A legacy of loyalty and dedication

Published in Farm Weekly, 4th September 2025

Coral Hewson, after spending close to 49 years with McIntosh & Son - Wongan Hills, will be retiring this year.

In an era where changing jobs every few years is common, Coral Hewson's 48 years and 11 months with one company stand as a rare testament to loyalty.

Now, after close to five decades of dedication to McIntosh & Son, Wongan Hills, Ms Hewson is retiring.

In 1976, at just 16 years old, Ms Hewson's journey began when McIntosh & Son director Ian McIntosh personally offered her a job.

"Back in the day, when we were at school, you were either an office worker, a nurse or a teacher, that was really the careers," Ms Hewson said.

Ms Hewson in front of the new building at the McIntosh & Son, Wongan Hills branch which was opened in 2016.

"Mum (Shirley) said, what are you going to do when you finish school here?

"I don't know, office work, I suppose, so she booked me into a commercial course in Northam for a year.

"Mum came and picked me up on the Friday to bring me back, and she goes, oh, I've got a job for you.

"Ian McIntosh came down to the farm, and my sister was working at the bank, so that's how he knew that I was looking for a job, so he came to the farm and sat down with mum and dad and said, your daughter's finishing school, if she wants to come and work for McIntosh, she's got a job."

Mr McIntosh, who has worked with Ms Hewson for the duration of her career, said they saw how efficient her older sister (Eileen) was working at Westpac Bank in Wongan Hills and presumed she would be the same.

"So I made the approach to her parents about whether Coral would be interested in joining our company, and they talked to her, and they agreed," he said.

"That was how our association started."

Ms Hewson and her sister would travel from the family farm in Konnongorring to Wongan Hills for work, before their parents moved into town after her brother and his wife move into the house on the farm.

Her role involved answering the phones, handling the accounts and banking.

"I can still remember the first day, because I came up from the farm with Eileen, and Eileen goes, do you want me to walk in with you, and I said, no, that's not a good impression.

"I can remember walking in the door and thinking, I know the office is there, I'll just go to the office."

Ms Hewson described herself as a quiet worker and credited Mr McIntosh’s wife, Chris, with helping her to come out of her shell.

"Chris was saying you need to be doing this with the customers, you need to talk to them because you're sort of the first contact, especially over the phone," Ms Hewson said.

"You need to make sure that they know that the customer is important to us, so you have to talk to them over the phone.

"So I learned very quickly that even if I don't know them, I need to chat to them and ask them how they're going and how's the farm going, how's the tractor going."

While she didn't initially enjoy talking to customers over the phone, it became an interaction she enjoyed, allowing her to get to know many different people.

"I used to ring McIntosh fairly regularly and Coral always answered the phone," said recently retired McIntosh & Son employee of over 24 years, David Thorne.

"She just had that nice phone manner and personality, and a great sort of person for the business and for McIntosh's.

"It was always company and customer first."

When the McIntosh & Son, Redcliffe branch opened in 2000, Ms Hewson was offered a position there.

"I said no, I'm a country girl, happier here," she said.

"No reason to move when you're happy somewhere because the green grass over the other side of the fence might not be as good as here."

Since starting, Ms Hewson has worked in each department in the business.

She had a multi-faceted role that included finding specific parts for farmers, handling service invoices, managing timesheets and warranty claims, overseeing machinery sales, reconciling creditor accounts, and preparing management reports.

Ms Hewson was also tasked, once she had her licence, with packing up the parts in the afternoon, weighing them, putting stamps on them, and taking them down to the railway station.

"I've probably moved up in responsibility from when I started, so I've always been involved in the accounts," she said.

"I used to do payroll, and that involved writing up the wage books and going to the bank, and getting cash because they paid in cash.

"They used to have their little pay envelopes that I had to sort out the money and give it to them."

McIntosh & Son general manager of the Cunderdin, Geraldton, Merredin, Moora and Wongan Hills branches, Anthony Ryan, who has worked with Ms Hewson for 15 and a half years, said her role evolved as the business did.

"As we took on other locations, Coral was involved in that as well," he said.

There's not much that goes on in the business process that Coral doesn't know."

Experiencing the evolution of technology, Ms Hewson recalled working on a manual typewriter.

"I can still remember my excitement about getting an electric typewriter," she said.

"I remember disliking Monday mornings because Monday mornings were when I had to type up McIntosh’s Farm Weekly ad on the telex machine, and I used to have this long tape that was about 3 metres long.

"I would say don't walk through my office and step on that tape because if it gets a tear in it, I've got to do it all again."

Ms Hewson said communicating with the workforce out on the farm was also difficult.

"When I first started, we of course went through the telephone exchange, and there were no mobiles back then," she said.

"I do remember talking with the technicians if they were out on a farm, that was the worst thing of communication because if they were in a shed and they needed to contact us, they used to have to go to the farmer's wife and say, can I use your phone?"

With new technology, account payments were made easier.

“Things are instantaneous now, where back then it wasn’t,” Ms Hewson said.

"For instance, I knew the Massey Ferguson had to be paid by a certain date, I had to factor that in to get the cheque in the mail, whereas now you can just pay it straight away.

“You had to manage your cash flow pretty good because you knew, OK, this cheque has gone out, but it actually hasn’t hit the bank account, so you had to factor in what outstanding cheques were going to be debited to your bank account”

In the previous McIntosh & Son Wongan Hills building, there was also no air conditioning.

"You could imagine, no air conditioning, no heaters back then, so cold in winter and hot in summer," Ms Hewson said.

