A brief profile of Tony Phillips
Tony was born in Southampton, England in 1944. He was educated at St. Mary’s College and Taunton Grammar before becoming an articled clerk with a Southampton firm of Chartered Accountants. Once qualified Tony moved to London to join Price Waterhouse (now PWC). After two years in London Tony decided to see the World and transferred to PWC’s Melbourne Office in 1969 for what was intended to be a two-year stint.
He quickly fell in love with all that Melbourne and Australia had to offer, including the lovely ladies, and after meeting his wife Jill within two weeks of arriving his fate was sealed. Married in 1971, Jill and Tony lived in Armidale and South Springvale before Tony took an offer from PWC to transfer to Fiji for two years in 1973. Jill and Tony set up home in Suva amongst the expatriate community. A great couple of years followed and it became one of their life’s great experiences.
Returning to Australia in 1975 Tony and Jill moved to Glen Waverley and Tony continued in his role as audit manager with PWC until 1980 when he moved to take up a role as Finance Manager with the Colac Dairying Company. Later it merged with others to become Bonlac Foods, a company with a turnover in excess of $1billion. Tony became CFO of Bonlac in the early 1990s.
In the year 2000 Bonlac was taken over by Fonterra (the NZ group) and Tony retired from full time employment. He now works part time as Company Secretary of Genetics Australia Co-operative Limited.
Tony and Jill have a son and a daughter (sadly an elder daughter passed away in 2017) and four grandchildren.
Tony loves most sports and plays both tennis and golf on a regular basis being a member of Black Rock Sports Club and Victoria Golf Club respectively. He has a long history in Community Associations having been involved in Jaycees, Apex and Rotary over many years.