Thor Prohaska - Melbourne

In 1979 I moved to Melbourne working as a labourer and Taxi-Van Owner Driver. I had sat for the Victorian Public Service examination in mid 1979 and at the end of 1979 I was offered a job as an Administration officer with the Animal Quarantine Service (AQS). I was married in December 1979. I spent five and a half years with AQS. It was during this time that I become involved in computers and began to develop a keen interest in them. I was the representative for the Victorian Public Service Credit Union. I commenced part time study and first tried Psychology and Biology at Swinburne University of Technology. After 6 months I decided that it wasn't for me because I had come to the conclusion that there are deeper aspects to the mind / body complex than the orthodox position held by psychology and biology. The next year I started a Bachelor of Business at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. I completed one third of the course and received a distinction and a credit for the 'Organisational Behaviour' units that I studied.

Having tried skiing and being a surfer and skateboarder it was a natural progression into snowboarding. However, at this time there were no commercially available snowboards in Australia that worked in our snow conditions so I started building my own snowboards. I didn't meet another snowboarder for three and a half years.

In August 1985 I resigned from the Public Service as I felt I had been unfairly passed over for promotions. Prior to resigning I secured a position as the Administration Manager for 'Craft, Hall and Edwards' a newly formed computer marketing company that had been started by three former IBM employees. This did not work out as the directors of the company wanted somebody with a 'different' attitude to the truth.

I then applied for a job with Dunn and Bradstreet in their computer department but was instead offered a job in sales selling debt collection services. I learnt the basics of the sales process but after a couple of months I resigned as I wanted to work with computers.

So early in 1986 I was employed by C.E. Heath (the forerunner of HIH) in their computer department as a Procedures Writer. This was my entry into the world of I.T. proper. Then in August my wife decided that she didn't want to be married to me. It was fortunate that we didn't have any children. This life change removed me from my comfort zone and as a result I couldn't sustain work and night school so I discontinued my degree studies at RMIT.

By early 1987 my involvement in snowboarding had grown to the point where I was finding it difficult to balance it with work demands. As I had some money from the sale of our house I decided to resign and follow snowboarding full time under the business name of 'Flowmotion'. This was an exciting period to be involved in the growth of something new. For an overview of my snowboarding career click here.

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