This was published 7 years ago
Tony Sonneveld, successful industrialist and campaigner on prostate cancer
They called him the "pocket dynamo" and indeed he was, setting out as one of 11 children in an impoverished family, delivering milk as a nine-year-old to help the family make ends meet, and finishing as a highly successful industrialist with a personal estate worth millions. But there was a lot more to Tony Sonneveld than that. He embraced every field he entered, including the military where he was a commissioned officer during the National Service.
Everything he touched, whether it was non-destructive testing, construction and termite control, became his own domain. When, at the age of 57, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he rose to become a NSW chairman of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, waging such a war on the disease that the malevolent deity – should there be one – which had singled him out must have realised it had chosen the wrong victim.
When Tony Sonneveld was diagnosed with prostate cancer, he took up the cause for others.
Anthony Leonard Sonneveld was born on a ship as it entered a Dutch harbour in 1946. His father, Hendricus Sonneveld, had served in the Dutch East Indies early in World War 11 and, retreating with other Dutch forces to Australia in the face of the Japanese onslaught, had met a nurse, Eileen Mary Ferguson. The couple married in Melbourne in 1943. Their first child, Michael, was born in 1944.
At the end of the war, Hendricus and his wife travelled to Holland. Tony Sonneveld was born on May 3, 1946 and was nine months old when his parents returned to Australia. He was schooled in Melbourne but because his parents were so poor, he worked throughout his schooling at a variety of jobs and left school in 1962, with his Leaving Certificate, to work as a trainee metallurgist.
Sonneveld completed his schooling at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, and continued at the institute, studying part-time, for a diploma in metallurgy. He qualified in 1969 and continued with a company that had already engaged him, Metlab-X-Ray, which specialised in non-destructive testing (NDT) of pipelines, power station, oil refineries and aircraft. In 1970, Sonneveld was called up for National Service. Graduating from a course at the Officer Training Unit, Scheyville, outside Sydney, he went to the Royal Australian Electrical and Mechanical Engineers at Puckapunyal, Victoria, servicing all manner of military vehicles, from tanks to jeeps.
After demobilisation in 1971, Sonneveld returned to Metlab. Transferred to the Brisbane office, he took responsibility for the company's operations in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Bougainville. In 1973, he moved to the Sydney office and took in New South Wales as well. He also married a teacher, Vera ("Vivienne") Albantow, bought a block of land in Seven Hills, in Sydney's north-west, and built a house.
Two sons arrived: Mark, born 1976, Michael (1977). In 1978, Sonneveld became Metlab's general manager. The following yeara daughter, Rebecca, was born. At work, his company, then called Metlab MAPEL Pty Ltd, had operations in Singapore, New Zealand, and across Australia. At one point, he personally dived at an oil rig off the New Zealand coast to do testing. In 2004 he published the "History of NDT in Australia".
In 1986, following a takeover of Metlab by a British company, a subsidiary of Amec plc, Sonneveld became deputy managing director of the parent company's diverse construction operations throughout Australia. In 1990, he joined Transfield Constructions as General Manager of the company's electrical / instrumentation subsidiary.
In 1995, Sonneveld left and took up a franchise for a new product, Termi-mesh, a physical barrier to subterranean termite infestation of buildings, which had a ready market following the phasing out of chemical controls. Because he was one of the first in the field, the return exceeded all expectations. The company turned over $1 million in 11 months and repaid the initial investment four-fold. Sonneveld then bought a run-down Blacktown factory for $500,000, renovated and extended it to provide a permanent nest-egg for the family.
The 2003 diagnosis of prostate cancer was a terrible blow. In 2006, he received the grim news that the disease had become metastatic – it had gone into his bones and was terminal. But Sonneveld, whose extra-curricular activities had included building a network of military contacts and chairing the OTU [Officer Training Unit] Association nationally, quickly took up the cause of prostate cancer sufferers.
He joined the NSW Board of the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia, became its chairman and a national director, and successfully lobbied the Howard Government to approve the drug Taxotere, an end-of-life chemotherapy for sufferers, to go onto the Prescription Benefits List. Also a national director of the foundation, he became its ambassador, giving public presentations, chaired meetings and attended many fund raising functions each year. Using the media and venues such as football matches, he set out on a campaign to make the general public aware of the disease.
Wanting to pack as much life into his remaining, years, Sonneveld initiated a music and fun day in 2006 for many of his friends, which has continued to this day on a biennial basis and has over the years attracted the likes of Mike McClellan and Marty Rhone. Awarded an OAM in 2010 for his services to NDT, Sonneveld handed over his business to his sons and went on an energetic program that included overseas trips and skiing, as well as supporting and mentoring fellow prostate cancer sufferers. But Sonneveld's own disease took its inevitable course.
Tony Sonneveld is survived by his widow, his three children, five grandchildren and 10 siblings.
Malcolm Brown