Kevin’s legacy remembered

Died: November 2, 2022

Kevin ‘KG’ Renwick was born to George and Ellen Renwick of Harrison St, Deniliquin on May 25, 1932.

This meant Kevin was 90 years old at the time of his passing, when he finally succumbed to cancer on Wednesday, November 2.

Oldest sibling to his brothers Allan (dec) and Lindsay, and sister Joyce (dec), Kevin effectively became the leader of the four and was a pioneer of the family.

He headed off to boarding school at St Pat’s Ballarat, being the very intelligent boy he was, courtesy of his mother Ellen who paid for him to study away.

Kevin’s time at St Pat’s wasn’t long however.

Much to the chagrin of his father George, who had high hopes for Kevin, he finished his compulsory time at the school to return to Deniliquin as fast as he could.

Not because of homesickness nor missing his family, but to get cracking and make his way in the world.

And make his way he did!

Exceeding at arithmetic, Kevin was heard to say he was in the top five per cent in marks in the state.

His dad wanted him to go to university and go on to greater things, but for some reason building was in Kevin’s blood.

In 1953, Kevin married Dorothy ‘Noel’ Stratton in Echuca and quite a large family was soon to follow.

They lived at Ellen Stratton’s house around the corner in Cressy St, and this is where the new Renwick Clan started to take shape.

After the first two children, Michael and Chris, were born, they moved to Wood St.

They then moved up and down Macauley Street, at different residences, until they settled later on at the corner of Henry and Macauley St - as many would now remember.

More children were to follow - Margaret, Terry (dec), Martine, Toni and finally Tim in 1970.

By the age of 21 Kevin was the biggest employer of people in the whole of the Riverina.

Lindsay has pointed out that the beginning of KG Renwick Holdings came about soon after Kevin finished his apprenticeship under local builder Bill Willis.

Bill had run out of work for Kevin, so he was now on his own.

Kevin once told Tim, “I didn’t set out to employ a lot of people, but for some reason people would come up to me on site and ask ‘could I work for you?’. I said don’t work for me, work with me!”.

That’s how Kevin started to quickly grow his business.

It would be fair to say that KGR Holdings did get big!

By the peak of this business in the mid to late 1970s, Kevin was directly employing more than 300 people - quite a feat considering the town of Deniliquin had only a population of roughly 7000.

KG Renwick Holdings had a conglomerate of businesses that included the concrete plant, aptly named the Renwick’s Redimix, which brother Allan looked after, plus a joinery, hardware store, a steel shop, hire company, all located in Wood St.

The main part of the business, however, was commercial and industrial construction.

The construction coverage geographically was something to behold, ranging as far north as West Wyalong, east to Bombala, west to Mildura and Dimboola and south to Stawell.

It was so big that one of his construction managers, Max Smith, supervised much of the work with the aid of an aircraft!

Satellite offices were placed in Griffith and Albury with brother Lindsay the construction manager for the Riverina.

His area also encompassed Leeton, Colleambally, Narrandera and, later, Albury.

You’d be hard to find a school, motel, bowling club, RSL club, court house and even a police station built throughout this whole region that didn’t have KGR on the site signs!

There was an particularly interesting story behind how he got to build the Rich River Country Club motel during the 1970s.

It was then owned by Lou Richards and the World of Sports Crew.

After months of waiting to see if his tender had won, Kevin plucked up the courage to actually ring Lou Richards to see how they were going.

Lou’s response was “Tender? You’re the only bloke to give us a quote, so you’ve got the bloody job!”.

The rest was history for that monumental landmark for the Echuca-Moama region.

One of the other trailblazing initiatives by Kevin was the use of a Wang computer in the mid 1970s.

It was huge in size by today’s standards yet had an output of only 128 kilobytes to compute basic take offs and job cost control for the building sites.

Kevin took to future technological advances like a true early adopter, mastering the use of car phones (despite having zero coverage here in Deni), facsimile machines, and then on to emails.

Much to the family’s entertainment later in life, he also embraced social media.

During this time Kevin also started many other pursuits to supplement his day job.

One was standing for council for the Municipality of Deniliquin, the forerunner to the now Edward River Council.

He held the position of Alderman (councillor) for 17 years, and was mayor for nine consecutive 12-month terms.

Coincidentally, younger brother Lindsay also was mayor for eight years, which the family understands could be a record for people from one family holding the position.

Kevin also joined Rotary.

While he held chairman roles on a lot of boards and groups, he never got to that senior position of president in Rotary.

The day they asked him to step up he wanted to move on.

He did, however, establish good relationships with members of Rotary in Japan, South Korea, the United States, Philippines and one or two other counties.

He attended ‘make up’ meetings whilst he was abroad.

Kevin maintained 10 years straight of 100 per cent attendance at Rotary - a true commitment.

One particular relationship forged through Rotary was with a long time family friend, Shoei Muto, who ran Rotary in the “small” town of Gifu in Japan.

This once manifested into a special visit by their Rotary Club back in 1974. It was during the flood, and they came to Deniliquin for a study tour.

