About

I am a South African. I am no longer in the first flush of youth, early sixties. These days I live the life of a nomad, splitting my time between Maastricht in the Netherlands, South Africa and, increasingly, elsewhere on my various bikepacking and road tripping adventures.

 

​I used to be a Chartered Accountant, doing what Chartered Accountants do, earning a living to raise a family. My professional life was spent mainly in the mining and public health sectors. I learned the love of traveling, particularly on roads less travelled. I guess I became a nomad a very long time ago.

 

I am either bikepacking or ambling in my old Toyota 4X4 (500k km to date). I have always been curious. I am a loner yet seek out the human connection – “who are you and where do you come from?”. A lifetime asking these kind of questions and being receptive to following opportunity has been both rewarding and complicated.

 

All my life I have been a collector. From a very young age it was stamps and sports programmes, encouraged by my father taking me to every sports event possible. From there my collecting interests grew exponentially and today I sit with an eclectic accumulation of ephemera that attempts to preserve some of our fast disappearing heritage. I carry an acute sense of responsibility to preserve for future generations our tangible and tactile contact with our past.

 

In the last few years I have found a public voice. I started publishing short stories around various aspects of my collections. COVID gave me an opportunity to talk to a fledgling audience.

 

I sensed I was (and still am) touching on a nostalgic link to our past. The digital world has taken away the tactile experience of interactions such as the exquisite pleasure in reading a hard copy broadsheet newspaper over a cup of coffee. My audience has grown.

 

I have become a storyteller and I tell my somewhat obscure stories through a variety of mediums. Public talks, the written word and increasingly through other channels. I sense I can reach an ever wider audience, perhaps the South Africa diaspora spread throughout the world.

 

I am at the beginning of this journey and cannot wait to see how it all pans out. I consider myself very lucky that I have a purpose. I absolutely love what I am doing. So much to share before the job is done. My only wish is to entertain and to contribute towards fiercely protecting that which should be preserved for future generations.

 

I hope you find here what you didn’t know you are looking for and that you find it within yourself to be as curious as I am.