By GARRY HOWE
INTERVIEWING Darrell Hardy is a tough gig.
Not that he is rude or arrogant.
Quite the opposite – he is so bloody humble and modest!
Many an attempt to pump up the Hardy’s hardware brand, he and brother Steve have built up over the years with the help of their families for this 60th anniversary feature, is politely batted back as being over the top or out of bounds.
The qualities that have underpinned the Hardy family’s six decades of serving the wider Pakenham community have been staff loyalty and customer service.
They have done a lot for the community as well, but most of that stays in house.
Dan O’Loughlin, who now manages the Hardy’s Good Guys store, began throwing pieces of wood around the timber yard as a teenager and remembers Darrell pulling up in his ute one day and taking him down to the Station Street store to offer him more suitable work.
“It was a good thing too, because I didn’t know anything about timber,” he laughs.
A local footballer of note, with four league best-and-fairest trophies on the wall, Dan at one stage ventured to South Australia to try his luck in the SANFL.
Towards the end of the season, Darrell and his wife Barb got word that Dan was a bit homesick, so they drove over to Adelaide, took him out to lunch and offered him a management role within the company when it was barely in his 20s.
Dan rates Darrell Hardy as the one of the nicest blokes he has met – and is ever likely to meet – although he is reluctant to say that on record, knowing how much it would embarrass his boss of 20 years.
“He would hate it,” Dan said.
Talk to long-time staff members Jean Kelsey, John McCraw or the two Traceys – Magrath and Morris – and they would have similar stories and opinions.
That same compassion and loyalty has been shown to customers over the years – and the wider community through the endless sponsorships and donations that have made their way out the door.
Hardy’s is often the first port of call for any sporting club or charity event organiser. Rarely do their requests go unfulfilled, although it has got harder as the town has grown larger.
Visitors to the PB Ronald Reserve adventure playground will notice Mitre 10 acknowledged in the timber panelling. That’s because Hardy’s threw it all in to the community initiative free of charge.
Most other contributions are not as easily recognised.
Like the young bloke, left to pick up the pieces of the family business after losing his father, who was told to help himself to whatever he needed from the store and pay it back when it could.
Or the family told to do the same thing when they lost their home to fire.
Just like another family who hit a bit of trouble halfway through building their house and were told to press on with the build and pay when their fortune turned for the better.
Back in the early days, the potato farmers would book everything up and pay once a year – when the yearly spud cheque arrived.
Darrell and Steve’s mum Joan enjoyed helping and serving new migrant customers in the 1950s and ’60s. Many had settled in the Gembrook and Kooweerup areas and she not only helped them in the store, but with language difficulties and development in the community. The family was never short of vegetables as a result.
Darrell and Steve had barely taken the reins of the business, after losing their parents, when the Ash Wednesday bushfires cut a swathe through the district in early 1983.
Again, the doors were thrown open to customers to take what they needed and worry about it later. Some took the most basic things – a torch, a jerry can or a shovel – to get them through.
“Don’t mention that though,” Darrell insists.
“That was a horrific time for the district and people felt the effects of it for years.
“What little we did to help pales into insignificance compared to what a lot of people went through back then.”
So humble, so modest, so understated.
Sorry Darrell, but any true reflection of the impact Hardy’s has had on this community over the past 60 years would not be complete without at least a hint of the unauthorised story.
