Les Smith brandishes a smile and a style that many people in Lismore will recognise from his decades working in menswear, primarily for local iconic business George Gooley's Menswear on Molesworth Street. Recently retired, Les took some time to chat with Sara Browne.

I came to Lismore in 1977 after I got married. Prior to that, I’d spent about three and a half years in Kempsey doing an apprenticeship in retail at a menswear store down there called RonDons. During that time, I got re-attached to a young lady down there that I’d met going through school. I went to school in Kempsey. I didn’t realise it but she was working right next door and it wasn’t until her boss got wind of me that he matched us up again. That’s the finish of that story.

The family business I was in down there had children coming through of an age to go into the business which meant that I had to find another position, I was basically going to be made redundant. Because of the friendship between my boss at the time and George Gooley, he decided to organise a job for me here in Lismore. I’ve been here since then. 

I loved the work. I loved the people. Everybody’s got their own story. Yes, ok you get the odd person who might rub you up the wrong way but most people are genuine in the heart. They really are. There are a lot of nice people out there. As you get to know people, you find out a bit more about them and the things they do for the community that nobody else knows. They’re a silent contributor. They don’t go about saying ‘look who I am’, they’re just Joe Bloggs on the street, and in the background, they support different organisations. Communication is the answer. I found out so much about people in that retail setting.

It’s one of the saddest things about today’s society where phones have taken over our communication. We don’t know how to communicate verbally. That is so sad because when it comes to retail if you can’t communicate with your customer and listen to what they need, you can’t go anywhere, it’s a dead end. I guess it’s a bit of the old school coming out of me but there’s a lot of the old school that needs to be retained.

Not all new school is right, particularly when it comes to retail. That’s coming to the fore as I get older and I see things changing. Of course, I can’t change one thing on my own and I can’t see it changing at all. We just have to put up with it.

I went to primary school in Kempsey. I have two sisters, one in Queensland and another in Casino also where my Mum resides. They both work in aged care. I’ve got a daughter-in-law who works in disabled childcare and my wife did childcare. We’re a family of carers. I don’t know if it is genetic, it just happened to be that way. Mum was an allrounder, Dad was only on the scene til I was about 8, that’s another story.

Les Smith active Lions Club member for 15 years, including a term as President, pictured here with Peter Ho

My mother is a stalwart. She was my mum, my dad, and my go-to. She was always there. 

I’m a parent myself, I have a boy and a girl. I think my mum influenced my parenting, absolutely. My daughter lives on a dairy farm and she works for the department of health in town here. She’s got two boys and a girl. They’re a very hardworking family.

My son is in Queensland, he’s worked all over Australia. He’s a boilermaker. When he left school, he had no idea where he wanted to go and I put it to him that I’d help him out with whatever he needed to go to get an apprenticeship, or a job, otherwise he’d have to go back to school. Within a day or two he had an apprenticeship. His qualifications are sky-high. He gets headhunted for jobs around Australia.

At the moment he’s taken a job 20 minutes from home – instead of being on the other side of Australia where he works seven days on, seven days off, away from home all that time. This job gives him time to be with the family and become a family unit once again. I think that’s very important, to have mum and dad there to bring the children up. Then they understand the importance of a mum and a dad. A mum has ideas and a dad has ideas and down the road, they all cross over and the kids will say ‘ahh that’s why I was told that’. It all works out.

I recently retired. I had been working just shy of 50 years. Prior to that, when I was in high school, I did after-school work. I was at Gooley’s for about 46 and a half years. I loved it. And it’s also the people you work with. I’ve been blessed, I really have. It was a small team, compassionate, and you can bounce off each other. If you’re busy with a customer and somebody else walks in to talk to you, they’re always there to lend a hand.

I’m not a huge fan of the word ‘fashion’. Fashion is what you believe in your mind. If you’re a fashionista, you’ll see something in a magazine and think ‘I want to wear that.’ So, you go down to the shop to try to find it but chances are the photo is 10 years old, it's been shot in Germany or somewhere and someone has just made an outfit up and says ‘this is the new fashion.’ To that person it might be but not to the general public.

You have ‘trends’, which I think is more important than the word ‘fashion’. People trend one way and trend another way. Having a sense of colour and coordination, talking to people, and listening is extremely important. To be honest, that’s probably number one. If something doesn’t work for someone, I tell them. There have been times I’ve had people in the shop and I say, ‘you can buy that but I won’t sell it to you.’ It’s their choice. They’ll understand that there is something about this that is not quite right and I’ll offer another opportunity to put something together then they’ll understand why I said that.

