In 1971, Neal was given the job of handling the acquisition of the Brisbane Gas Company. John Rowell (later Sir John Rowell) was a partner in the legal firm, Neil O'Sullivan and Rowell, the Queensland associates of Murphy and Moloney, Boral's New South Wales solicitors. (Rowell became a director of Boral in 1974.) This firm had acted for Boral on a number of occasions, including the incorporation of Queensland Refineries in 1954. Rowell was instructed to approach the larger Brisbane Gas Company shareholders to try and acquire a position in the company so that Boral could then make a full takeover bid. Rowell remembers, 'I was stumping up and down Queen Street in Brisbane trying to acquire shares. This was not very successful. The Queensland business community was a very insular place at the time and didn't take kindly to the idea of a southerner moving in on their turf.' Rowell regularly reported progress to Sydney; after a couple of weeks it became clear that the share acquisition strategy was unsuccessful. Neal said, `I can well remember the stage when all appeared lost. Boral's offer had been totally rejected by the board of the Brisbane Gas Company and Boral's local directors weren't terribly enamoured of the whole proposal either because they were part of the Brisbane establishment and were somewhat embarrassed that we were involved in a contested takeover.' Neal had been reading a book about acquisitions and realised that this stalemate could be resolved by approaching the shareholders directly with a `first come, first served' bid. No one at Boral or Neil O'Sullivan and Rowell had come across this method of acquiring shares in companies before. It involved a representative for Boral getting up on the Stock Exchange floor and offering to buy a parcel of shares (for example 20 per cent, at a specified price) in the desired company. Once the required percentage of shares had been obtained the offer closed, hence the description 'first come, first served'. Neal rang Griffin at home on the weekend and canvassed the idea of using this approach with him. Griffin said, 'Go to it'. To represent Boral on the Queensland Stock Exchange floor Griffin enlisted Frank Charlton who was on the Queensland board of the City Mutual Life Assurance Society Limited. As this had never been done before, and knowing the local opposition to Boral's advance, Charlton was reluctant, not at all confident the offer would work. Griffin told Charlton that if he wouldn't do the job, Griffin would find someone else who would and Charlton finally agreed. However, nobody had let Rowell know that Boral was trying this innovative approach to the takeover. He was still visiting potential Brisbane Gas Company sellers with a $3.40 buying price, not realising that Charlton was offering shareholders $3.50 on the Stock Exchange floor. This 'first come first served' approach proved very successful for Boral; it acquired 10 per cent of the Brisbane Gas Company in a matter of hours, and a further 20 per cent the next day. However, Rowell was persona non grata for some time among the Queensland business community. Once Boral had a 30 per cent shareholding in the Brisbane Gas Company, Allgas Limited, the supplier of town gas to the South Brisbane Gas Company, made a counter-offer to fend off Boral's bid. Boral then notified the Queensland Stock Exchange of its intention to make an offer to buy Allgas as well. Rowell recalls a conversation with Griffin in which Griffin commented, `We'll catch the fisherman as well as the fish!'. Boral's action resulted in the tabling of The Gas Suppliers (Shareholdings) Act, passed by the Queensland government in 1972. This prohibited Boral from holding more than 12.5 per cent of Allgas - the fisherman had slipped the net. After litigation, Boral withdrew the takeover offer for Allgas which in turn dropped its offer for the Brisbane Gas Company, leaving the way open for Boral to finalise the takeover. Griffin then said to Neal, 'The next thing to do is make a full takeover offer to all the remaining shareholders so that no-one has been disadvantaged by our "first come, first served" bid.' Boral did this, acquiring 100 per cent of the Brisbane Gas Company, providing Boral Gas with a capital city utility.         History of The Brisbane Gas Company The Brisbane Gas Company was incorporated in 1864. Its first coal gas manufacturing plant was at Petrie's Bight on the river bank near the centre of Brisbane. At the time the city had a population of about 12,500 and kerosene street lighting which wasn't very efficient. Gas was assumed to improve street lighting, as well as offering shopkeepers and domestic homes the opportunity of much better illumination. By 1883 Petrie's Bight had been outgrown and a 22-acre site was purchased on the river at Newstead. Here a larger coal gas plant, capable of producing 1.5 million cubic feet of gas per day, was erected. The plant began production in 1887. This site is still used by the company although gas production methods have changed dramatically. A thirty-inch cast-iron exit main, laid for the gasworks in 1887, is still in use. It took one hundred years for this pipe to be utilised to its maximum capacity.   Brisbane Gas Company's Petrie's Bight gasworks on the Brisbane River, 1882.         In the 1880s a second coal gas plant was built on the south side of the river by the newly formed South Brisbane Gas and Light Co. Ltd, in direct competition with Brisbane Gas. This resulted in gas mains being laid independently on both sides of the river by both companies, which became very confusing. In those early days, the only way either company could be sure that they were supplying the people they were billing was to cut off their gas main at the end of the street and run down the street, making a note of the houses that blacked out. It is not known what Brisbane residents made of these lightning power cuts. In 1889 commonsense prevailed. The Queensland state government brought in a franchise agreement obliging both companies to restrict their operations to the side of the river on which their gas plants were located. In the early 1890s the gas lighting monopoly was threatened when electricity was introduced. However, the gradual decrease in the use of gas for lighting requirements was more than offset by the growing demand for gas for cooking and heating appliances.   Newstead gasworks in 1927.         In 1893, Brisbane experienced the first and worst flood in its recorded history and gas production was stopped for two five-day periods. The second major flood was in January 1974 and the erection of sandbag levies around vital production plant equipment at Newstead meant that Boral could maintain an uninterrupted gas supply to its Brisbane customers despite the natural disaster. Up until 1965, the Newstead plant used coal for gas making. Initially supplies came by ship, from New South Wales and as far afield as England until it was established that the coal from nearby Rosewood and Ipswich was suitable. In 1965 a reforming plant was erected at Newstead which converted LPG into a product with the same characteristics as town gas. The LPG was brought in by road tanker. Rod Holmes, General Manager of Queensland Gas Corporation, joined Brisbane Gas Company in 1953 and was financial controller at the time of the Boral takeover in 1971. He recalls, `This was a precarious way to operate, particularly in times of road transport or refinery strikes'. Boral subsequently entered into a contract for the supply of naphtha gas from the refineries along the river at Hamilton. These refineries were connected to a pipeline so there was always a supply of gas available. To ensure a permanent gas supply to its Brisbane customers, Boral also bought a standby plant and two electricity generators to supply all the electricity required to keep the works plant in production.         »»