Cameron Bell and Irrigear principal Charlie McDonald have plenty of shared history following their fathers David and Dick’s earlier successful partnership Davydick. Photo: John Thistleton.
Almost 40 years after two farmers formed a business partnership that became a household name in Goulburn and district’s rural community, their sons and grandsons are back working together.
In 1986 David Bell and Dick McDonald got together over a bottle of Scotch whiskey to talk about off-farm income, and invented the Davydick Suspension Sheep Weigher.
Winning best invention at the Orange Field Days and coming third at the National Field Days, the innovation was followed by several others.
A friend of David’s introduced the partnership to poly pipe fittings, and Davydick became the NSW distributor.
Dick’s son Charlie became their first sales representative, more sales staff were employed and a warehouse was built on Dick’s farm ‘Kintyre’ north of Goulburn.
Distributing products into Victoria and later building a new warehouse at Bradfordville, Davydick flourished.
In 1997 the partners separated amicably. David kept Davydick with wholesale distribution in NSW and Victoria, while Dick took on the national distribution of float valves and other products, and formed MRC Distribution.
David’s son Cameron worked briefly on the family’s farm, ‘The Levels’ at Golspie and later with a mate became a commercial diver, then a freelance diver and found other work around Sydney Harbour.
Meanwhile at Golspie David, always a gregarious man, got to know someone renting a cottage on his farm, a New Zealand businessman, Murray Ellen, who was based in Hong Kong and designing large structures in South East Asia. As it happened, Murray was looking for someone to help for a big project in the Phillipines, and David suggested Cameron.
David Bell, (second from left) Dick McDonald and his son Charlie in their Davydick warehouse in the early 1990s. The person at extreme left is unknown. Photo: McDonald family collection.
“The next thing I know I’m on a plane for Hong Kong where I spent six weeks getting to know the business,” Cameron said.
“In the Philippines’ Cebu City we built this massive structure, the size of two football fields in one room with no internal columns,” he said. “It was a distribution centre for a pharmaceutical company.”
He continued on other projects until the Asian economic crisis hit and returned to Sydney, where he walked back into his old job. “Got onto the boat I used to drive around, looked around, there was my hard hat where I had left it, which was amazing after two years,” he said.
Through contacts two other New Zealanders offered him another project in the Phillipines building low-cost, tiny houses. But he wasn’t paid and the work showed little promise. Nevertheless, while waiting for what he was owed, he met his future wife, Sarah.
Back in Sydney he teamed up again with Murray Ellen, building large structures including aircraft hangars and a stadium roof in Sydney, Brisbane, Cairns, Adelaide and Canberra, Thailand and China.
David Bell and Dick McDonald in the early 1990s giving their sales team an overview of their strategies. Photo: McDonald family collection.
“My boss was an eccentric inventor kind of guy, a real engineering geek,” he said. “He would hear of a job, come up with a plan in his head, do a rough sketch and I would use that for a more complete drawing on CAD (computer aided drafting). He would pitch the idea to a potential client.”
If they won the job Cameron would go on-site as project manager and oversee their intellectual property. “It was a pretty cool job, a lot of variety, different locations and I wasn’t stuck on a building site all the time,” he said.
Now married to Sarah and living in Sydney, renting a flat in Ashfield and raising their son Sam, Cameron said the big city lifestyle didn’t suit them.
Fortuitously his father and his brother Jeremy invited him back to Goulburn to join Davydick in 2005 and he returned with his young family.
Importing pumps during a prolonged drought, Davydick was thriving; at other times they prevailed through lean times before bouncing back again.
Davydick had become a formidable business when the Bells sold it to a multinational company.
Meanwhile Charlie McDonald, who had gone into partnership with his father in 1999 to create Goulburn Water Systems, was preparing for the future.
Charlie and Bronwyn McDonald, Cameron Bell, Anthony Mills (now at Goulburn Power Centre), Mark Norton who manages Irrigear Yass and Jack Smerazanski, who is no longer with the firm. The photo was taken about 2019. Photo: Irrigear Goulburn.
He bought Dick out in 2006, moved to bigger premises in South Goulburn in 2016 and rebranded as Irrigear Goulburn. He opened a second franchise at Yass in 2019 and another outlet at Fyshwick in 2024.
Cameron joined as a casual in about 2006 to help on a contract Charlie had won to irrigate Belmore Park and came on board full time in 2017. Today as the epitome of a thriving family small business, Irrigear also employs Charlie’s son Henry, his wife Bronwyn and Cameron’s son Sam.
