(Pictured with partner Vivian )
I was born in Lower Hutt, New Zealand in 1952 and brought up mostly in Foxton on the southwest of the North Island. I moved to Australia in 1979 and started working in the electronics and computer industry in Sydney before moving to Canberra in 1983. My son was born in 1983 in Canberra and now lives in Newcastle and my daughter born a couple of years later in 1986 who decided to stay in Canberra. The pair have given me 4 grandchildren to enjoy.

Vivian is from the UK and came to Australia not long after I did and lived in Perth, Cairns and Canberra where she worked as a nurse and midwife. She and I met in Canberra in 2002 and after a few years joined the local 4WD club (Southern Tablelands) and discovered the joys of 4WD and outback touring in Australia. In 2010 we retired, sold the house, and started travelling around the country in our Patrol Ute with a Heaslip camper on the back. Vivian had done a bit of house sitting before we met, so we decided to start our new “unemployed and itinerant” lifestyle in a similar vein. After several farm-sits, motel-sits and a few house-sits, we started looking for a new, permanent base and ended up near Forster NSW, where we’ve been living for the last 12 years with 25 acres of trees, weeds, kangaroos and deer, as well as a few chickens.
We continued with the camper for several more years, before acknowledging that we were going to have to compromise on the freedom and versatility of a single cab ute and camper, and upgrade to a caravan. After visiting the Melbourne caravan show and seeing the Bushtracker stand, we were sold on the Kedron vs Bushtracker quality and features and finally found a 2003 BT in 2019. It took a couple more years before we discovered BOG and after meeting the wonderful NSW crowd at the 2022 mini-muster decided we would attend the Horrocks AGM muster in 2023, then Forbes in 2024 and Barmera in 2025. Vivian and I are looking forward to more involvement with the BOG committee and making more friends with Bushtracker owners around Australia.