After completing schooling and gaining a year 12 certificate (thanks to my parents for year 12 completion in those days for a country boy in Western Australia in the 1960s was rare), I worked on the Family farm for four years.

During that time I did it in pieces of study but none of it was connected. It includes everything from a wool classing

qualification to a general Bookkeeping certificate, A unit in sociology and a few other bits and pieces.

That all changed when I went to teachers’ college and graduated at the end of 1969.

What then followed with a career in education in Western Australia and the Northern Territory extending from 1970 to my retirement in January 2012.

for most of those years, I was the school principal and worked extraordinarily hard – anything up to 80 hours a week which I documented. Along the way, I also did a lot of external study and that was after I finished work for I never mix work and study.

Following my retirement I worked for four years at the Charles Darwin University variously as a lecturer, tutor and marker.

It all ended in 2016 and I went out into what is called the “pasture of the long paddock“.

These days, I do a lot of writing and publishing online, and in various other outlets. But it’s true to say that my career these days is a career that has been retired – along with me.

As a 78-year-old man, I don’t have any wish to start another career.