George James PRICE only had six weeks formal education. He started work when he was eleven years old splitting palings in the bush around Strathbane near Dover where he was born. When he was 17 years old he was cutting palings for himself.
He Received his Master Mariners Certificate in his twenties and his own trading boat a few years later.
He had good cause to remember his first trip to the West Coast when he was twenty.
He stepped ashore to hear the news that the V.D.L. Bank had closeditsdoors.
He left his mark on the West Coast with the first telegraphlink between Strahan and Queenstown. He and two friends cut the poles.
However shipping was his true vocation. He owned and skippered many more sailing craft and steamers. Although his boats were strictly work boats all of them had speed and he won many Regattas. The last races ever sailed for trading boats at Southport, Shipwrights Point and Kettering Regattas. He also won his class at the Royal Hobart Regatta, Bellerive, in the boat called 'Myrtle May' in 1915.
He was also a good axe-man in his own right.
In 1917 George was working as a mill hand.