Paul Paech
A brief report on some of my doings

My Parents
John Adolph Paech and Edna Emilie Muller
My siblings:
brother John David, sister Katharine (Kate)

John and Edna both earned university degrees, then fell in love at Concordia College in Adelaide.

Brother John & I were both born in Lower Hutt Hospital in Wellington NZ, which was my Dad’s first post as a Lutheran Minister.
In 1950, we transferred back to Australia, first Grovedale then Geelong where my loveliest sister Katharine was born.

Education

At 14, my Dad’s professional work resulted in the end of that cosy family unit: I was (almost literally) packed off to Concordia College in Adelaide, where I was in line to become the third generation of the Paech family to become a Lutheran minister (or teacher, perhaps).

Well, that didn’t happen. Major social changes have tended to marginalise the role of churches and more generally of religion in Western countries.

Many of the Paech kids in my generation have become teachers, but my brother maintains an active role in his local Lutheran congregations.

My Adelaide years

What a stroke of luck to have had the opportunity to grow to be an adult in one of Australia’s more civilised cities: South Australia was the only colony not to have been settled by convicts.

Doubly fortunate for me to have done so during the radically transformative years of Don Dunstan and Gough Whitlam, two of the most visionary and consequential politicians Australia has seen.

I guess I was a bright kid, and managed to sail through most of the educational challenges that arrived on my plate, and the various acedemics who noticed me seemed to apprecite the quirky ways of this lanky long-haired weirdo.

My brlliant career

Being a poor student had its attractions at the time, but was pretty obvious to me quite early on that it was important to get a handle on the harsh realities of making a living. I knew there was a wider world out there and that you didn’t get to travel for free.

It was an accidental offer of a copywriting job at a local ad agency that determined the course of my professional life.

Thanks to Creative Director Terry Bunton for persuading me to join US-based Young & Rubicam, for which I worked off-and-on for an international career lasting more than 20 years, and taking me first to Sydney then to Europe.

My very first creative assignment came from Mitsubishi/Chrysler who briefed us on a brand new truck they wanted to launch into the competitive Australian market.

My Not-So-Squeezy TV advertisement

It was an extraordinary stroke of luck, and became one of the best loved ads of the year. Many years later, I met the head of Mercedes-Benz trucks in Australia. When I told him of my ad, he said jokingly: “You bastard. We couldn’t sell our Mercedes trucks for love or money. Everyone wanted the Not-So-Squeezy One.”

Sydney frolics

There was no more exciting city on the face of the earth than Sydney during the 1970s, and I love exploring the thrills that a bigger city provided to me. I lived in a tiny flat that I bought for $64,000 at 7 Elizabeth Street in the centre of the city, travellling to work in North Sydney on one of the city’s ferries.

As often happens in big cities, it was the pressure of real estate that determined my next move, this time to Bondi Beach, where in desperation because my inner-city home (this one in Hunter Street) was being demolished, I bought a modest flat in Bondi Beach. One of my firends snapped that “you’ll never make any money down there”, but I could hadrdly hve bought better.

It was such a beautiful and welcoming place to live, and I’ve lived there ever since. So many very exciting events and creative loving people, Bondi has delivered in spades. It’s my Australian home.

And here’s a special secret: this most extaordinarily beautiful little harbour beach is just 15 minutes ride away, on the 390 bus.