
“I was there for a month and the shearing season came up and I asked the boss if I could have a couple of weeks off,” Don said.
“At the end of the two weeks, I was still making as much in a day as I was making in a week at Tarax, so I went back and asked for another couple of weeks.”
He then asked for another, and another, until the boss warned him that if he didn’t turn up on Monday to not bother turning up again at all.
“That was the end of that,” he said.
With shearing a passion that served him for decades, Don discovered many callings outside of work, too.
Testament to his relentless pursuit of what, and who, he adores, he’d asked his now wife, Lorraine, out about 15 times before she finally agreed to a date.
They courted for three years before getting married in 1961 at Shepparton’s Church of Christ.
The pair honeymooned on the scenic South Molle Island in Queensland’s Whitsundays, long before 2017’s Cyclone Debbie caused its commercial resort to be abandoned.
Together they had five children, all girls, named Michelle, Kim, Lisa, Mardi and Giselle, who, between them have 13 kids, who between them have several of their own, too.
Don was less of a traveller than Lorraine throughout the years, although he did go to New Zealand a couple of times to pursue cycling endeavours after falling in love with the sport in his teens.
In 1964, when he was 18, he won a big road race between Bendigo and Charlton.
He became so skilled at cycling that he rose to the top ranks in Shepparton, going on to represent the Goulburn Valley in Melbourne races, both on the road and in the velodrome.
At the height of his time and physical investment in the sport, he was riding 500km each week.
“I liked cycling because I was fairly good at it; you tend to like things you’re good at, don’t you?” Don said.
He continued competitive riding with “the vets” until he was into his 70s, only giving it up around 15 years ago, but he still gets the bike out from time to time for a leisurely ride.
He also gave motorcycle racing a crack, powering his Suzuki T250 to the occasional win at Winton and Broadford in his younger years.
It’s a common theme he’s carried with him his entire life; he likes things with a lot of horsepower: planes (he held his private licence flying Beechcraft Musketeers and small Cessnas over Goulburn Valley skies for 10 years), motorbikes (not only did he race them, he loved tinkering with them), cars (much to Lorraine’s displeasure, he recently bought that Corvette she refuses to ride shotgun in, but, she will jump in the passenger seat of his E-type Jaguars), and, well, horses themselves.
Don had a knack with racehorses, and bred and trained them on the 22-hectare mixed farm he and Lorraine owned at Kialla for 40 years.
“I had a very good stallion at one stage called War Chest; he was the runner up in the Blue Diamond (Stakes) in his year (1982),” Don said.
From playing the cornet in a youth club band to farming sheep and growing crops, to co-owning Ramuda Batteries with his brother and becoming the designated tiger snake catcher in shearing sheds around the country, Don had a crack at many and varied things.
He might not have had a chance to do half of it had he had died at 30 like he thought he was going to in a terrifying moment he recounted during an assignment for a University of the Third Age writing workshop.
Don penned the tale of the time he almost drowned at Waranga Basin.
“My friend had just bought a Flying Dutchman, a little sailing boat. It had a big sail, they were very fast,” Don said.
“Two of us went out for a sail with him. I thought he knew what he was doing, but he didn’t.”
On one last loop before returning to shore for the day, the boat capsized, trapping Don under the sail without air.
“I got caught out in the ropes and couldn’t get out and I was trying to turn it up the right way ... I knew we were in trouble because I was really cold and shivering from exposure.”
He learned later that he had probably 40 minutes left to live had a couple of people in little minnow boats not noticed their crew was in strife on dusk and come to the rescue.
“I thought, gee, I’m saved,” he said, recalling the relief.
“Because I thought I was dead.”
The Tigers supporter grew up barracking for Collingwood, but as he matured, he began to question his loyalty to the Magpies.
“What’s Collingwood ever done for me? Nothing,” he said.
“I’d had a bit to do with Richmond because Tommy Hafey was up here and I’d been down and stayed at Richmond, going through the clubrooms and I thought, I’m more at home with Richmond.
“Bugger Collingwood, I jumped ship.”
Football is one of many sports Don loves watching between reading many books, which is not a new passion born out of retirement, it’s one he’s always had.
“While the other shearers were off drinking beer, I was busy reading,” he said.
“I’ve never really been much of a drinker.”
But a thinker?
Absolutely.
While he has no plans for a second piercing, another sports car, or a third language, he’s got plenty of time for further studies at the University of the Third Age.
“I like the science lectures,” he said.
Don’s life experience is so well rounded, he could probably be delivering them himself.
As the multilingual local luminary Don would say in his newfound second language, passo e chiudo.
For the monolingual English speakers among us, that translates to over and out.