Just a few minutes in his Bargo workshop is all you need to know for certain that Richard de Groot is a master craftsman.
An artist who makes beautiful but practical things from wood.
To be fair, it does come as a bit of a surprise to learn that while he has carpentry in the blood it is only in the past three or four years that he has finally made it his main preoccupation.
But even now, aged in his 60s, Mr de Groot, the master carpenter who migrated to Australia from the Netherlands in 1982, also moonlights as a paramedic.
Even though by the time he had turned six back in the old country he had made up his mind carpentry was going to be his thing.
“My favourite uncle, he was already a carpenter, and he was the one who really introduced me to woodwork,’’ Richard tells me as we lean on his work bench in the Bargo workshop to talk about his life and times.
“My uncle made some stuff for me even when I was little, before I was six years old.
“And as soon as I got to technical college it was carpentry straight away; nothing else interested me, just the carpentry.’’
But as he has found, life has a way of taking us to places and activities that were not on our radar.
Sure, the carpentry has always been shadowing Richard de Groot’s life, but to make a living he has been a tiler, paramedic and shipwright.
He even did a bricklaying course at technical college – “just in case’’.
And that’s where he did the tiling course, as well, and graduated as a master floor tiler.
“Now that would be a degree in tiling, but nothing exists in this country like this, here you either tile or you don’t tile,’’ he says.
“And that’s literally what I was told when I arrived in Australia.’’
He tried to get some work as a carpenter once he landed Down Under, but there was nothing available.
“But I could get work as, believe it or not, as a tiler,’’ he says.
“So I went back into tiling and set up my own business and did that for nine years.
“And then (Prime Minister) Paul Keating decided we had to have a recession. That was really bad for the building game because within a month there was no work, nothing.
“So literally within months I was unemployed and had to find something else to do.’’
He found the answer from a story in a magazine about a lady in the US doing a paramedic course.
“I thought: you know what, I like that idea. I applied and got on, and studied like I’ve never studied in my entire life and became a paramedic,’’ he says.
He loved being a paramedic and worked for the NSW Ambulance service for 20 years before giving it away, but signed up with a private firm to do occasional shifts.
But the carpentry was never too far from his mind.
“On the rostered days off I was looking for something to do, so off we went looking for some second hand timber, and this guy said these slabs of cedar are available, if you buy that lot I will give you those three pieces for free,’’ says Richard.
“OK, cool, and now what am I going to do with those?
“Well, they became coffee tables, all three of them, and I thought, this is quite fun, making these things.
“And because it’s all natural edge and that, I started making more of those, and I think I’ve made 16 coffee tables by now, all different ones.
“And I didn’t want to put just ordinary square legs under it, so I just headed into the bush looking for stumps, branches or whatever, and do it that way.’’
The carpentry bug was about to put a bigger hold on Richard: two interior designers he had met at networking gatherings said to him about three or four years ago – Richard, we need to get something for a customer, and we can’t buy it anywhere, we can’t find it anywhere, we know you do carpentry, can we have a chat.
“I ended up making that item for them, and I thought, alright, I get the hint, I need to further this into a money making thing,’’ says Richard.
And that’s when De Groot Creations was officially a business with a website and social media accounts.
“I decided to make stuff people want me to make, but it has to be something unique where you can’t make a second one exactly the same,’’ says Richard.
“It has to have natural edge, it has to be recycled, or regrowth timber, and I don’t buy timber that’s imported from overseas.’’
Richard has since been commissioned to do things like floating shelves, book cases and even garden benches.
“People ask me if I can make something for them, and I say, if you can draw it, I can make it – as simple as that.’’
Recently he made fire pits, and then thought, anyone can make fire pits, so he improvised by making solid oak timber covers that convert the pits into coffee tables in the summer.
And there’s also restoration work for the master from Bargo via the Netherlands.
It’s a lovely story, too, Richard riding his motorbike during one of the lockdowns and seeing this crappy looking chaise lounge out on the nature strip, obviously headed for the tip.
“I kept going but 200 metres later stopped and thought, no I need to have a better look at this, so I turned around and went to check out the lounge,’’ Richard says.
“The owner happened to come out of his driveway and said, mate, just rubbish, and I said, I am interested, but I need to go home and get the car and the trailer.
“He generously took the lounge back towards the house so it wouldn’t be taken by someone else while I was getting my car and trailer.
“So we picked it up, and after I restored it took some pictures and took them to the gentleman who threw out the chaise lounge, and said, this is the lounge you threw out.
“They were flabbergasted, and very pleased that I took the effort to come back and show them what I had done.’’
For Richard de Groot, like all artists, being creative is not as easy as flicking a switch.
“I could have a piece of timber sitting here for a couple of years and wondering, what the hell am I going to do with it,’’ he says.
“And suddenly, one day, I know what I am going to do with it. And then go and do it.’’
It has taken a lifetime for Richard de Groot to seriously devote himself to what he was always meant to do: carpentry.
But they say it’s never too late to do anything, and something tells me this master craftsman in our neck of the woods is just getting started.
- To connect with Richard de Groot, phone him on 0432 371 765 or visit his Facebook page here.
