He was a successful businessman and grazier and a well-known, well-liked and respected man about town.

"They just don't make them like that any more, do they?" his daughter Jacki Waugh said.

She said that, from a young age, her father had always had some enterprise on the go.

"He was always around town doing paper runs and milk runs before school and after school," she said.

"He was a jack of all trades. He was all over the place doing jobs."

His fruit business started out growing potatoes at Taralga and Crookwell.

"He started that business by selling produce off the back of a truck," Jacki said.

"He grew potatoes at Crookwell and Taralga and he would bag them up and take them to Sydney to the markets.

"But he realised he was coming back to Goulburn with an empty truck, so he thought he might as well bring back a truck-load of other produce, fruit and vegetables, and sell them.

"He had his truck down in Grafton Street, but the council of the time moved him on and then he went up to the corner of Mundy and Auburn streets and he had the shop on the corner up there for a long time.

"He later established Divall's Fruit Shop in Bourke Street; eventually, with his brother Peter."

Mr Divall was also known for establishing the successful Divall's Earthmoving and Bulk Haulage business. "He established the gravel pit business later on," Jacki said.

"Fifty years ago, we moved to Carrick, where the farm and gravel pit is," Jacki said.

"Everyone thought he was mad setting that up, telling him there was no potential in the land. But he fertilised it and got it going well and knew that the gravel pit was there and there was the potential for another income. It grew from there.

"He still owned the land and [now] the boys have the business and the trucks out there."

Goulburn Mulwaree Council noted Mr Divall's passing with one minute's silence at their meeting on July 2. Mayor Bob Kirk offered his condolences to the family on behalf of the council at the meeting.

John Divall's funeral will be on Saturday July 6 at 11am at St Saviour's Cathedral.