Peschar stands at more than two metres, or six feet, seven inches tall in the old scale.

“I’m shrinking a bit now,” Peschar laughs, as he orders a salmon fillet and a glass of shiraz, while taking in the view from Jonah’s on the Beach restaurant, where he held his 90^th birthday party earlier this year.

“Being tall, the advantage is you can see what a lot of people can’t see. You look over their heads.”

As a businessman, Peschar would embrace the art of standing head and shoulders above the others in retail. “Big John” once featured in a promotional photo in the Herald, with his long legs on the desk and holding two pistols to shoot down prices.

Yet as a teenager, Peschar wanted anything but to stand out. He was simply trying to survive in German-occupied the Netherlands during World War Two, and being noticed could be dangerous, even deadly.

HE was named Adriaan Johannes Peschar when he was born in Amsterdam in 1928, but that was shortened in everyday use to Hans.

The Peschars’ was one full home. Hans was the fourth of twelve children. By the time he was 10, there were eight siblings, so the family moved out to the suburbs into a larger house. It was a crowded but comfortable life, with Hans’ father in charge of international sales for a Jewish firm: “So maybe I got some of my marketing from him.”

When Peschar was 12, life changed overnight.

“I never forget the 5th of May, 1940,” says Peschar. “Five o’clock in the morning, my father knocks on my little bedroom upstairs, and all my other brothers, ‘Get up quick, come downstairs. Germany is invading. There’s a war. And the radio is giving instructions’.

“It was an unbelievable experience. The night before I was just concerned about going to school. The next morning, all of a sudden, that’s all changed.”

For the Peschars, they had the good fortune of a father who spoke excellent German. That skill bought the family time when soldiers turned up at the door. Hans’ older brothers could have been carted off to be labourers, so they spent most of their time in hiding: “We had a tunnel under the house, so during raids, you could hide there.” 

The family quickly learnt to talk in hushed voices in their own home, so neighbours and passers-by couldn’t hear.

“We were taught to be very quiet,” Peschar recalls. “Years later when I went home, I started to whisper. I’d forgotten that the war was over.”  

Hans had the responsibility of heading out to search for food for his family. He rode his bicycle to outlying farms. Officially, this was not allowed, because everyone was on rations, and practically it was difficult, as food became very scarce. 

The teenager would make his way back into town under the cover of darkness, defying a curfew. One time, Peschar was carrying a homemade gun fashioned from a pipe, along with bullets, in the hope of hunting for food. He was crossing a bridge into town when he was confronted by German soldiers.

“I had three bullets in my pocket and I had big gloves on,” he says. “The Germans are coming up - ‘Halt! Hands up!’ - so as I put my hands up, I had three [bullets] in my hand and put the bullets inside my glove. [The soldier] felt me all over, then looked at the pipe, but he couldn’t make out what it was. Fortunate. Anyway, they searched us, nothing on us . . . And they let us go.”

Another night while carrying food, Peschar was stopped and interrogated by a couple of  young German soldiers: “I looked at their eyes, and although it was night time, under their helmets you could see they were only kids. They were no older than we were. They were young conscripts, very inexperienced, they could see the war was coming to an end - ‘This might be us in a few months’. They just came back and said, ‘We didn’t see you, and you can go’.”

Then there was the time he and a friend took a horse into town for the Dutch Resistance to slaughter for food, on the promise of a generous slice of meat each: “I was young, you take it as it comes. It wasn’t until later I realised some of the risks we took were quite severe.”

After five years of fearful and constrained living, the war ended and the world blossomed for a 17-year-old.

“The minute the war finished, the freedom of that …,” Peschar says, shaking his head. “It was a great feeling, you could go anywhere. Unbelievable. All of a sudden you could do all these things. And that, of course, helped me go to Australia too.”

Before that big move, Peschar had a job with the liberating Canadian army, a reward organised by the Resistance fighters he’d helped. That allowed him to develop his English skills. Then he enlisted in the Dutch army, before becoming a timber salesman.

In that job, he met a man who wanted an agent to sell prefabricated houses in Australia. Hans grabbed the chance, even if he knew “very little” about Australia. After all, the job quickly earned him a visa. 

In 1950, with a loan from his father, he bought an air ticket and took the five-day flight to Australia, flying over its vast interior: “Land and land and land we flew over, and nobody there! Which was the dream we had anyway. The opportunity.”

The opportunity was sometimes lost in translation. Soon after arriving in Sydney in November 1950, Peschar and a couple of others found work fruit picking. Peschar, with his limited English thought they were heading inland to pick oranges. He explained the plans to the ticket seller at the train station, who nodded. “Oh, he knows,” thought young Peschar. The fruit pickers found themselves on the train to Orange – to pick cherries.

The house sales role faded away, so Peschar worked for a while picking fruit and on a dairy farm, then sought a job as a commercial traveller, ​selling home goods in central and north Queensland.

With the new job came a new name. The prospective employer told Peschar, “You have a strong accent, and ‘Hans’ has a German sound to it.

