Don’t you love stories of success, especially when it is unexpected?
Every day on his dairy farm, Pioneer Charlie walked past an old weirdly shaped fallen tree trunk on his way to the milking shed. In his imagination the log became more and more like a crocodile. Finally he couldn’t stand it any longer. He had never sculpted anything in his life but he was overcome with the urge to shape the old tree trunk into a crocodile. He took to the tree with a hammer and chisel. But the wood was very old and as hard as iron. So, being a practical man, he went back to his shed for his favourite tool, his chainsaw. Soon he had hacked out the gaping jaw and menacing teeth, the huge scaly body and the deadly tail. He also did a convincing job with the menacing pop-up eyes, short meaty legs and savage claws.
Charlie was enormously pleased with his chainsaw creativity. He took visitors to the farm past the carved croc just to enjoy their reaction. Invariably, when they saw the croc caricature, they turned and ran in terror. Charlie realised he was onto a winner. Over the next year, whenever he had spare time, he worked on chainsaw croc creations. He had a dream of a croc farm full of fearsome croc replicas. Crocodiles were infinitely more exciting than cows he decided. He laid out a trail for tourists and arranged his sculptures in unexpected places to terrify them. Some of the crocs slid suddenly towards the visitors when they stepped on a plate in the ground attached to a counterweight. He used his farmer’s ingenuity to make the crocs move in all sorts of unexpected ways.
He put a big hand-painted sign next to his front gate on the highway saying “Charlie’s Croc Farm – Prepare To Be Scared.” He charged an entrance fee which visitors happily paid. He bought a tough looking hat studded with crocodile teeth from an internet seller. He concocted stories of his days as a croc hunter “up in the tropics” although he had never been more than 100 km from the farm. He had a battle story for each croc replica about how the real-life version had attacked swimmers, terrorised settlements, or gobbled up livestock which strayed too close to the river bank. As Charlie had lost several fingers in the process of chainsaw sculpting he worked in the stories of the missing digits being snapped off by crocs. The tourists drank it in with looks of wide eyed horror.
Business boomed and soon he employed other locals to handle the growing number of patrons. He preferred staff with missing fingers or nasty scars which they could show the tourists, claiming they were from croc attacks. Charlie’s croc farm became the biggest tourist attraction in the area. It helped that there were no other tourist attractions at all in this quiet farming area of rolling green hills and benign bovines. The town council gave him large amounts of free publicity to attract tourists to the region and Pioneer Charlie, the dairy farmer turned sculptor, became something of a local celebrity.
“Carve it and they will come” had been his dream, and his dream had been serendipitously realised.
For years, John and Josephine had run a greasy spoon cafe just near the local railway station. But financial disaster loomed. The locals had moved on from fish and chips, meat pies, hot dogs and flavoured milk. They now preferred smoked salmon salads, Thai vegetarian noodles and organic single origin espresso coffee. As the debts mounted up, John and Josephine got to desperation point.
Now that their six children had moved out of the flat, they decided to rent out rooms to students. Soon they had the place filled with students happy with the cheap rent, handy location and reheated junk food leftovers. Things were improving financially. But the town council planning department heard about the place and came to inspect it. The inspectors told John and Josephine they were running an “unlicensed rooming house” and that they must “cease and desist” immediately or face a massive fine. Disaster loomed again. As he was leaving, the council inspector casually mentioned that John and Josephine had a great location for a registered student hostel if they could add a few storeys to the shop and put in more bathrooms. This was a eureka moment for them. One of their sons was a builder. He soon organised finance and council building approval. Then he built a four storey hostel after demolishing the crumbling old shop and flat.
When it was all finished, John and Josephine quickly filled it up with eager rent paying students and were soon awash with cash. A fast food failure had turned into a fast cash bonanza. Serendipity.
