Farewell to a pillar of Port Douglas
Our People
He is known as the “man who shaped Port Douglas”, but who actually knew the real person behind the iconic Port Douglas property empire Tony McGrath Real Estate?
Always larger than life in his loud purple shirts and colourful braces, Tony could captivate a room effortlessly with his stories of Port Douglas characters and big-game fishing, as well as his dreams of one of his many horses one day winning the Melbourne Cup.
But son Cam McGrath says one of his most enduring memories of his big-hearted dad, who died late last month at age 86, was of Tony simply sitting behind his office desk.
You see, his father just loved his work, where he won a host of national awards as one of the best real estate agents and property developers the business has ever seen.
“He loved more than anything putting deals together for people,” Cam says.
“He was always behind his desk.”
And what big deals he did across the past few decades in the developing Port Douglas market, with high-level negotiations involving a host of resorts, hotels and other subdivisions.
Tony was still doing deals right up to a couple of months ago, before ill health eventually caught up with him.
But he did not retire before setting up his second-in-command Heather Carle to take over the business, and in the process ensuring his name would live on for many more years.
The real-estate trade was so ingrained in the McGrath family that son Cam and younger sister Heidi remember all sorts of side effects felt at home, such as Tony naming one of his boats “The Agent”.
“We remember building cubby houses out of real estate signs,” Cam says.
Born into a poor family in country NSW, Tony McGrath’s parents moved to Sydney when he was very small.
When Tony was four years old, his father signed up to fight in World War II but never made the front line - he was run over by a truck and killed on the Sydney wharf before setting sail for Europe.
Tony made his name in real estate while in NSW, but after numerous holidays to Far North Queensland to help fulfill another of his passions, fishing, he and then-wife Greer made the big move.
He originally started an LJ Hooker franchise in Port Douglas, but went out on his own into other businesses, then eventually settled down into the company which now carries his name.
Cam says one of the keys to his father’s success was his big personality.
“There’s no such thing as a two-minute chat with Tony McGrath,” he says.
“He always had time for everybody.”
Tony would talk for hours with clients and friends about horseracing and fishing.
Like when, more than once, he ran his boat aground on the Great Barrier Reef, or when he reeled in a marlin somewhere out past Lizard Island.
And there was the time when a horse he part owned, Mr O’Ceirin, made the field in the 2014 Melbourne Cup, but ended up finishing second last in front of a horse that pulled up lame.
Tony, however, had plenty of successful horses too, including Srikandi, which won and placed in group one races and earned more than $2m for its owners.
He even had a stake in a horse called Port Douglas, which was not too successful, but showed how much he cherished his adopted home town.
And many townspeople also had great respect for Tony, including historian Pam Willis Burden, who dedicated a chapter to him in her book Beneath Tropic Skies in which he talks at length about all the characters that made Port Douglas what it is today.
Characters such as the former Warner Street "servo" owner "Stretch", who rode his horse to the pub, and advertised his business on the radio as having "topless service attendants". But when the truckies arrived from the highway on a special mission to fill up, what they discovered was Stretch with no shirt on and a petrol pump in hand.
Tony was certainly one of those many Port Douglas characters who will also go down in local folk law as much as his name will live on in the real estate industry.
Tony McGrath is survived by children Cam McGrath and Heidi Bresler and step-son Shane Morris.
A public memorial will be held on Tuesday, March 18, at 11am at St Mary’s by the Sea on the Port Douglas waterfront to celebrate his life, with all welcome.
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