One of Horsham real estate's biggest movers and shakers passed away peacefully on October 29, just three days after his 92nd birthday.
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For more than half a century Vern Castle's name was synonymous with real estate in the Wimmera.
From his offices on the corner of Darlot Street, Mr Castle orchestrated some of the biggest and most complex land sales in the history of the Wimmera.
In the late eighties, he was instrumental in the construction of Horsham Plaza, negotiating with 24 individual land vendors to secure the site.
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According to his son Graeme, it was Mr Castle's "incredible" work ethic that set him apart from other agents in the region.
"It was his work ethic that had a big impact on me... I remember when I worked with him many years ago and he'd be rolling out of the driveway at 4am," he said.
"It'd be two hours to somebody's place and he'd want to catch them before they started work on the farm for the day."
Combining his passion of real estate with a love of aviation, Mr Castle could fly over a piece of land and smile, knowing he'd been there, sold that.
"He loved his flying, landing in people's paddocks... he'd just drop in, drop out and catch people," Graeme
Mr Castle was a familiar sight zipping around in his plane, from Horsham to Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
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Graeme Castle recalls a flight across the Great Australian Bite with his father when he was sixteen.
"We were probably a kilometre off shore, maybe a hundred feet off the cliffs... it was just spectacular, it's really been etched in my memory," he said.
Mr Castle loved to fly and worked up over 5000 hours of flying - remarkable for someone who wasn't a commercial pilot.
"He was very competent at it... I remember landing on an air strip in the Grampians with him once; I had no blood left in my knuckles, I was hanging onto the seat because it was such a hairy landing, but he was very calm."
But thousands of hours in the sky and a storied career in real estate was a long way off for the country lad growing up on farms across Jeparit and Beulah.
One of four children, Mr Castle was born in 1929 grew up alongside siblings Noel, Beth and Bill during the Great Depression.
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In 1939, Mr Castle contracted polio and for the rest of his life would walk with a limp.
But it never slowed him down.
In the late 1940s he started work with Brain and O'Connor, stock agents with New Zealand Loan.
However, soon enough Mr Castle discovered he preferred selling the land the sheep were grazing on - he'd found his calling.
Not long after, the young Mr Castle arrived in Horsham to sell real estate for F. W. Grabsch and Sons.
He was given the job of selling land north of Warracknabeal, and his career truly began.
However, Mr Castle was more than just a titan of Wimmera real estate, he was also father to five children - Joy, Pam, Helen, Graeme and Chris.
While he will be deeply missed, his legacy lives on in the makeup of Horsham itself, one that might not be visible at first glance.
"He had a fairly quiet life towards the end, out in Haven." Graeme Castle said.
"He started appreciating the little things in life, like the ducks in his dam."
The house he spent his final years was one of the houses at the Horsham Plaza site, cut in half and relocated, meaning he was never far his legacy.
Mr Castle is one Wimmera resident who left an indelible mark on the place he loved.
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