About John

Welcome to my digital home away from home!

I was born in Queensland, Australia and grew up on the Redcliffe Peninsula, where I spent an inordinate amount of time roaming the beaches and playing backyard cricket with my mates. I fell into university because I could not think of anything better to do at the time. My career then spanned from mowing lawns and packing groceries, to being the global head of Real Estate and Acquisitions for the public-listed Flight Centre Travel Group.

Having a real job that required me to circumnavigate the globe and attend outrageous travel industry parties was a fantastic gig. But hanging with ‘Suits’ did not deliver the type of freewheeling adventurism I yearned for. In between serious bouts of work, I have travelled through over 90 countries and visited all 7 continents. I have overlanded from Ushuaia to Alaska, crisscrossed America in a 1973 Lincoln Continental, worked in a London pub, taken three long European campervanning trips, and, on other jaunts, simply tossed on a backpack and rolled with the flow. Such glorious freedom!

However, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Sometimes my greatest adventures and deepest learnings have come from the hardest challenges. In my travels, I have been shot at, poisoned, tear-gassed, robbed at gunpoint and locked up in an African jail. I have stowed away in a Columbian cargo plane, ridden across countries on the back of trucks and the roofs of buses, flown in an ultralight over the Zambezi and been a passenger in not one, but two train derailments. You’d think I learn, hey! Yet each time I return from another jaunt, I feel revitalized and renewed, thriving with fresh ideas, crazy goals and the energy to execute personal change.

I’m now fortunate enough to combine my twin passions of writing and travel. I produced two travel memoirs, plus feature articles and writing/speaking gigs, from the comparative safety of my home in the Currumbin Valley on Australia’s Gold Coast. This place is my base camp from where I launch new adventures.

I have a room of my own from where I write, procrastinate, get distracted, and write again. It can be lonely up there in the attic, so I make sure I stay in touch with the literary world through various memberships.