Why I drew the lines

Alex de Vos
The death of his father at the hands of the Nazis in World War Two put Torquay’s Curtis Weiss on a career path to the arts.
Now a sprightly 82-year-old living on The Esplanade, Curtis remembered how he worked as an extra for a film company in Vienna after the tragedy.
“My father was an art dealer and didn’t believe in Mr Hitler’s politics,” Curtis said.
“He was sent off to a concentration camp, not far from Dachau (prison camp) but on the Austrian border.
“He died in the camp and I was at arts school at the time and had to earn a bit of money on the side, so I worked as an extra.”
The work helped ease the pain.
“It was a lot of fun,” Curtis recalled.
“It could be boring at times because there were so many shots and sometimes you’d spend all day in make up.
“I was only a kid at the time, about 16 – all the able-bodied people were in the army, so it was only the youngsters and the very ancient.”
The curtain closed on Curtis’s acting career around the time the war ended.
These days the ex-actor prefers drawing and publishing cartoon books in the name of charity.
But it took Curtis a journey of career and country changes to reach his destination.
After the war he immigrated to Australia and settled in Adelaide where he resumed his art studies.
“My original training was designing books covers,” he said.
“But now everything is done by computers, so I switched just in time to interior design.
“I was in the industry for quite a number of years.”
After working in Adelaide, Curtis moved to Melbourne where his interior design career began to take shape.
“I’m not a terribly big communicator,” he admitted, “so I started working in the commercial industry, designing the interiors of pharmacies.
“It was a very lucrative business, the chemists. The highlight of my career was when I won an award for the best pharmacy in an Australian wide competition.
“Funnily enough the pharmacy was in Geelong – on the corner of Ryrie Street and James Street. That was about 30 years ago.”
After successful years working in the design business in Melbourne, Curtis moved to the Surf Coast where he planned to spend his retirement days drawing cartoons.
“I ended up in Torquay after I saw a pen drawing of a house for sale at Airey’s Inlet,” he said.
“On the strength of that I drove down to Airey’s Inlet to buy the house, which was really cheap at the time, but was knocked out of the auction.”
Curtis fell in love with the Surf Coast and years later finally purchased a house overlooking the ocean at Torquay.
Curtis lives with a joint tenant and his two Scottish terriers, Pepe and Feri “the feral”.
“Pepe is okay but Feri can be a bit protective,” Curtis warned.
Last year Curtis published a cartoon book for a Masonic Lodge to raise money for charity.
“I sold about 500 copies and collected $1000,” he said proudly.
“The lodge in its wisdom doubled that amount and $2000 went to the Peter McCallum Cancer Hospital.
“I had a prostate problem a number of years ago and that charity was very dear to my mind but I’m good as new now.
“This (cartoon drawing) would have been my chosen profession if it wasn’t for the war.”