Biography

I was born in Morwell, in Gippsland, Australia in 1972 and I grew up between several small country towns before attending Melbourne University to study History and International Politics, then Law and, eventually, Education.  In 1993 a backpacking trip through Indonesia saw me firmly bitten by the travel bug and during the next several years life was a mix of travel, studying and short term jobs.  I won a scholarship to study Indonesian in Indonesia for a year in 1995-96 and returned home speaking fluent Indonesian, a fact which helped me qualify as a secondary school teacher of Indonesian and Humanities in 1997. Thereafter I combined travel with various teaching posts, living in Indonesia, England and France before returning home to Australia in 2011. I am married to Geraldine, a native of the Brittany region of France, and we have two sons.

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