Please note this is a rough first draft and is a work in progress.

I’ve had an interesting and varied life. I was born in Kingston, Tasmania.

When I was eleven, we moved to Burnie; I remember being incredibly excited about travelling and moving to the other end of the state. My sister is still annoyed that we moved and weren’t given more feedback about the move.

My sister and I are total opposites in that she has always had and appears to need a strong home base, in her case, mostly farms or larger blocks around on the North West Coast. She likes travelling but is always happy to be home.

Whereas I’ve never ever felt the need for a home base. I like travelling, and if it’s a trip back to a home base I’m temporarily at, I tend to get very depressed, so living on the road has been my dream state for as long as I can remember.

We stayed around the Burnie area, in various places, until I left for Uni in Hobart when I was seventeen years old.

We belonged to the Burnie Field Naturalists’ Club, and I spent many weekends walking with the local bushwalking club all over the North West of Tasmania, often with Peter Sims and my childhood friend, Michael Turner.

It was while staying at the Field Naturalist’s Club shack at Rocky Cape that my sister and I discovered a cave that had not been seen by white people before.

And one of my more memorable bush walks was having the great privilege with Mick Turner to be part of an archaeological survey down the south west of Tasmania, and then to walk with Peter Sims and Michael all the way down the coast of south west Tasmania. An amazing once-in-a-lifetime trip.

I spent a year at Hobart University, where I learned the joys of drinking. I continued drinking myself into alcoholic oblivion until I was 32. Along the way, I did have many adventures.

I hitchhiked all over Tasmania and Australia for several years. Went fruit picking with my friend Shane and had many jobs, mostly truck driving or labouring, but I did join the public service for a few years.

I got married to Ketty and worked various jobs, including:

  • share farming on a dairy farm in the North West coast of Tasmania, probably the hardest work I’ve ever done
  • working in the mines in King Island, and Luina and Roseberry on the West Coast of Tassie
  • joined the public service in Launceston

We had a wonderful wineries tour of Victoria in Ketty’s MGA sports car.

I owned an early Suzuki 4WD – a tiny little thing with a 2-stroke 360 cc motorbike engine, that had amazing 4WD capabilities.

Ketty and I separated when I was in my late twenties, and I spiralled down into very, very alcoholic drinking and drug taking, mainly speed and marijuana.

I travelled over to Perth and lived there for a while in my Datsun 180B, until I got caught drink driving and was given the option by a very enlightened judge to either go into an AA dry-out centre or go to jail. After some persuasion from my lawyer, I decided to go to the AA dry-out centre. That was it; it was there that I stopped drinking and have not had alcohol or any other drugs since.

After I left the dry-out centre, it was after I left the dry-out centre that I ended my second main career. The first one being an alcoholic and a junkie. This second career was in the book trade, mostly in Canberra, when independent bookshops were flourishing. They have since mostly died out, which is a terrible shame.

I managed two bookshops, owned a bookshop with my then-partner, Deb, and then became a book agent for Allen and Unwin Publishers.

I discovered the internet in 1998 and initially built websites for bookshops, which eventually led to my third career as a website builder working online. (Websites, low-code/no-code automations and workflows, and now AI automation and productivity).

I have hitchhiked extensively and travelled by motorbike, car, 4WD, train, and plane.

Vehicles I’ve travelled and lived in (in rough chronological order):

  • Datsun 1600 (Melbourne to Perth)
  • MGA Sportscar (Victorian Wineries trip)
  • Datsun 180B (trip to Cape York)
  • Holden station wagon (Tassie, Victoria, NSW)
  • Toyota Land Cruiser FJ55 (big trip to see Lake Eyre in flood)
  • BMW R80GS motorbike (many trips all over Australia)
  • Landrover Series IIa V8 (East Coast and across to WA)
  • OKA 4WD truck (up and down in WA, New Holland Track, Tanami Desert Track, Tassie, Cape York, far North Queensland)
  • 1999 Toyota Troopy, my current vehicle (Far North Qld, East coast of NSW & Vic, Kati Thanda, Uluru, Alice Springs, East McDonnell Ranges, Tassie, Kangaroo Island)

Cate, Zoe and I lived in and travelled in our OKA up and down in WA, the New Holland Track, the Tanami Desert Track, Tassie, Cape York, and Far North Queensland. We then spent about four years running the Portland Roads Beach Shack for the owner (just north of Lockhart River and Chili Beach) in Far North Queensland.