Growing up in Sydney

The first thing people notice about me is that I have an accent. I am originally from England by the way of Australia. My father, Philip was stationed in Australia after WWII and decided to move the family there in 1969. I was brought up in the city of Sydney, which is one of the most beautiful and exciting cities in the world.

Sydney Harbor Bridge and Opera House
I attended Sydney High, a selective high school in the inner suburb ofMoore Park. We lived in the inner city suburb of Paddington. Our home was a 2 story terrace house on Cambridge Street. The street itself was quite steep, a 30 degree incline. Each day I would walk to school in Double Bay (about a mile). During my high school days, I would catch abus or train to school. My favorite times were during school holidays,when my family would head out into "the bush" and spend time on farming properties owned by friends of the my parents. These visits were the highlight of my childhood and they helped me decide to pursue a career in agriculture.

27 Cambridge St Paddington, NSW 2021

Sydney High was an all boys school, we had the unique position of being a GPS school (Greater Public School) which put us in with famous private schools such as "Scots College" , "St Josephs College" and "TheKings School" all of which were upper class expensive private schools.We played Rugby, Cricket and other sports against these schools on Saturdays. We were also considered a regular "High School" and got toplay against the local high schools like Randwick, Maroubra and DoverHeights on Wednesdays.

I also played Rugby for "The Bays" starting in the under 7s and going on up to under 12's where I began playing for Sydney Boys High School. I played (not very well) Rugby for all 6 years I was at High. I also was for a time a rower in the school rowing team and also played cricket and was a member of the First Grade Shooting Team in 1981.

Perhaps my fondest memories are of my years in the Sydney High School Cadet unit. I joined in 1977 and spent many a Tuesday afternoon in my cadet uniform learning to march, use a compass and all things that soldiers do!

Each year we would go off for 3 days on a bivouac, and an annual Campfor 5 days. It was a great experience. I got to ride in an Iroquois Helicopter and to shoot SLRs and M16s. We got to go on an overnight orienteering exercise and camp up in the BrokenBack Mountain range near Singleton, NSW.

Jackarooing & Agricultural College.

After graduating from Sydney High, I took a position as a jackaroo on a 33,000 acre cropping property in Northern New South Wales (NSW) The farm was owned by the Australian Agricultural Company. A jackaroo is a farm manager intern of sorts.

I found myself driving a big 330 hp "Versatile" 4WD articulated tractors in 8 hour shifts as we prepared the ground for the wheat planting.

We worked 24/7 for 12 weeks to prepare and plant over12,000 acres of wheat that year (1982). It was a drought year and when harvest time came we took our fleet of 6 John Deere Headers (Combines) on the road starting up around Moree and working our way south to finish at Windy in late December. It was quite a site in our largest field (570 acres) to have 6 combines all running in line as we took off the very poor (3 bu/ac) wheat crop.

Over the next 3 years I worked on several other AAC properties in Queensland and the Northern Territory.

This included the the 3.6 million acre cattle ranch "Brunette Downs", NT. It was in the NT that I learned to ride and take care of a string of 6 horses. I learned to trim and shoe horses as well as ride up to 50 miles a day and to drive a "Road Train".

The jackaroos all lived in a large barracks, We spent a lot of time out in the stockcamp. Mustering on horseback with helicopters assisting. Brunette ran over 50,000 head of mainly Santa Gertrudis and Brahmin cattle. It was a hard life, sleeping under the stars in our "Swags". Up before the dawn and out to muster the cattle. I was very fit, weighed in at under 200lbs. I remember standing listening to the radio as Australia won the Americas cup in 1983. We had just finished rounding up some horses at the homestead yards. Never in a million years could I imagine that less than 20 years later I would call the USA home!

In 1984, I transferred to another AAC property, Maneroo in Longreach, QLD which is the home of the Australian Stockmen's Hall of Fame

Maneroo was about 60,000 acres and ran mainly Merino sheep for wool production. Longreach is in Central Queensland, the open plains stretch on for miles.