What also transpired was that the Island Sanctuary, an area looked after by Rotary down by the river, had flooded and the goats, emus and kangaroos living there had to be re-housed during the floods.

As a man of action, Kevin had organised these animals to be interned on the vacant block next to his house.

The Japanese tourists took much delight in coming to our home and seeing these amazing creatures who apparently “lived” in his backyard!

Of course, Kevin, the amazing shutterbug he was, had also taken thousands of feet of movies, family and work.

To this day it has brought much mirth to the family with the odd home movie night.

Another group that Kevin was involved with, and of which he was so proud, was the Duke of Edinburgh Study Tour.

Hand picked out of many local government and state dignitaries, Kevin was lucky to represent the local area along with many luminaries from all over the Commonwealth.

This included His Royal Highness, Prince Philip The Duke of Edinburgh.

It’s believed that Noel and Kevin were lucky to spend time with the Duke at his residence and briefly met The Queen - or as the Duke had introduced her, “there’s the old duck now!”.

Duke of Edinburgh events were held around the Commonwealth and the local one was at Sydney Harbour.

Noel would tell of funny stories having to deal with the Prime Minister’s wife, who somehow got to be babysat by Noel after she may or may not have had one too many shanties during the social events.

One great initiative of Kevin’s was his joint creation of the Department of Decentralisation, way back in about 1971-72.

It pushed the benefits of regional living to the NSW Government, in particular ‘Dynamic Deniliquin’, and the opportunities that arose by migrating out of the busy capital city and setting up a life here in town.

There have been many stories of people over the years who moved to Deni because of Kevin and work opportunities.

And during the sensational 1960s and ‘70s, Kevin - with his more front than Myer attitude - would write to celebrities or VFL footballers and actually get them to come stay in Deniliquin at his house.

This included Ted Whitten, Peter McKenna, Mike Preston and Pam Kilborn.

Kevin was very much before his time with his views on multiculturalism and reconciliation with our First Nations people.

Through his mayoral duties Kevin took pride in what they called ‘naturalising’ new residents to our country.

He helped various refugees settle into the town, and actively pushed to have them come here to settle in and contribute to our society.

You will now find third generation families from south east Asia whose initial interactions here in Australia were brought about through Kevin and his unofficial municipal support.

One such family he took pride in naturalising was the parents of son Michael’s best friend from Assumption College - the Serafini family.

Michael had become best mates with Renato, more commonly referred to as Sera, who later played for Fitzroy.

This explained the support for the Roys from Kevin and a number of other family members.

Sera would often come to Deni, sometimes with teammates, and one year was seconded to the KG Renwick annual football match.

No doubt the match would have been commentated on by Don Hyde, the famous VFL commentator who Kevin gave his first job while he worked in Deni to begin his radio career.

Moving on from KGR Holdings, which Kevin sold in 1979, he and sons Michael and Chris started Murray Unit Development Trust (MDUT) in a spare bedroom at the Macauley St home.

This was soon to become Hotondo Homes.

By the mid 1980s this business had grown to a 300-a year building company, at this stage now in a Cressy St office behind the post office.

By the late 1980s Hotondo had unfortunately outgrown Deni, as building hundreds of houses for the Victorian Government was untenable from interstate.

The family decided to relocate the business to South Oakleigh, Victoria.

Moving to Melbourne compelled Kevin to further step up his work with the Victorian Government, with what was known at the time the Ministry of Housing.

Hotondo was the Victorian Government’s largest housing builder.

Early in the 1990s, with the demise of social housing, Hotondo moved their concentration towards private housing and built display homes in a number of metropolitan and Geelong locations.

Another social housing initiative that Kevin had come up with during the 1990s, however, was something he brought back from one of his study trips to South America.

That was the Group Self Build program.

This program saw low income families, usually a conglomerate of immigrant families, who put in what you would call sweat labour to assist each other with the construction of their homes in land hubs subsidised by the state government.

This wonderful initiative was a fantastic way to provide affordable housing to many families, and it was implemented all throughout Victoria.

Whilst still building new homes, by 1993 Kevin had started what was to become a very successful franchise business model which eventually involved builders throughout the east coast of Australia, from Hobart to Rockhampton.

In 2004 at the age of 72, Kevin looked to retirement and allowed his sons to buy him out of Hotondo.

Kevin loved fishing, and the rare game of golf and it was thought he would do more in retirement while spending more time with his beloved wife and grandchildren.

But no, not Kevin.

Through some differing business opportunities, Kevin finally settled with a new business that worked as a more simplified building franchise, again, supporting local small builders in taking on the big boys.

This company is called Independent Builders Network.

Kevin found that the Hotondo builders and now his Independent Builders Network builders were all like second sons to him, and he took great pride in working with and supporting - regardless of the travel and time away from home to do so.

He had formed lifelong friendships and admiration from many successful construction businesses and their families.

Kevin was a great driver of people. He motivated many, whether they be building suppliers, trades, land developers, builders or business people.

~ Contributed by Mr Renwick’s family.