From the hippie trail to handmade carpets

From the hippie trail to handmade carpets

When Ian Swart was invited to speak at his son’s Entrepreneurs Organisation chapter in 2023, he had no idea that sharing stories of his hippie days would spark a two-year journey into memoir writing. Now, at 75, the Melbourne businessman has penned a remarkable account of how a Jewish boy from Elwood became Australia’s first retailer to import handmade rugs from India. “They loved listening to my speech and thought that I had lived in a fascinat…