With 4 other Jackaroos, we were responsible for mustering and managing a large flock of 17,000 sheep. At shearing time we had to muster, draft, and dip the sheep, as well as help with the wool pressing. We rode many miles on Motorbike each day mustering the sheep.

Two shearers working on shearing their sheep, a roustabout picks up the wool (middle) wool skirter at wool table and wool press in background.

I left AAC In 1985, and worked for a short time back in NSW near Coolah, for Rob and Fiona Hoddle. I joined the local Polocrosse club and played in a few matches before leaving to attend Orange Agricultural College in early 1986.

I was at Orange Ag College for 2 years and went through their Associate Diploma in Farm Management course (Associates Degree) program. My time at OAC was a lot of fun, we played rubgy (of course) and enjoyed all the activities that one does at college. The experience was perhaps a little different for me as I was over 21 when I came up to college. Many of my fellow students were straight out of school and a lot were still "wet behind the ears". Funny how you find your niche, I found myself with more in common with the "horsies" who were the Horse Management students, A lot of them were a bit older like myself and we had some good times together.

While at collect, I also joined the Young National party (Young Nats) this was a political group associated with the National Party of Australia, an agrarian conservative party. The Orange branch was an active branch which met monthly and attended state conferences and council meetings. This time was the heyday of the Young Nats. I made many friends, some of whom I still am in touch with.

I graduated from Orange in 1987 and was Awarded the College Medal for academic excellence.

After graduation, I worked in several positions on farms in places such as Euabalong, Narrandera, Cooma and finally back to Orange. Where I worked for 2 years as a farm hand for Bruce and Sally Gordon. They owned several properties in and around Orange. I worked with Stud Cattle, Crossbred sheep and grew a few crops. I lived in Orange.

In 1991 I took a job with the Nestle company in their new Friskies Dog Food processing plant. I started in the wet plant which produced canned petfood, l worked on the line, adding ingredients and working in theautoclave section. I then moved to the dry plant and for a time operated their computer controlled grain milling operation. In 1992 I commenced an undergraduate degree by distance education at CharlesSturt University based in Wagga Wagga in southern NSW.
I completed the first year of my degree by distance education. Still with Nestle, I was transferred to Brisbane, Queensland to train as a quality assurance technician.

Baccalaureate Degree and Teaching Degree

In 1993 I resigned my postion with Friskies and spent a year travelling overseas to England, France, Belgium, Italy and the US. My father had moved back to England and I had not seen him for a few years. As most Aussies will tell you it is a long way to go anywhere from Australia so you may as well go for a year...

I met my wife Rebecca in the USA in 1993. We were both employed as camp counsellors at Hidden Valley Camp, Freedom, Maine. A beautiful setting for a summer romance! We parted ways in August, she returned to Miami university of Ohio to finish her degree and I returned to Europe for a couple more months of my working holiday. I went back to Australia in January of 1994 moving from Orange to Wagga Wagga.

I commenced full time studies at CSU in Wagga in February 1994. Charles Sturt University offers 3 year Baccalaurate Degrees with the opportunity to add a fourth year at teachers college. I decided to continue with a major in Agriculture and planned to seek a job as an Ag Teacher in the NSW secondary teaching system. My first semester I lived in various places, ending up in a dorm with a whole lot of other (mostly younger) students. Living in a dorm is a unique experience but not one I would recommend for mature age students!

Rebecca came over in October of 1994 and we became engaged. She joined me in Wagga in 1995. She living with some college students in a house and I was living with a couple of college students in a big house by the lagoon in Wagga. We were married in Defiance, Ohio in June of 1995. I graduated witha Bachelor's Degree in Agriculture in 1996 and continued on with a postgraduate diploma in secondary education. In 1997 I received my licence as a secondary teacher in the State of New South Wales.

My final job in Australia was as a computer teacher at Wagga Wagga Technology High School. I was in charge of the Macintosh lab and taught 7-12 computer studies for a couple of months. Our daughter Rose was born in Wagga Wagga, NSW, Australia inMay of 1996.

