Hardware retailers Barry and Keith Fagg. Picture: Tommy Ritchie 59125
Andrew Mathieson
A FIRE at the turn of the last century did more than burn the records of a part of Geelong’s history – it could have easily killed a family legacy of more than 157 years.
Brothers Barry and Keith Fagg now safely sit back in their boardroom, dwelling over century-old framed pictures of the Fagg hardware empire, born a stone’s throw away from the Barwon River.
“This is where Geelong was first settled – the first house was here,” a reflective Barry says, pointing toward the river.
“Then the settlement started on the bay and over the next 50 years they finally came together.”
The historical site on the corner of Moorabool Street and Barwon Terrace is a far cry from the original building that was home to a timber merchant, a carpenter, a wheelwright and an ironmonger.
An upcoming major expansion promises to deliver modern Fagg’s Mitre 10 its greatest one-stop hardware complex since English immigrants Samuel and William Fagg first opened their doors in 1854.
But when the blaze destroyed, ironically, the timber-based building in January, 1901, the first Fagg brothers were left devastated.
The business was largely uninsured and rather than pack it all in they chose to start again from scratch.
Barry now sifts through pages of historical records but with a heavy heart comes up empty on more than 30 lost years.
“We really don’t know how they did it or what the process was at the time because we lost all that information,” Keith adds.
“The fact they rebuilt that building and got it going again is quite extraordinary.
“Both Samuel and William weren’t young men, either.”
Samuel, the great-grandfather of Barry and Keith, was 73 and William, 70 at the time.
But William died the next year in 1902 to see his dream unfulfilled and his brother seven years later.
Now Barry, 59, and Keith, 55, with a sense of responsibility carry the burden of custodians of a history that is more than just a family tree.
Grandfather Charlie and their dad, Bert, still alive at 93, ran Fagg’s for nearly all of the 20th Century.
Bert was just 16 when he picked up his first tool and was 82 when he called it quits.
“Most businesses that age could be five or six generations, not just four,” Barry mentions.
Keith’s 27-year-old son, Mark, is now the fifth generation working in the business.
Fagg brothers is the eighth oldest family business in Australia, only 17 years younger than a transport and wine business that holds the coveted title.
Barry boastfully finds a loophole that could elevate the family’s standing higher.
“It is the same family, yes, although the family business association regards son-in-laws and whatever as being in the same family,” he points out, “but Keith and I have a direct blood relationship back to Samuel Fagg.”
Barry counts at least 25 Fagg family members as having worked more than a few hundred years combined in their South Geelong, Geelong West, North Geelong and Waurn Ponds stores.
“Certainly, in the early 1900s and during the wars and depressions there weren’t too many other options,” Keith says.
“Our father would have loved to have become an engineer but he ended up being a joiner because that was the only option when he was a teenager.”
When Barry and Keith think of Fagg’s through their years, their minds cast back to the timber mill down the road.
The smell of the sawdust inside the boiler and dry timber steaming out of the kilns remains fresh among their senses.
The belt and pulley-driven machinery provided a child’s playground, Barry recalls.
“Those were the days when occupational health and safety wasn’t an issue,” he laughs nostalgically, “you could walk around and the machines spinning.”
But that’s where the affinity with timber ends. Neither, they concede, are handymen.
“We’re probably not what you call the most practical DIY freaks – we’re acknowledging that and we don’t claim to be,” Barry grins before Keith interrupts: “We have a passion, we just don’t have the skills.”