She also witnessed changes in farm machinery.

"No guidance back then, basically it was follow your wheel tracks in the paddock," Ms Hewson said.

"Now it's all guidance managed, so that's a huge thing.

"I used to be able to do parts back then because machines were so simple, you know, the header might only have had 50 wearing parts in it, and now you could have 200."

Ms Hewson also remembered receiving her first office chair after sitting at a wooden kitchen table with a kitchen chair with a bit of foam on it.

In a career spanning decades, Ms Hewson's longevity at McIntosh & Son is due to the company being family-oriented, a rarity given that the Australian Bureau of Statistics reports only 10 per cent of Australians stay in one job for 20 years or more.

"Ian and Chris were very good with me," Ms Hewson said.

"You could always talk to Ian if you had a problem."

Some other influential people within her career include Brian Donnellan Branch Manager, Greg Verburg Branch Manager and Kevin Dack Parts Manager.

"They were great help to me to improve my knowledge of being in a Agricultural Machinery business," Ms Hewson said.

Some career highlights included how many people Ms Hewson trained within the business, not only the 20 or so at the Wongan Hills branch, but extending to the branches in Moora, Merredin and Emerald, Queensland.

"Ian McIntosh and I flew to Emerald to help set up in the 90s," Ms Hewson said.

"It was funny because we had to take all the stationery up, so invoice books, and we loaded them up in suitcases, and then we got into this seven-seater plane, and the guy sees all this luggage and said we're not going to get off the ground but we did and arrived safely.

Thinking about the most rewarding part of the job, Ms Hewson said it had been seeing the business grow with her in it.

"Because I think I've helped with that," she said.

"When you think, when I started, there were only two branches, Wongan Hills and Moora, we probably had eight employees in Wongan and probably Moora, maybe five or so.

"That was two branches, and now we've got 600 employees and multiple (13) branches, so I would hope that I've helped with that, and here, 48 employees now in Wongan."

Mr McIntosh said Ms Hewson stood out in times when things were tough.

"She's had a lot of responsibility in our branch in Wongan Hills for a long period of time," he said.

"She served under four or five general managers there, and she's been a rock as far as we're concerned, that has been loyal to us as a family and to the business.

"We just couldn't wish for a better person."

He said her commitment to the company has been fantastic from a client's perspective, as they appreciated loyalty and staffing consistency.

"She has been such a loyal and brilliant co-worker with us," Mr McIntosh said.

"She's been part of the success of the Wongan Hills branch for so many years."

McIntosh & Son, Wongan Hills, sales manager David Trindall, who has worked with Ms Hewson for 39 years, said Ms Hewson knows the answer to everything.

Ms Hewson with coworker David Trindall, who has worked with her for 39 years.

"She's very company-oriented and we've never been able to pull any wool over her eyes," he said.

Mr Ryan agreed, saying Ms Hewson had been the backbone of all of it.

He mentioned that Ms Hewson always knew how to get things done and was great at explaining how to do it without looking for any credit.

"Her knowledge of the system and how it works, and how to find things, is second to none,” Mr Ryan said.

"Coral has been the constant."

Mr Ryan described Ms Hewson as the model employee, saying they had been lucky to have her.

"I'm sure there's a million things that Coral does that we don't know about, that we'll find out about when she's not here," he said.

"We're lucky to have someone who's grown in the business, and the business has grown with them.

"You can't replace that knowledge, and also the customer knowledge of who's who.

"It's not easy to come by and hard to replace."

He said her work ethic was second to none.

"I don't know how many times she came in on the weekend and a Saturday afternoon, sneaking a quiet moment when there's no one else around to catch up on something and get something done," Mr Ryan said.

"Coral's very humble, you would never know she was here unless you saw her here, because she wouldn't come in and say, oh, I did this.

"Always happy to do extra work, but never wanted to talk about it.

"Coral's professionalism rubs off on other people, and she sets the standard of that's how it should be done."

Sharing a few anecdotes of Ms Hewson's time at the Wongan Hills branch, Mr Ryan spoke about her Minties tin.

Ms Hewson said the Minties tin would be at least 25 years old.

"If there's ever a customer who was complaining, then Coral would offer them a Minties, so they can't talk," he said.

"A customer brought it to me, and I must have been having a moment, and he came in with the Minties tin and said there you go, Coral, when you're having those moments, have a Minties," Ms Hewson said.

"It carries on to the customers now."

Ms Hewson, with McIntosh & Son general manager of the Cunderdin, Geraldton, Merredin, Moora and Wongan Hills branches, Anthony Ryan, with the safe kept from the old branch.

Mr Ryan remembered when they moved into the new Wongan Hills building, and Ms Hewson requested to keep an old safe from the old dealership.

"We weren't allowed to throw it out," he said.

"It took 15 people to shift that, but Coral had to have a safe.

"But then Coral lost the key."

“I was trying to find something in the filing cabinet, and I was like, what’s that envelope down the bottom of the cabinet,” Ms Hewson said.

“Oh, it’s the key, anyway, so I do have a key now.

Retiring at the end of September, Ms Hewson said the safe would remain at the branch in the warehouse as it is used for storing payroll documents.

The Minties tin will also remain on the counter for customers and employees to enjoy.

After a remarkable career at McIntosh & Son, Ms Hewson said she would miss the employees there, as well as interacting with customers.

In retirement, she plans to travel and tend to her garden more.

Ms Hewson is also looking to be more involved at the Wongan Museum, where she works as the secretary.