I’m an author of fiction and non-fiction. My work includes travel guidebooks for the publisher Lonely Planet and a cultural history of Siberia co-published by Oxford University Press/Signal Books. The novel Drifting on the Edge, set on the border of France, Germany and Switzerland in the Basel trinational region, was released in 2025.
I was born in the port city of Fremantle, Western Australia, and pulled anchor early on to spend a couple of years in Europe and the US, mostly in London and Berkeley (California). I also spent several months hitchhiking through Southern Europe, the Balkans and North Africa. Returning to Australia, I studied comparative literature and later Russian at university in Perth and Melbourne before moving to Germany, where I’ve been based for over two decades. During that time I’ve researched, written and coordinated numerous guidebooks for Lonely Planet, mostly on Germany, Austria, Russia, Switzerland, Poland and Hungary, and also contributed short stories to LP travel anthologies.
In 2008 I travelled chunks of Siberia and wrote “Siberia, A Cultural History”, having stitched together a deal with a publisher at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This was partly because it gave me a good reason to travel out there again. I’d lost 10 kg on an earlier guidebook research trip, having gotten by in some regions largely on tinned tuna and pelmeni (Russian ravioli) due to food shortages. But I wanted to return to learn more about how the vast distances affected the people and defined the region. Also, I was – and still am – fascinated by Siberia’s First Nation cultures. On that earlier guidebook research trip to Western Siberia, the region had struck me as being in some ways like Australia in a refrigerator.
Travel and writing are two of my passions, but I’m also an enthusiastic semi-amateur musician who loves writing and recording music, and jamming on guitar with fellow musos whenever I have the chance.
What’s More…
The day job has kept me in many wonderful and less wonderful ways over the years. In very distant history, I turned socks the right way around (they’re generally sewn inside out) on the nightshift at a Holeproof sock factory in Melbourne, Australia. I’ve written ripping yarns about vacuum pumps and their uses (seriously, there’s more to vacuum than you think) for a German engineering company in a microregion known as “Vacuum Valley”. On one working holiday I cracked rocks across from Westminster in London for a global resource exploration company. (You baked the samples before hammering them to bits for testing; but best of all were the corporate swimming pools.) Another memorable station was writing mainframe-computer training handbooks for sewage workers (et al.) at Melbourne Water. More popular was the wine column for the Melbourne Water employee newsletter, signalling a sputtering start to a career in journalism. The rest is either history or can be read elsewhere…
What I’m reading: “What We Can Know” by Ian McEwan (I can only read this comparatively with a certain book blurbed on this website).
What I’m listening to: After listening to Olivia Rodrigo with Ed Sheeran, singing “The A Team”, Live at BST Hyde Park 2025, Joe Jackson at the Rockpalast in 1983. Poor sound quality but Joe is totally underrated these days. https://youtu.be/NBMTn5o2QuM?si=UmVZvsbrqoA8T5tG
Unsung: See What I’m Playing.
What I’m playing (on guitar): First Aid Kit (because in one of my jam groups they’re a favourite). Still trying to get a fast picking pattern.
Podcasts: Resting on The Rest Is History – Johnson and Boswell series currently. I’m intrigued by Boswell having caught the clap 19 times. He obviously didn’t learn, our learned Boswell. I love the line in Episode 3: “I smell you in the dark”. As a guideboiok writer who has been to some places, I can of course undertsand this completely. And I really like The Book Club, with Dominic Sandbrook and Tabitha Sirret. Liked George Orwell podcast a lot. https://youtu.be/twlF52iIewc?si=LkDKwxfq9TIFVYzl. What I especially liked about this one one was how Tabbi’s feminin(ist) perspective met Dominic’s historical perspective so well.
Photo of the Month(s)
Venice, Italy.