He's A Lively N.G.

A Brett Hilder Profile

Businessman

Alfred Alexander Hopper of Rabaul, is about the liveliest businessman in New Guinea. He was born on the North Coast of New South Wales in 1908, as one of a family of 10. He finished his formal education at Taree High School and then joined the T. & G.

Mutual Life Assurance Society.

DURING the war Alex was in the army, and saw service in New Guinea, which gave him a strong desire to return there. After the war he went back with T. & G., but 1948 found him back in New Guinea arranging insurances “for a start”; he found so much in surance waiting to be written that he got a very good start indeed. He then launched out into plantations, his first purchase being Belik Plantation on New Ireland.

He has since bought Klinwater Plantation in the Bainings, New Britain, and in other cases he has formed companies to take over certain plantations, with himself as managing director. A recent one was Bali Plantations Limited, which Alex floated on the Sydney Stock Exchange. Alex has formed A. A.

Hopper & Company to operate in island merchandise, cocoa buying and other business.

In addition to insurance, Alex is also a stockbroker, and still finds time to be the father of a family.

In 1954 he married Miss Patricia Clarke, formerly regional Librarian at Rabaul: they have two children, Patricia Jane, born in 1955, at Guildford, Surrey, and Paul Edward, born at Rabaul in 1956.