Canberra Southern Cross Club makes Matthew Walshe new chief executive

On Sundays, he scrubbed butchers' fridges spotless. He cleared out ashtrays pretty well every evening. From 5am, he would clean every single glass in the club until they sparkled.

"I certainly had dish-pan hands. I knew it had to be done," he says.

"When duty managers saw me, I was always on time. My shirt was pressed. They would never say, 'You haven't cleaned those glasses'."

And now he's set to be the chief executive of the same business which turns over $35 million per year and employs 600 people.

He started at the Southern Cross Club on March 11, 1993, largely because he couldn't think of anything else to do. He hadn't been bad at school but somehow university didn't appeal.

Work in the real world did. "I really loved it, pretty much from day one. The people were really good. It felt like home," he says.

After the scrubbing and scouring, his first managerial job at the club was as the manager of the Southern Cross Yacht Club, starting on Melbourne Cup Day in 1999. "It was a baptism of fire," he says.

From there, he was put in charge of the Woden Southern Cross Club in 2003 as it was undergoing a $20 million refurbishment.

He then moved into the Southern Cross Clubs' top layer of management - and now to the very top as chief executive.

En route, he developed a reputation for getting things done on budget and on time. So when the current chief executive Ian Mackay announced his retirement, Mr Walshe threw his hat in the ring.

Appointment wasn't automatic. Head-hunters were appointed and conducted a national search. In the end, it was down to two people, and Mr Walshe got the job.

The current chief executive (the third in the club's history) and the new fourth will now spend the next four months working in tandem. Mr Walshe flies solo in November.

It hasn't only been learning by doing. The new chief executive has been on courses during his career, but they have been very orientated towards management, including studying "club management" at Southern Cross University in Lismore.

But he also learnt as he went along, particularly from the three previous chief executives which the club has had since it opened its doors in 1972.

He has no regrets about the path he took. One of the lessons he takes from it is you have to work to get what you want. "Youngsters want everything and everything now. I try to explain that there is a time and a place but you do have to work for it," Mr Walshe says.

Given that, he thinks there is still a good future in the hospitality industry, saying: "From my experience, you can carve out a really good career in hospitality.

"I would say to a young school-leaver, 'Hospitality is hard and it gets harder and harder to get into the industry, but if you do the hard work, you can achieve whatever you want to'."

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He thinks he got his meticulous nature and his hyper-commitment to work from his parents. His dad worked on the doors at the Southern Cross Club for 14 years.

He's now 89.

"He's a man of very few words," the son said.

"He's very proud."

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