The second generation of pearler under Nicholas Paspaley Jnr continue to produce priceless gems of nature's art.

The late Nicholas Paspaley, pioneer pearler of Broome and Darwin was a man of some ambitious design; a visionary who battled both the tempestuous forces of nature and the aggressive tides of fate in order to help the sea to produce it romantic gem - the pearl, and as perfect a pearl as is humanly, and in nature possible to create. From his early dream where the pearl-producing oyster shell was the focus of his world, surmounting the odds to produce a pearl in the Australian South Seas that would have no peer. Paspaley Pearling Co. has grown into an international entity that has redressed the balance. The world has become Paspaley's oyster.

His three children, Ros, Nick and Marilynne are all integral parts of the Paspaley operation which today encompasses pearling as the primary and most important element of the portfolio, but with expanded interests and investment including an import/export business in New York, real estate holdings, a design studio, shipping, retail outlets, in a vast organisation that spans South East Asia, the United States, and the far Western, Eastern and Northern ends of Australia.

Paspaley Pearling Co. has grown to embrace a corporation structure and logistics with over 400 employees but the nacre of the company is the triumverate of second generation Paspaleys. It is also a multi-million dollar operation whose longterm prospectus has proven even in the short term to augur untold benefits both financial and in terms of prestige and profile, for Australia.

But it is pearling, perhaps the most romantic of the alliances that man enjoys with the sea but also the most fraught with difficulty, gamble, and the mercurial nature of nature herself, that remains the "first, second and third love" of the late Nicholas Paspaley's three very different but equally enamoured children.

Nicholas Paspaley senior was by all accounts a determined man, the slings and arrows of sometimes outrageous misfortune and the immense capital outlay that are the twin intractables of pearling, frequently testing but never taking their toll on the Greek born pioneer. Where his peers surrendered to the inanition of a volatile trying industry, Nicholas Paspaley developed new ways of thinking; of acquiring and dealing with new knowledge and technique; forming alliances very early on with the Japanese, the world leaders in pearl culture and ultimately establishing his own distribution networks when the original connections had outlived their use.

Yet it was only really in 1980 that the future of Paspaley Pearling Company as it is today became remotely apparent. Since then, Paspaley's results are unparalleled. Apart from the capital outlay on the most state-of-the-art technology it is the inherent respect with which the shell, the most important element of the business is treated, the time invested in its daily care that guarantees to some more specific extent their peerless results proving that dedication and hard work above all else, are the most valuable personal virtues in this industry.

"Pearl is not actually a natural resource - the shell is the natural resource. "It is our skill that puts value added to the shell", says Marilynne Paspaley. "It is an Indigenous industry that is incredibly important in this country and highly prestigious overseas. We are exporting the finest pearls that can be found anywhere in the world and that is very prestigious for Australia".

Throughout the early, struggling years, there were several forays into other areas in order to support the vision that had yet to become splendid, to keep the pearling business going.

Indeed, after ten years of experimentation with new systems put in place by Nick junior, the incremental rewards were only beginning to materialise just before his father passed away, in the early eighties. And they continue to grow. Beyond perhaps even Nicholas' most ambitious designs.

Master Pearler Nicholas Paspaley's legacy is palpable both in respect of the business that he founded through persistence and vision, and in the philosophies - personal and professional of his children. All three are as determined and passionate about pearling and their individual roles and contributions to the maintenance and expansion of the company; pragmatic and respectful in terms of where diversification can and should occur and committed to the original intentions of their father, whose overall view of pearling was, by necessity, less a commercial enterprise and more a way of life. It's a tall order whose largesse of reward prerequires massive risk.

"Nothing in the world could be more interesting to me, it is such a diverse industry", says eldest child Ros Bracher. "It was something my father started and he encouraged us all to participate in it from a very early age".

"I never doubted it, not for a minute", says Nick, middle child and only son whose professional future was assured from childhood. "As a child, I'd never had a holiday - after school and every vacation I would go and work with my father".

