I was born and grew up in old coal-mining villages in County Durham in north-east England. My childhood interests were all related to Nature in some way – botany, astronomy, butterflies and moths, and learning all that I could about world geography. This last one was engendered by the stories told to me by my maternal grandfather, who had worked in the coal mining industry all of his working life, rising to become the national secretary of the cokemen’s section of the NUM. He had attended many conferences in various European countries in the late 1940s and early 1950s, but the story that I loved to hear was about his trip out to mining operations in Africa as part of an NUM delegation in 1950, before I was born. He had travelled out to Africa aboard a B.O.A.C. Sunderland flying boat, which landed for refuelling and overnight stops at places such as Sicily, on the River Nile at Luxor in Egypt and Khartoum in Sudan, and on Lake Victoria at Kampala, Uganda. I seem to recall that it was a 5-day journey to land eventually somewhere in Northern Rhodesia in what is now the Zambian Copperbelt, where he visited copper mines in Kitwe and Mufulira. I still have a photo of him standing with the backdrop of the Victoria Falls in Livingstone. From there it was a short hop to the coal mines at Wankie in Southern Rhodesia (now Hwange, Zimbabwe), where he also visited the grave of Cecil John Rhodes in the Matopos near Bulawayo, and then on to Johannesburg in South Africa where he visited some of the Witwatersrand gold mines. I dreamed that one day I might retrace my grandfather’s footsteps.

It was therefore no surprise to anyone that after finishing my schooling I ended up studying Mining Geology at the Royal School of Mines in London and upon graduation headed off for my first job as a geologist on the copper mine in Mufulira, Zambia. Needless to say, I did visit the Victoria Falls. I have always believed that one should make the most of being where you are as you may never be back. In that vein in 1975 I went with 3 friends and 2 vehicles on a 3,000+ mile round trip from Mufulira, up through Tanzania, where we climbed Kilimanjaro, and on into the Rift Valley in Kenya, where we saw the amazing sight of over 1 million flamingos on Lake Nakuru. Also from the Copperbelt I managed to visit Mauritius, Malawi, Swaziland and Lesotho.

I met and married a nurse in Mufulira. Our first son was born in Mufulira. Rather than returning to the UK as I’d always imagined we would, after just over 5 years in Zambia we headed for South Africa, where I had secured the job of geologist on the copper mine at Copperton in the north-west Cape Province (now Northern Cape). A daughter and another son were born while we lived in Copperton. Family holidays were always in the spirit of ‘make the most of being where you are as you may never be back’, so travelling an 800 mile round trip to Cape Town or a 1,200 mile round trip to the Kruger Park became the norm. After almost 5 years in Copperton we had already seen more of South Africa than many South Africans – Cape Town, the Garden Route, Port Elizabeth, Aughrabies Falls, Kalahari Gemsbok NP, Natal Drakensberg and of course the recurring theme over the next 30 years, Kruger National Park. I once estimated that my wife and I must have spent about  300 days in ‘the Park’. Nature and wildlife were always at the forefront of any trip.

We moved from Copperton to a gold mine near Klerksdorp in the Transvaal (now North West) for another 4 years, then to the gold mines of Barberton in the south-eastern Transvaal (now Mpumalanga) for 2 more years, all with the same mining company, before being moved to the head office in Johannesburg. We were now able to settle down and lived in the Atlasville suburb of Boksburg on the East Rand, a 30-minute drive from central Johannesburg. Another 10 years would pass before I made a break and set up as an independent consultant and my work began taking me beyond the borders of South Africa. This is also when digital cameras came of age and I was able to document my travels much better and where the story that you see unfold in my blogs begins.

Now retired and back in the UK I have branched out from just bird and wildlife photography and tried my hand at insect macro-photography. Nature still comes first.