“I think we should find another name … How about John?”

“So from that moment, it was John,” he shrugs.

“Were you happy to have your name changed?,” I ask.

“Yes,” he replies. “I just wanted a job desperately. It gave me an opportunity to travel, see Australia, learn the language better and save some money.”

Peschar saved enough money to pay back his father and take a voyage back to the Netherlands. As much as he loved seeing his family, he didn’t want to stay: “I couldn’t believe it. There were still restrictions in Holland, and they were just getting over the war. And they couldn’t believe the stories I was telling them about Australia.” 

Peschar extended his holiday, working for a while in Canada then, to escape the cold, he travelled to the Bahamas. He landed a plush job at the Bahamian Club, after telling a yachtie he had met that he was a book keeper. It just so happened the exclusive club in Nassau needed one of those. 

Island life didn’t keep Peschar, and he planned a return to Australia. Before heading back, his boss at the club asked the young man to drive his Cadillac from Miami airport to his home in New York City. On that road trip, John Peschar saw his future: Television, “which I’d never seen in my life”, and discount stores.  

“Out of the city, there were big sheds, and they were selling stuff, and it appealed to me,” Peschar says. “I always found the mark-up on the road here [in Australia] extraordinary. If I sold to the shops a dinner set for £10 and they sold it for 15,20, that’s slowing things down. You’d sell many more sets, if you made it cheaper. And everybody wins.

“I’d already built up this idea that one day I’d have my own shop.”

He returned to a travelling salesman’s job in north Queensland. That led to him meeting Pamela Cowie, in Cairns, in early 1955. By the end of the year, they were married.

Peschar had an offer to return to his job in the Bahamas. Instead, the couple headed south to Newcastle, where there was an opening for a commercial traveller.

However, Pamela missed Queensland, John was away a lot, and then came a terrible blow. Their first child, a boy, died just a few days after his birth. The couple would later have two daughters, Amanda and Kristen.

John was needed at home. He quit his sales job, and the Peschars went into business, in a little shop at Gateshead.

While John sought customers and used his self-taught skills to install antennas for this new thing, television, that had just arrived in Australia, Pamela took care of the business: “I’d never been trained in anything. I hardly went to school, because of the war. So I needed her.”

The shop gradually sold Novocastrians on the idea of discounts. In the late 1950s, Peschar recalls, the word “almost sounded illegal”, and the established stores in the city thought it a threatening term. But customers liked it. So much so that in 1959, the Peschars bought a larger property in the semi-rural suburb of Mount Hutton.

“I wanted to be out of the city, different, away from where the others were,” he explains. “And it just took off.” 

While he advertised, the biggest selling point for John Peschar was word-of-mouth: “People would come from all over the valley.”

As a result of supplying discounted goods to homes, John Peschar was a household name in the Hunter. The business had grown to seven stores and about 120 employees by the early 1980s, when he decided to sell, thinking, “I’ve done this for 25 years. Maybe it’s time for a change.”

Change came by way of a phone call out of the blue from NBN Television’s then owner, Kevin Parry. Peschar joined NBN’s board of directors and was its chairman until the late 1980s. He loved the opportunity, working with people he had met in his days as an advertiser, and helping out with NBN’s enormously popular Telethon fund-raisers. 

For Peschar had always wanted to be more than a businessman; he cherished being a part of the community. It was why he had embraced the chance to become an Australian citizen back in 1957.  

“I realised if I were to live here, I want to really be part of it,” he explains. “I didn’t want to be a visitor for the rest of my life. You become part, and proud, of the place where you’re living.”

With that approach, Peschar used what he learnt to help build the community, from helping steer appeals to complete Christ Church Cathedral to being the Deputy Chancellor at the University of Newcastle. 

But Peschar also stayed in business, even after reaching retirement age. He bought into a television station in Townsville, and purchased a shopping plaza in Singleton and Hunter Valley vineyard Meerea Park. The vineyard was viewed not as strictly business, but “a family get-together place”. 

Peschar loves sailing – “it’s relaxing and it’s challenging”. He’s owned a succession of boats, including a 46-footer, Blue Moon, which he’s had for about 35 years. And Blue Moon has been a nursery for Olympians. His grandchildren are Olympic sailors Will and Jaime Ryan: “They’ve been on boats since the day they were born.” 

For John Peschar, family and time are everything. He is keenly feeling that, as he grieves for his wife of 62 years. Pamela died in May. 

He is determined to make the most of time. The former discount specialist adores a full-value life. 

“Even now, I’m unemployed. I feel maybe I’ve retired too early from all of that,” the 90-year-old says, watching the workers creating the Supercars track outside. 

“You think, ‘Hey, there are things to be done. There must be something we can do!’.”

One thing John Peschar often does is reflect on what he considers a fortunate life.

“The harder you work, the luckier you get, I know. But Australia! It’s a wonderful place. Unbelievable opportunities.

“I came here with nothing, and I’ve had a wonderful run.”