General News
20 November, 2025
Family spark continues business heritage
For 80 years, Hopper Electrics has been a fixture in Horsham's business community. As the wholly family-run business celebrates this major milestone in 2025, The Wimmera Mail-Times sat down with the family to uncover the story behind the iconic kangaroo logo and the business's enduring success in servicing the town and district.
The founder, Eddie Hopper, was one of five brothers who emigrated from London before World War II – all of them with the curiosity of carrying the same middle name: Eddie David, George David, Thomas David, Cecil David and Victor David.
His son, Noel Hopper, who ran the business from 1970 to 2000, was born in 1942 and explained the naming convention.
“My mother was Cecilia David,” he said.
“It was her name. So they put her name in the middle for all the boys.”
This would lead to the inevitable mixups with deliveries: “So in Horsham, we had E.D., C.D. and G.D., and two of them in the same sort of business, both electrical contractors,” Noel said.
“So the carrier he’d look at (the address) and he’d take everything around to C.D., because he only lived around the corner, and then my old man would be waiting for stuff.
“He’d ring up, (and they’d say) ‘oh, no, it's been sent’ and then you ring the carrier.
“So it would create a few problems.”
Before starting the business, Eddie first gathered work experience on farms in Goroke and at a milk company at Riverside.
However, when war broke out, he was refused military service due to having had typhoid fever.
However, he kept trying to get in, and finally his determination prompted the army to offer him a position in Maffra, Gippsland, looking after the electrical fittings in 10 Nestlé dairies.
When the war finished in 1945, Eddie returned to Horsham with a very young Noel, which he actually recalled.
“I can remember when we got off the train in Horsham,” Noel said.
“Then we moved into my uncle's place, who was Lindsay Smith, radio up the top of the main street – he used to repair radios (and) sell radios, and we moved into his place.
“I think we were only there for a couple of months ... but I can remember going down and buying the house we moved into.”
The new address: 7 Stawell Road, where they still are today.
About 11 years later, starting his apprenticeship at 14, he quipped that after three months “he knew more than his father did”, but laughed even more when he admitted his own sons returned the favour decades later.
“I found that out because I had two of my boys who worked for me too – and they all thought they knew more than me after about six months!” he said.
Watching his father’s working ethic rubbed off on him, as he said, “I never worked a 40-hour week” and would even work many weekends with programme maintenance at quarries.
There was other regular maintenance work at Schwartz’s bakery with late finishes – “10 o'clock at night (or) two o'clock in the morning” and early starts were common.
“We used to start at 7.30 – when we got into the summer, we started at seven and then worked to four, and then knocked off, because by mid-afternoon it was starting to get pretty warm in the roof of a house.
“We were knocking out 150 jobs a month.
“I don't know what year it was, but we did telephone exchanges for the government, and we did Ararat, Macarthur, Hamilton, Warrnambool, Portland – we spent 25 weeks in Portland, two of us.”
He said it was funny to see electricians on mobile phones nowadays, in contrast to how communications worked for the company many decades ago, with difficulty in pivoting to respond quickly to repair requests.
“We put CB radios in our car, and that cost us over $5000, and I reckon in a couple of years that we would have paid them off well and truly,” Noel said.
“Because we're doing maintenance, the only communication we’d have (before that) is they’d come back at morning tea time and they'd come back at afternoon tea time.
“But when we put the radios in, it was good.”
Another idea during Noel’s time was the kangaroo logo, to help differentiate from his uncle’s business.
“All of a sudden, we had E.D. Hopper and Son, and then they changed it to C.D. Hopper and Sons,” he said.
“So then we changed ours to Hopper Electrics … and then we actually bought the kangaroo in on all our vehicles – all our vehicles at that stage were all blue.”
He said the introduction of GST in 2000 was a partial catalyst for passing the business on to his son, with his wife, Margaret, baulking at the introduction of more technology needed to run the books, but he had only praise for the ongoing upholding of the business’s credibility.
“Rick’s pretty switched on, and Rick’s young bloke, Tim – he’s really switched on,” Noel said.
In the office now is Rick’s wife, Jenny, and she admitted the business reputation was a two-edged sword, with “a lot of loyal customers that just keep coming back to us”.
“There is pressure to keep up the quality of work because of the work that's done before you,” she said.
“Noel and his father, they worked really hard to get their name known in the town, so you’re under pressure to keep that name going.
“Two of our sons also work for us, as well as Rick's brother. So we're wholly family-run at this stage.”
Rick agreed and was keen to see the name continue into the future.
“You’ve got my grandfather, my dad, myself, and I’ve got two of my own boys working for me as well,” he said.
“So hopefully they'll take it on and keep the name going.”
Noel said the family side of business meant a lot, including the support of his wife, by his side for 55 years until passing nearly seven years ago – the emotion in his voice evident as he spoke of the loss of their partnership.
Watching the subsequent generations of his family grow was a great joy, and he was keen to also pass on what he had learned about attitude over the course of his working life.
“Everybody complains now about the cost of the buying a house and interest rates and all that sort of thing,” he said.
“But things weren't that good back then either. I was getting 15 pounds a week, and I was paying six pounds 13 a week payment to the bank on a house, and food wasn't that cheap.
“Everybody's got higher expectations in life. As I've told my kids – and I was told when I was a kid – you got to crawl before you walk. You got to walk before you can run. And people don't want to do that now – they want to go straight and run, and they want to be in a marathon at the same time.
“And you know, life's not that easy when you get up to that stage and you haven't done the stages to get there.”