Born in Pinjarra in Western Australia and raised on a farm in the New England region of NSW, he is the fourth child in a family of five with one older brother,(now deceased) two older sisters and a younger sister. He attended Tingha Central school during the primary school years and graduated from Inverell High School in 1968. After twenty years of farm life, he decided the rural life was not for him.
The road in 1970, took him through flying school at the NASA College in Cessnock, N.S.W., and onto bush flying in north Queensland. During that time, he became a qualified Flight Instructor. The oil crisis in 1974, threw many people like him out of work. Having been made redundant, a subsequent pre-planned visit to UK opened up greater horizons for him.
After obtaining the UK Commercial Pilots License, he found employment flying in Nigeria, UK, Europe, and later in North Africa. He returned to Australia and joined a small airline in the Pacific. This led to being recruited by the Hong Kong startup airline, Dragonair, in 1986. He was employed by them for 17 years and retired as a senior Airbus Captain.
On early retirement, after the SARS epidemic, he has built a Resort on an island near Phuket in Thailand, where he resides from time to time. He has two daughters who live in Melbourne. The rest of the time he lives in Phuket with his wife and now his lifestyle imitates the name on his boat.
