Bio
His father, Frank, lived and fought in the two wars. He was only sixteen when he became an English gunner in WW1. A German byplane in the northern region of France shot him down. The pilot was killed and Frank was forced to land. He was fortunately found and tended to in France, where he bore witness to the treaty of Versailles in 1919.
How did you travel as a kid from Adelaide to Melbourne? On a pilot’s lap. What else could you do if your father had been a wing commander in the Royal Australian Air Force and had his own air company? He was seeing things from above already as a child.
He had a sweet tooth and some anxiety issues. On an important family reunion in Adelaide, the tension made him insatiable. Here he is right after eating off all he could grab in the sweet shop. He is about to throw up.
Prepared for, almost, everything. In Melbourne, at his cousin’s family house, there was a boomerang hanging from the chimney. Having made sure the coast was clear, he grabbed it, ran off and threw it. He spent the next month looking for it. He never found it.
Consider this: your cousin has a human-size playhouse in the yard, it’s summer, you both feel like skating and there are several plum trees almost ready to eat nearby. What do you do? If you are an eleven year old determined Aussie boy used to flying, you persuade your cousin to miraculously forgo all home-made marmalade for a year and you go and plum-carpet the floor.
He has done it too: the spiritual sessions in the 50s. Sydney, Paddington, when it was dangerous and dreary. They used to invite their Greek and Italian friends and would sit around a table, eating and drinking. An improvised Ouija board would then make its appearance and on this occasion, so did three Russian spirits devoted to implanting communism in Australia. They didn’t go far.
Swinging London in the 60s. Here with his first wife Helen, from New Zealand and two friends from Australia.
Shooting ads at Pinewood Studios.
And from London onto Spain to be transformed by its culture. Here he is at the Feria de Abril. Meet el niño de Adelaida.
Relentlessly looking for changes in scenery, here he is driving across Europe in a Bentley.
And throughout all that time, and the time that followed, he kept portraying in his diaries the atmospheres and stories of all the places he visited.
