At the age of eighty, John has looked back on his life’s experiences. From the freedom as a child growing up in rural New Zealand at the conclusion of World War II to his travels across the globe and the rough and tumble of decades in business. The stories he has written have captivated readers’ attention through their spirit of adventure, curiosity and wisdom that extend across generations.
A bit more about John.
After he left school he worked in livestock management and, later, on a cropping farm in New Zealand’s Southland, often in below freezing temperatures. During the long winter nights, before the advent of television and FM radio, he had plenty of idle time and he decided to enroll in a year-long correspondence course with the London School of Journalism.
He presented his first freelance effort to the editor of the New Zealand Herald’s supplementary newspaper, The Weekly News and was encouraged to submit a weekly article based on his rural experiences in both New Zealand and Australia. When he left New Zealand to join a yacht for a life of adventure, the editor asked him to continue to submit regular weekly farming articles, as well as writing about his travel experiences.
Along the way, he wrote detailed letters to his parents – that boarding school training never quite deserted him. His mother saved those letters and it was the re-reading of those, as well as some of the newspaper articles written during the same period, that inspired him to set down this narrative of his early life.
John also spent 40 years as a leader in the Australian meat and livestock industry. Starting his own meat export business in his 20s with nothing but a telephone, he successfully grew this business into a multi-million dollar enterprise exporting meat and animal husbandry expertise to all corners of the globe.