"The business is in your blood and your bones", says Marilynne, youngest of the clan and the most recent conscript to active Paspaley duty. "not only that, we all love it with the same passion....and it is a fascinating business - you can't help but be involved because it is so exciting.

"Our father was a very wonderful man and he has left me with so much that is important in my life that has nothing to do with business", Marilynne continues. "It was his approach to life - his priorities: he was a very honest and honourable man. At his funeral, our Japanese employees - the men - were weeping openly in public and that is not a common sight...not a common sight at all. Family was very important to him and people were very important to him, but honesty was also vital. He didn't need to impress them; he didn't need to cut corners or to tread on anyone to achieve what he wanted. He didn't need to make money fast because if he did he wouldn't have been in this business. There were a lot of people who could be in pearling today who were there when he started but they just couldn't see the dream. He had the dream, but not only did he have the vision, he had the commitment to pursue it, to stick by it, year after year, decade, after decade".

The Paspaley girls harbour very vivid memories of a unique upbringing in an even more anachronistic household headed by parents who differed from those of their peers in both style and profession. Theirs is a very strong and affectionate image of their father and the very elegant Vivienne Paspaley who left Sydney society to marry the pearler from Darwin. Marilynne paints a portrait which could have been taken from the pages of a Neville Shute novel or any one of the period stories that have formed the basis of Australian cinema. It was a culture shock made all the more real by the fact that one was not talking of another country, rather another town that to all intents and purposes, could have been another world away.

"Our parents were not like anybody elses because they were both remarkable people. My father, in his business and his attitude to everything was different.

"My mother would never go anywhere, even if it was just shopping - without wearing stockings - in 350C heat, 99% humidity. She would look immaculate! I have memories of my mother turning up to school to give me my lunch wearing a magnificent picture hat, beautiful dress stockings, high-heeled shoes and gloves!"

Growing up in the far northern port of Darwin nonetheless has instilled in all three Paspaleys an ingenuousness and lack of pretension in approach and philosophy that is as rare in the international world of haute jewellery as the precious gems they cultivate. Although boarding school and tertiary educated in the city with a personal penchant for the world of art and precious collectables, her responsibilities in overseeing the business mean that today, Ros Bracher spends most of her time in Darwin, a situation that appeals to her notion of quality of life.

"Our father was a master pearler and I supposed he just presented as someone who produced pearls and had ships and we lived in the 'vast frontier'," she recalls. "Darwin back then? Well, my own recollections were by comparison - how very different Sydney was!? I couldn't believe the Paddington terraces - that people could and did live so close to each other and not have huge gardens. To me, Sydney was odd, not Darwin!"

"Although I have a place in Sydney, I spend most of my time here in Darwin and I simply love the lifestyle here. The casualness of the whole place - the informality. It just appeals to my nature".Marilynne recalls a childhood of carefree sunny days, tolerance and social laissez-faire where the by-products of urban preoccupation were non-existent and the most virulent social affliction was gossip."It was a very small town and it was really wonderful to grow up there, a very safe and innocent environment".

After their university educations, both girls waited until the time was right respectively for them to share in the running of their father's organisation.

Marilynne's subsequent experience is eclectic and as far removed from the shell farms and luggers of her childhood as Sydney is from Broome. Working variously as a radio announcer for the ABC and in public relations, Marilynne was employed as an actress, a career to which she is still in some part committed, when Nick called her to help set up the retail side of Paspaley Pearling Co.

"I didn't follow the line as strongly as the other two", she says. "I chose another path early on and I was committed to that path but they needed me. Nick simply phoned me and said that at the request of the West Australian government we were building a retail showroom in Broome to display our Australian pearls to the tourists and would I please go and help set it up. I was still working as an actress and I planned well ahead so I knew that during that period my energies would be committed to that project. However, when I went there, I fell madly in love with it and with Broome, and I am only too happy to still be involved".