Immigration to the United States

The decision to move back to the US was a joint one, after a lot of prayer and discussion we agreed that it would be easier for me to find work here in the US as a teacher than it would be for Rebecca to find one in Australia as a therapist. It also was difficult for her to be away from her family. Little things like driving on the other side of the road made life difficult for her as well.

After applying and being granted resident alien status we immigrated to the USA in March 1997. We left behind many friends and many fond memories. On arrival we stayed with Rebecca's parents for a couple of months while we searched for somewhere to live. Fortunately we were able to find somewhere close by and eventually bought the property, where we are still living today.

We call the farm Daintree Farm after the Daintree Forest which is a world heritage rainforest and wilderness area in Northern Queensland. The property was owned by Charles Ball (Chuck) who had lived here on and off for a couple of years. The home was in bad repair and we had to do a lot of renovations to make it livable again. We were incredibly blessed to find this house, considering its location (half a mile from Bec's parents) and the fact that houses just do not come available for sale in the countryside that often.

Educational Technology

My big opportunity came in January 1999, I heard about a job opening with the local agency that handles the internet and computer services for schools in NW Ohio. The organization is called the North West Ohio Computer Assocation (NWOCA) I joined NWOCA as an Educational Technologist, they were opening a new office in Toledo. I traveled each day some 120 miles to work in our Perrysburg Office, commuting up and down one of the most dangerous stretches of US Highway 24, which follows the Maumee river up from Defiance to Toledo.

The new office was set up to service the Schools in the Toledo area.We started with 6 staff in the main office on the second floor of thePenta Skill center and 2 hardware staff in the cave, located down by the library. This office has since grown to have more than 20 staff.

I was required to get an Ohio teaching licence. To do so, involved taking an extra class at the University of Toledo, which I completed in 2000. I now hold an Ohio Teachers 5 Year License and have endorsements to teach General Science (7-12).

In 2001 a position became available  and I  transferred to the West Office  which is located inside the Four County Career center,  about 6 miles south of Archbold, OH.

I work with the schools in Defiance, Williams, Henry and Fulton counties. I still work with some schools in the Toledo area, with ongoing projects involving FileMaker Pro databases and content management systems.

In 2004 I celebrated 5 years at NWOCA. Each day brings something new.We offer training sessions in our 2 locations as well as custom training sessions held by appointment out in the districts. I also spend quite a lot of time working on FileMaker Pro databases for NWOCA and for our member districts. We are moving from FileMaker over to an Oracle Database using their APEX development tool. I have also beenexperimenting with PHP and MySQL databases and have become much more familiar with the UNIX Command Line Interface.

Family Life on the Farm.

Our family is now 4 children, Rose (1996), Josh (1998), Dominic (2001) and Michael (2004)
We recently (2003) made major renovations to our 100 year old farmhouse, including a new basement and remodelled the rest of the house with a new Kitchen and dining area.

The farm has an old (1900) gambrel roof barn that house our various animals including our laying hens, outdoor cat (Satu) and now 2 Miniture horses (Taz and Dilly). Currently we also have an arabian mare (Agape) visiting us. She is a ridable horse and Rose has been madly working with the horses which she really loves. She has been training Taz to pull a cart and often can be seen on the road with Taz going up and down, enjoying the warm summer days.

Contact Me.

Well, I hope you have enjoyed my biography. Many old friends have found me by searching the web and ending up at this bio page. Please drop me a line via email and let me know what you are up to. My work email address can be found on the contact info page.

You can also drop me a line via my home email address.

theohiobloke_at_gmail_dot_com

US Citizenship

On September 21st , 2007 I became a US Citizen. In a ceremony at Notre Dame Academy in Toledo, OH. My naturalization was attended by family and friends. 86 others also became citizens that day. It is a proud thing to be able to finally say "I am an American".

My NING Memberships