Clifton Vaughan Holland was born on 21 June 1914, the eighth of ten children, and was raised on his family's farm on the
Mornington Peninsula, south-east of
Melbourne. He acquired the informal name
John at an early age, and he was always known as John Holland thereafter. He studied civil engineering at the
University of Melbourne and then worked for the
Commonwealth Oil Refineries for three years. He joined the army when
World War II broke out, and served in the Middle East, Greece and the Pacific, becoming a lieutenant-colonel. He returned to civil engineering, setting up his own business in 1949. His first contract was to build a shed on a property in western
Victoria owned by a farmer named
Malcolm Fraser, who would later go into politics and become the
Prime Minister of Australia. He took a personal interest in every employee, and insisted they be involved in community service. He himself was involved in various causes, including the board of the
Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Bone Marrow Foundation, a co-founder of the National Stroke Foundation, the Voluntary Euthanasia Society, chairman of the Sir Edward Dunlop Memorial Committee and, from 2000, as patron of the Children First Foundation. He was a keen sportsman in his younger days, and later became president of
Royal Melbourne Golf Club and patron of Flinders Golf Club. ==Honours and awards==