Paspaley Pearling Co., is today, a synergistic structure, with family members actively involved at every level of operation. Marilynne's natural exuberance makes her the perfect communicator for Paspaley retail; Nick and Ros meanwhile share the administration whilst Nick also applies his experience to the practical side of pearling itself and to international negotiations. Marilynne's ex-husband, Russell Hanigan, manages Pearls Pty. Ltd. in Broome which controls the family's famous Kuri Bay pearl farms and Peter Bracher, Ros' husband handles the company's legal work. "Our family members are hands-on people", says Marilynne. "They are on the farms, on the ships, in the shipyards, everywhere....".

She explains how the retail side of Paspaley Pearl Co. is but one more recent forum for presenting the natural beauty of Paspaley pearls to the world. In actual fact, the family jewels have held pride of place in the showrooms of the world's foremost jewellery houses for many years. "We have the finest and largest collection of South Sea pearls in the world", she says. "And we have also supplied the world's most important pieces to its most famous jewellery houses. Our pearls have held pride of place in Tiffany's, Cartier, Chaumet, Bulgari, Harry Winston and of course, Mikimoto just to name a few. People have also paid tremendous prices at international auctions to own them. One strand of our pearls set a world record at a recent Sotherby's auction in New York. The price was US $2.2 million and although the bidder was anonymous, we understand it was Frank Sinatra.

"Pearls are so beautiful in themselves, a setting should be there really to enhance the natural beauty of the gem", adds Marilynne. "We prefer designs which complement a truly fantastic pearl. The styling should be a platform to hold the jewel and when you work with pearls of our quality, this is possible. This design philosophy is something we are looking to develop in upcoming designing talent in Australia".

For Nick Paspaley, growing up on the luggers, around divers and in the environs of the pearl farms, implied a career that was largely a foregone conclusion. He was groomed as heir apparent from childhood, working and learning alongside his father before taking out his first boat at age twenty.

He joined the company full time in 1972 bringing with him the spirit and enthusiasm to innovate that is characteristic of a new generation. Almost immediately he set about planning revisions to and improvements in the traditional methods that had been initiated by his father's Japanese partners in accordance with their prevailing environments but which were to his mind, inappropriate for the Australian conditions and shell. Patience was the most valuable attribute, as the new systems took years to develop and implement.

"The old system, which I call the 'Japanese system' is basically what my father inherited when he started his joint ventures with the Japanese", explains Nick. "they came to Australia and brought with them their pearl culture system which was based on their own industry and was, at the time, the only system in existence in the world. Applied without adaptation, it just didn't suit the Australian shell and the Australian conditions. The results were terrible but they were the results that the world accepted. In the first ten or fifteen years that pearl culture existed in Australia, those systems never changed.

"When I joined the industry then, naturally I accepted that the old Japanese systems were the Bible. There was tremendous resistance from the Japanese to change anything because they were sent to Australia to implement those systems and were instructed to adhere to them under any circumstances. but in working with these systems, I had the uneasy feeling that we were working against nature, not with it.

"You see, in the early days the business wasn't anywhere near as profitable as it could have been, "he says frankly recalling what drove him to reorganise the foundations and ultimately redirect the fortunes of the company. "It was damn hard work you know, and I don't think that I know of any other business which is harder.

"I could see a lot of money was being spent and a lot of work was being done, and at the end of the year, only a very small quantity of pearls resulted, and of those there were a very, very few nice pieces. I thought it was such a waste of opportunity. There was a lot of incentive to change the way the industry operated. This is a very capital intensive business and requires a lot of costly equipment, so naturally there was a lot of resistance to this change. I wanted to harness nature to grow the pearls for us not to fight against nature as the industry was doing at the time".

Nick's ideas were seen to be revolutionary to the point of near folly. They involved literally beginning at the bottom of the seas and reworking all the way up the ecosystem to the method of production, all of which obviously required tremendous financial outlay. And although Nick understandably prefers the details to remain anonymous - "I don't want to tell the world how to tell the world how to make pearls like we make them" - and indication of the reverence with which his objectives considered the welfare of the pearl shell lies in the fact that Paspaley take the entire shore crew to the shell, the mountain to Mohammed rather than risk compromise in the production of the pearl.

