Sober choice pays dividends for Brett

By Peter Owen

BRETT LeMoy, a knockabout Sydney lad with a wanderlust, was onto his sixth or seventh cerveza in a cozy bar in a charming Spanish village when he wistfully remarked to his mate: “This is the life. How good is this?”

“You know this bar’s for sale,” his friend said. “It’s going for a song.”

He thought long and hard, but Brett decided against buying that bar, tucked away in a street at Andraitz, the Majorca village best known as the hiding place of disgraced Australian tycoon Christopher Skase.

“It would have been a bit like the mouse being in charge of the cheese,” Brett reflects today.

Instead he stayed in Spain for a year, running an art studio with that same mate, then returning to…