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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1999 Week 12 Hansard (25 November) . . Page.. 3780 ..

MR HIRD (6.09): Mr Speaker, I seek members' indulgence to make a short reference to the recent passing of one of this Territory's most respected businessmen, Mr Nick Sadil. As members will know, Nick was a real estate industry leader in Canberra for more than 30 years and co-founder of a company known as Sadil Quinlan. Regrettably, he passed away on 7 November, at the age of 76, after a long battle with cancer.

Nicholas George Sadil was born in China in 1923, the son of White Russian parents who had left their homeland in 1917. He migrated to Australia with his family in 1949 and got a job selling window blinds in Sydney. This led to his first venture into real estate on the New South Wales central coast. Nick moved his business operation to the south coast at Tomakin but transferred to Canberra for greater ease of commuting. He made what might today be called a killing, selling land at �20 a block.

Nick worked for a period in Canberra with a company known as Lyneham, Tacheci and Whyte and became the first salesman in the industry to sell $1m worth of property in the ACT in a single year. He founded his own company with Mr Laurie Quinlan in 1970. Mr Quinlan moved on after three years but Nick continued to run the company right up until his death, although in later years most of the business responsibility was taken over by his three sons - Greg, Marc and Adam.

Those of us who knew Nick well, as I did, would be aware that he was a man of his cultural talents. He was an accomplished musician and was fluent in four languages, a skill which gave him unparalleled access to community organisations as well as the diplomatic community.

Among the sales he made in this area was the People's Republic of China's first Canberra embassy, established in the early 1970s in the former Commodore Motel on Northbourne Avenue. He also sold the Russian Trade Commission building in Sydney and the East German Embassy, and he helped the Czechs and the Slovaks with additional accommodation after the break-up of Czechoslovakia.

Nick was active in the hotel broking market, and among his various sales, to name a few, were such well-known properties as the Statesman Hotel-Motel in Curtin, the Jamison Inn in Macquarie, the Deakin Motel in Deakin and the Kingston Hotel in Kingston.

Mr Speaker, our condolences go out to his three sons, their wives and their children, Nick's grandchildren. Sadly, his wife, Ngarie, predeceased him a number of years ago.

Question resolved in the affirmative.

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