"Today, our organisation is quite complex. We have ships and shipyards to make sure that the vessels are kept in good condition; management and marketing structures, laboratories; workshops that make our own specialised machinery for caring for the pearl shells we even make our own workboats and launches to our own specifications. Because of the scale of our enterprise, we have to have these support systems and we employ approximately 400 people to do just that". Amongst that number, is a team of workers whose sole task is to care for their allotted number of shells during the growth period. Each day, they clean the shells of marine growth, maintain the baskets and the rafts so that any inclement weather will not impede the development of the gem.
"It is a combination of things", answers Nick in near conspiratorial tones as he talks with some reluctance about what it is that makes the difference between a Paspaley pearl and those that would be princess of the trade. "First of all, we probably spend twice as much as anyone else in the world in investment to produce it. And apart from your technique, the quality of the pearl that you produce depends to a large extent on their amount of care and attention that you give it.

Today, the Paspaley portfolio is varied, international and highly diverse in nature with other interests ranging from real estate holdings and shipping to farming, an import business in the United States and Wall Street property investments as but a few of the new Paspaley concerns. These, along with the planning, preparation and production of the all-important pearling, keep Nick and Ros extremely active and highly focussed on the operation and growth of the company.

As a result, Nick finds that his presence is increasingly required in boardrooms rather than on the deck of his beloved luggers but: "I make sure that I spend at least two months of the year at sea, hopefully three. You know", he adds thoughtfully, "it is very romantic making the pearls but making the business stack up organizationally is a tremendous amount of work. If I ever decided to retire, it will be to get away from the tedious side that goes along with it. Then, I might make a few pearls just for pleasure".

It is still the making of the pearls in nature and the people who re essentially attracted to the lustrous wonder of the gem that continue to intrigue and delight the Paspaleys. Like the American fellow currently en route to Australia for a Paspaley pearl auction and accompanying golf tournament, who wrote to Paspaley recently telling them of the offer of a partnership he had received in a pearl farm. An attractive proposition indeed, but as he wrote, 'who wants to compete with the Paspaley pearls?'

"You meet wonderful people", affirms Nick. "I have a tremendous amount of respect for the Japanese and their way of doing business. Their work ethic is just remarkable and I think that the thing that has fascinated me most about business is being able to deal with the Japanese in an industry that is theirs. I am not selling to them, I am selling with them and now we have a common business, a common bond - we work together, we produce together and we sell together.

"I'll tell you another interesting thing about this business, most buyers are very wealthy whether they are companies or individuals and most don't have to buy pearls at all. They are mostly doing it for pleasure. One fellow recently paid $150,000 for an individual item at an auction we held a little while ago. I congratulated him and told him that it took a lot of courage to buy that particular piece. He just smiled at me and said, 'well, I don't know if I can sell it, but I don't mind keeping it anyway".

But for all the glamour, romance, finance and seductive distractions of an industry that has piqued the interest of writers fired the tempestuous passions of a myriad sea-faring characters and sealed with gracious certainty the affections of lucky recipients the world over, pearling per se remains "the primary passion" of the late Nicholas Paspaley's three children, the values he installed in them being that of the family and the real value of the profession.

Talk of the third generation and designs on their own pearling future is inevitable. With Marilynne's three boys, Ros's two sons and a daughter, and Nick's son and daughter, the dynasty seems secure. Now that the apprentices have become the masters it will be interesting to see whether history will repeat itself as it so often does with large family businesses.

"Yes", laughs Marilynne, "we have enough kids between the three of us to carry on. And the company is large enough for them all to find their own niche if", she adds with caution, "they're interested.

"I think that it is extremely important that Ros, Nick and I have a similar feeling about life and the company. The next generation would be wise to follow the ground rules; number one, that there is no rush. Success comes from hard work and dedication and most of all - hands-on participation. That is very important and I think that if it is followed through it will continue to be a strong successful company. And that", she adds firmly, "is enough".