Perth

"‘When the market thinks your business is worth more than you do, go public. When it goes the other way, buy it back.’ It’s a variation on the real estate maxim of ‘buying right’ that he’d learned in his early days in Perth."

"Stokes & Associates came up with an angle no-one else in Perth had: they sent out hundreds of form letters, designed to scoop up any sellers unhappy with their current agents’ efforts along with house owners who had not considered selling before. This was to sidestep the hidebound ‘gentlemen’s rules’ of the established firms represented by the local real estate body. Stokes recalls: ‘The institute got its nose out of joint because you’re not supposed to contact sellers already with another agent. So I sent out letters to everyone.’ Exploiting this loophole outraged established agents"

"Stokes liked both ideas. He approved a new station logo, a jingle and a series of advertisements. It cost money. So did a new one-hour news service produced in-house. This meant setting up a foreign desk, a sports desk and other innovations to bolster the bulletin with national stories the way bigger stations did in Perth or Brisbane."

"The nuts and bolts of broadcasting fascinated Stokes. He had trouble remembering dates and people’s names, even figures once he’d finished with them. Money bored him once it was made and reinvested. But technology had always intrigued him. Inside Australia’s new media mogul was the little boy squatting in the squalor with his Meccano set at Watsonia barracks, the bigger boy who built a crystal set, the teenager who grafted an electric fuel pump onto his first jalopy and the offbeat property developer who was among the first in Perth to have a home computer. Now he was gripped by the idea of creating the first digital broadcast centre in Australia. His eyes gleam and his voice is animated when he talks about how they did it."

"Being Columbo incognito can have small drawbacks. One dry season in Broome a few years ago, an alert bank teller telephoned Australian Capital Equity in Perth to say a weather-beaten man wearing shorts and a T-shirt was attempting to cash a small personal cheque in the name of ‘Kerry Stokes’. The mystery man was, in fact, Kerry Stokes. At that stage he’d owned the best house on the coast for nearly twenty years and before that was joint proprietor in a dozen huge cattle stations in the Kimberley. He could have raised a cheque to buy the entire town but he didn’t even raise his voice. He likes to see people doing their jobs properly and has never wanted to be recognised in the street."