Doug Armstrong

   If extensive life experience is one of the important characteristics of a good strata manager, then Doug Armstrong has that in “spades”. From an early age he has lived and worked in difficult, exotic and challenging circumstances, which makes handling a tough Annual General Meeting like a “walk in the park”. Doug has recently retired from his role as CEO and Licencee in Charge at Clisdells Strata and so, this seems like an opportune time to record his story.

   Doug Armstong was born in Glasgow in 1942, in the middle of World War II. His father, Joe, was an electrical engineer, who was stationed at the huge British naval base of Scapa Flow in northern Scotland. Doug lived with his mother, Sarah, in Glasgow at first, but, as Glasgow’s extensive shipyards came under increasingly heavy German bombing attacks, Doug moved with his mother and grandmother to the comparative safety of the coastal town of Prestwick about 50 kilometres to the south. At war’s end, the family had all survived and Armstrong’s father took a job as an engineer with the British Colonial Service and was posted to Gambia on Africa’s west coast, one of Britain’s numerous colonial territories in Africa. At the end of World War II in 1945, much of Africa, Asia and India were still colonies of Britain, France, Netherlands and other European powers and those European powers were responsible for the government of those territories.

   At first, Joe Armstrong worked in Gambia, whilst his wife and son, Doug, remained in Scotland. However, with Doug about to start school, Sarah rejoined her husband in Gambia and Doug spent the next three years at a Methodist school in Bathurst, a city situated on an island at the mouth of the Gambia River, a stream which stretches right through the entire country. This city is now called Banjul and is the capital of Gambia. One of the inherent dangers of life on the Gambia River was malaria, a disease which killed or incapacitated hundreds of people each year. However, Doug escaped unscathed from this scourge and when he turned eight years old, his parents felt that his education would be limited in Gambia so Doug was sent home to Scotland to the small town of Crieff, where he was enrolled in a boarding school called Morrisons Academy. He would spend the next eight years of his life at this school, away from his family.

    Doug admits that he hated the first year at Morrisons but, after that, he discovered sport and life began to look up. Doug played cricket, rugby, tennis and took part in athletics and not only enjoyed them all, but excelled. The school was full of kids like him, boarding away from families overseas, but also representing lots of different ethnic groups from Britain’ extensive colonial empire. He freely admits that his houseparents were caring people who looked after them well, but it was a tough way to grow up. During the shorter, end-of-term holidays he would stay with his grandmother in Glasgow, but for the long summer holiday, he would return to Gambia to spend the time with his parents.

   In 1958, at the age of 16, Doug left Morrisons Academy to return to Gambia, where he would complete his schooling by correspondence. For the next 18 months, he studied for his General Certificate of Education (GCE), the equivalent of our HSC. He loved the African environment and liked nothing better than hunting and living in the bush. At the end of 1959, Doug returned to Britain to sit for his GCE examinations, which he passed successfully. At this same time, his father left the Colonial Service and returned to Britain, where he obtained a job with the English Electrical Company as an engineer and the family lived together near the town of Rugby.

    Doug was not sure about what he wanted to do after school, but he did know that he did not want to work in Britain. His first job was as a trainee Production Manager at a dairy near Rugby, but after a couple of years, he began to seek work further afield. He applied, and was accepted, to enter the Rhodesian Police Force (now Zimbabwe) but, upon advice from Rhodesian acquaintances, he decided to pass up that role. A good decision, as it turned out, as Rhodesia was beset with a war for independence for the next 15 years, which was a bitterly fought struggle with many thousands of deaths.

   Doug was still sure that he wanted to work overseas in an outdoors role, so imagine his delight, when, in 1962, he read an advertisement in the “Times” newspaper, which sought “young men of pioneering spirit to work on the tea estates of north east India”. He applied immediately to the company, Walter Duncan and Goodricke, and was granted an interview in London. When the Company Director, who interviewed him, found out that they had both attended the same school in Scotland, Doug was hired immediately. Within a few weeks he was aboard the P & O liner “Himalaya” in a first-class cabin, leaving the port of Tilbury bound for Bombay (now Mumbai), via the Suez Canal. After a two week voyage, Doug arrived in Mumbai and caught a domestic flight to Calcutta (now Kolkata), where he was greeted by a company representative and promptly put on a WW II DC 3 aircraft, which flew the new recruits into the Newlands Tea Estate, about 500 kilometres north of Kolkata. The aircraft landed at the estate’s own airstrip, necessary because the surrounding roads were often impassable from monsoon rains and washouts. If remote was what he wanted, this fitted the bill.

   Doug worked on several large plantations, which stretched along the foothills of the Himalayas, as one of the Assistant Managers, with responsibility for looking after the enormous workforce, which often numbered more than a thousand. One of the important prerequisites for the job was the ability to speak Hindi. The new recruits, like Doug, were given 6 months to learn to speak this local language and, after that period, when the Visiting Agent arrived on one of his regular inspections of the plantations, he tested the proficiency of the new recruits. Doug found the language relatively easy to pick up and, so, passed with “flying colours”. Although the area was quite remote, life was never boring. Doug engaged in hunting, fishing, tennis and the odd drink and even played Rugby for Kolkata and, subsequently, for India, in the annual All India and South East Asia Rugby championship, as a fullback, winger or flanker. There were dangers as well, with the area being inhabited by scores of leopards, which regularly killed local cattle as well as the odd, careless human. Wild elephants also proliferated and needed to be avoided, particularly when they had young afoot.

