Graham’s family has a long connection with the Great Ocean Road and Lorne districts. In 1884, his paternal great grandfather from England settled near the St George River, the 1899 census showing him as a market gardener. Graham’s maternal great grandfather helped cut the original road from Deans Marsh to Lorne with a bullock team.
Graham was born in 1946 at Birregurra Hospital, attended school at Lorne until year eight, then to Belmont High to year eleven. He recalls at age sixteen, he and his brother drove over the edge of the GOR near Cumberland River, landing upside down on rocks thirty metres below, both escaping to tell the tale.
Graham joined the National Bank in 1964, beginning at the Korumburra branch, then Ocean Grove, Sorrento, and Geelong in 1967 where he met his future wife, Carleen, at the Palais Theatre. Carleen was a nurse at Geelong Hospital.
They married in Geelong in 1974 and first lived at Hoppers Crossing. Graham’s first manager position was at Inverloch, then Moe, Sale, Mansfield, Morwell, and his final nine years at Traralgon. He retired in 2002, and lived in Torquay while their home was rebuilt in Lorne. His brother Brian was a line foreman in Lorne for many years.
Graham and Carleen have two sons, a daughter who lives in Port Headland, and seven grandchildren.
In 1989, Graham found, via a cousin, other Floyer family in England. There was only one Floyer name in the London ‘phone book, but it led to ancestry back to 1086, and a family royal coat of arms. In 2010 Graham was invited to manage the Bendigo Bank in Apollo Bay, a four year stint to round out his long banking career.
Graham’s interests today are family history, reading, walking, and still managing finances as honorary Treasurer for the Lorne Historical Society. He remembers Lorne in earlier times as a more working class society, with more permanent resident home owners, but today, after a career traversing Victoria, very much enjoys the Lorne environment.
