[2] Jim Curran and his brothers were raised on this farming property, named "Bundah", located sixteen kilometres (ten miles) west from Gilgandra township.
After his father's death in February 1957, Curran resigned from the Department of Education effective 9 Sept 1957 [5] and moved to Malaya with his wife where they both took up school teaching posts at a company-owned tin-mining town on the east coast.
They enjoyed a stimulating three-year period among the expatriate community engaged by the mine owners and made many lifelong international friends.
[6] He ran "Bundah" successfully as a mixed farm, growing wheat and raising sheep and beef cattle while his wife taught at Gilgandra primary school.
Renshaw, with farming and agricultural origins, had a strong personal following in the nominally conservative-leaning country seat, appealing to a diverse range of voters from well-to-do graziers, to small farmers, to blue-collar workers, and he ultimately held the seat for Labor against Country Party opponents for four decades.
In January 1980, Renshaw resigned from the NSW Parliament and endorsed his private secretary, Curran, as ALP candidate at the resulting by-election to be held a few weeks later in February.
Areas of more traditionally ALP-voting towns such as Nyngan had been moved out of the Castlereagh electorate and a large area of traditionally National Country Party-voting territory had been moved inside the electorate boundaries, including a large section of the adjacent seat of Burrendong which had been abolished.
In the 1980s he worked with NSW Trade in New York for two years as Manager of Industrial Promotion for New South Wales, and after his return to Australia he was later appointed as an Assistant Commissioner for Western Lands.