   Apart from the natural hazards of living in the remoter parts of northeast India, very close to the border with East Pakistan (now the independent nation of Bangladesh), there were other less pleasant aspects. The most important of these was the continual state of undeclared war which existed between India and Pakistan at this time. This resulted in hundreds of heavily armed troops being stationed in the tea growing areas to fend off potential cross border raids from Pakistan. As foreigners in a potential war zone, British planters were required to have residence passes. This led to some interesting late night confrontations between Indian patrols and planters returning home from a night at their club. Fortunately, these encounters ended peacefully, as many planters were on first name terms with the local army unit commanders and were frequent guests in their regimental mess. As an added bonus, Doug has memories of being invited to “shoot-offs” at the local regiment’s firing range.

   After eight years of working on various estates, Doug, who was now married, returned to Britain. Doug had met his wife, Jennifer, in Kolkata, whilst he was playing in a Rugby tournament. She was in India on university holidays visiting her family, since her father worked for one of the country’s largest jute producers. Doug and Jennifer were married in 1968 and their first child, Roderick, was born in 1970. After leaving India, Doug again considered working in Africa until a colleague, who had migrated to Australia, alerted him to the opportunities in the tea plantations in Papua New Guinea (PNG). At this time PNG was a territory under Australian government (until independence was granted in 1975). Doug quickly obtained an Australian visa and a job on a small tea plantation near Mt Hagen, where his second son, Fergus, was born in 1971. After a year in Mount Hagen, Doug moved to the coast, where he managed a coconut and cattle property for a further twelve month period.

   Following these roles, Doug was recruited by the Department of Lands to work for the National Plantation Management Agency (NPMA) in PNG. As Independence was imminent, expats were looking to sell their estates back to the government and Doug’s role was to value these properties and, then, recruit people to manage them. From 1972 until 1981 he was based in Rabaul and, following that, he was sent to the capital, Port Moresby, to run the entire NPMA operation. As their sons were approaching High School age, Doug and Jennifer decided to relocate to mainland Australia in late 1982, choosing to live in Sydney. He had no job lined up, but not long after he arrived, he saw an advertisement in the “Daily Telegraph” newspaper. The advert was in the cattle and livestock section and invited people to buy a share in John Scott’s Alliance Strata Management. Doug applied and duly paid his $40,000 to buy a portfolio of 80 strata units on condition that he share the income 50/50 with Scott. Other early colleagues of Doug were Peter Callaghan, Neville Musto and Rod Lester. Unlike some of his colleagues Doug was not bound to sell the portfolio back to Scott, if he were to move on.

    In 1982, Alliance Strata Management was only a small company with an office at 50 Miller Street North Sydney. It would grow in the next decade to be far and away the largest strata management company in Australia, at that time, with a veritable “Who’s Who” of early strata managers working there. Luminaries such as Peter Callaghan; Ian Rowe; Judith Ferguson and son, Craig; Richard Tooker; Bruce Howland; Volli Peacock; Terry Hopkins; Toni French; Karen Belcher; Carole Hardin and Terry Minton all cut their teeth at Alliance Strata. By 1992, Alliance Strata managed more than 3,500 buildings and the company had eight branches with 36 strata managers and a large team of ancillary staff.

    Doug Armstrong studied at Hawkesbury Agricultural College, where he gained his Strata Management Licence in 1982. He managed his portfolio until early 1987, when he left Alliance for a short time to set up his own business, called “Tradefind”. This company carried out repairs and maintenance for strata managers, but it was only a matter of months before John Scott came calling, asking Doug to close his business and manage a similar type of company called “Masterworks”, which was owned by Alliance. Doug managed this company until 1992, when Scott, under pressure from the courts and the press, closed “Masterworks” down and, eventually, sold Alliance to Body Corporate Services in 1994. It was whilst Doug was working at Alliance that his third son, Hamish, was born in 1990. 

   Doug worked for Alliance right up to 1994, at which time a former Alliance colleague, Cathy Laws, suggested that there was a job available at Clisdells Strata, then based in Hurstville. Doug was immediately hired by Peter Clisdell as a strata manager and he quickly became the Licencee-in-charge and, later, General Manager. He worked at Clisdells until his recent retirement in June this year.

    Doug, now married to Sue, plans to spend his retirement engaged in numerous activities. He’s dusting off the golf clubs and is keen to obtain his drone pilot’s licence and so, work with architects and builders. Doug’s youngest son, Hamish lives and works in Sydney, but another son, Rod, and two granddaughters live in Copenhagen and yet another son, Fergus, and two grandchildren live in Dublin, so there is plenty of overseas travel in their plans, especially now that the world is opening up again. Closer to home, Doug is the step father to Sue’s son, Matthew, who is now married with a baby daughter, a source of endless delight and regular visits. Youngest son, Hamish currently lives and works in Sydney, with for the time being at least, no matrimonial plans. Doug is also preparing to write a memoir of his own life for his family. Given the varied roles he’s had and some of the places in which he has worked, this memoir should be an enthralling document, which will be treasured by his family.

   Many past members of the strata industry have great life stories to tell, but not many could top that of Doug Armstrong. We wish him all the best in his well earned retirement.

   Fittingly, Doug Armstrong was awarded Life Membership of SCA(NSW) in October 2022 for services to the strata industry.