I became an academic almost by accident. From 1978 to 1992 I lived in Sydney and
worked as an industrial relations/human resource management executive in the
building and construction industry. I was the National Industrial Relations Director
of the Australian Federation of Construction Contractors for several years, following
a stint as Director of the National Industrial Construction Council. But a man can
only do the same kind of work for so long before getting stale, and in the early
1990s I got out of employment relations into more general lobbying and then
consulting work.

In 1993 I realised I was sick of spending 2 - 3 hours a day sitting in traffic. Often on
the way to the airport where I would catch a plane to a meeting that I already knew
would be largely a waste of time. So I decided to get out of Sydney and do
something else, although I didn't have much idea of what. I settled in a place called
Pottsville Beach for a while to explore possibilities. I'm still here - lazy I guess.

In 1995 I went back to uni. I got a Bachelor of Commerce from Uni of NSW back in
the 1960s but didn't get very good grades. There were too many distractions.
However I enjoyed doing a Bachelor of Social Science at Southern Cross as an
external student. I chose subjects that were related to my work experience and it
was interesting to get a theoretical insight into the events that I had been part of. I
also enrolled at UNE as a cross-institutional politics student for two years and did
some of my work there.

Anyway the upshot was that I got pretty good grades once I mastered the art of
academic writing so I went on and did honours. I got a first, which got me a job at
Griffith doing research .... they asked if I would like to do some teaching and it all
followed from there. I'm now a full-time casual academic, enjoy the lifestyle and I'm
very happy I left Sydney when I did.
About me