What goes out the door has your name on it. A lot of chain stores today unfortunately don’t have that attitude. It’s a case of putting the money in the till and getting the customer out the door. I’ve had that experience as a customer. By the way, that experience was not local.

I was in Lions for 15 years and went through the executive right through to being president which was fantastic. It’s all volunteer. They do fundraising but there’s no commission, every cent that they raise goes straight back to society. If you gave me 10 dollars to go to a fundraiser, that whole 10 dollars go there.

I’m very proud to have been with the Lions. I also did 27 years with Scouts. I’ve held many hats in that time. I stayed with the cubs which are basically seven and a half to ten and a half. I call it the fun age. They’re like little jewels. Their minds are like sponges, they’re looking for information and knowledge, and to help children with that I think is very important. We did heaps of camps. I actually CO’d a major camp down at Grassy Heads back in 2000. It had over a thousand members attend. It was called the Cubarama Extreme. It was the biggest and best. 

Every now and then I see a cub grown up, they drop into the shop and say ‘gday how you going Mysa?’ – that was my scout name. I have to take a second look because they’ve grown up. They’re not a little bloke anymore. I was at the Square the other day and a lady and her daughter waved to me and came over and chatted. It was a cub I’d looked after 10 years ago. I thanked them for coming over to talk to me. It means so much, it's very gratifying.

I’ve seen lots of changes in Lismore. One of the things that surprised me was how many menswear stores were here in Lismore when I first came. Specialist menswear stores. If you go back to that era, we didn’t have things like shopping squares and malls. The town block was the attraction, the huge magnet. Over the years, the more you take out of the block and put it in another venue, that magnetism drops, and some of those customers won’t go to the block, they’ll go to where that specialist store has moved to.

It's unfortunate now, after the flood, that magnetism is extremely low in its ability to draw people back to the town to do basic shopping. Other towns have picked up the slack, and good for them too. I know Casino and Ballina are going very well. That’s because people don’t have variety here in town. The magnet of the block is nowhere near what it should be. It will take a while to come back, I’m talking years. 

This flood was devastating but if it hadn’t been for the tinny brigade, it would have been catastrophic. The number of people who could have died…the mind boggles. My heart and soul and prayers go out to everybody that was in those boats because they saved the town. My wife and I talked about this a little bit. We weren’t affected like people who lost their homes. Sometimes my wife and I will say we feel empathically guilty for the fact that we weren’t affected as much as others.

Like a lot of houses around town, we put up people who were displaced in the flood. And cleaning up Gooleys was a big job, yeah that was a big job. But given where we are now in the shop, it's come around very, very well. Touchē to the team and the families, they’ve got in and had a real go and what’s there is a testament to their drive. 

I definitely want to travel now I’m retired. Cape York is number one. I’ve never been there. We’ll drive, it might take us a month or so. We’ll stay places on the way up and different towns on the way back and I want to do some serious reef fishing. That’s on the bucket list. I’ve been an avid fisher. I was fishing a lot when my son was around but since he left home, I’ve fished very little. Just recently I started getting my fishing gear out and cleaning it up. I’m very keen. 

Fishing is about the challenge, the hunt. 99% of the fish I catch I put back. They’re probably undersized anyway. You have to be very patient. And if you find you’re getting bites in an area but you’re not catching anything, you’re probably better off moving another 20 meters down the beach or river and you’ll find it’s a totally different scenario. There could be a hole there, could be a big snag, you wouldn’t know. Mind you, I’ve found enough snags in my life, not just on the bbq either. I will fish on my own but I do prefer to have a companion. Talk about the fisherman’s foot.

I definitely won’t leave Lismore. The town has been very good to me. I don’t see how people can grow up in a town like this, retire, and then move. Ok we’ve been through some hardships and we’ve lost a few things, but that will all come back. 

People often say ‘you’d know a lot of people.’ I know a lot of people by sight, names - no. I can see a customer come through the door and I think, I know who that person is, I sold them such and such, but if you ask me their name…I’m a shot duck. There are too many. They come in and say ‘Gday Les how are you?’ and I say ‘Yeah great how have you been keeping?’.

You get some very senior people coming in, some use cards but a lot use cash and unfortunately, some of them are not wary about how they open their wallets. So, when they open it up you can see their cards and ID and see their name. Then at the end of the sale, you say, ‘will that be all Mary?’ and she says ‘how do you know my name?’. That’s for me to know and you to find out, with a tap of the finger on my nose and a smile. Little things like that can make someone’s day, using their first name. You can put a bit of yourself back into a conversation. 

I’ve been blessed with Lismore. There’s been ups and downs. But if you can put your downs away and move on and think positively, that’s half the battle.