Steve has lived in ten countries on four continents, but now Melbourne, Australia is home. There Steve’s a volunteer fire-fighter and recipient of Australia’s National Emergency Medal. He’s had more jobs than he can remember, in places like mines, nuclear power stations, banks, the military, newspapers and magazines, on radio and TV, where he was only allowed to appear as a voice. A multi award-winning journalist, he holds an MBA degree from the prestigious Exeter University Business School in the UK, though not all the time.

Steve has competed in about 20 types of motorsport on two and four wheels and has had one international race win, many crashes and three broken necks; in the absence of any obvious talent, he has retired from racing, at least for now. For years his competition licence featured a picture of Desmo the family dog and annoyingly, no-one noticed, perhaps proving that pets do look like their humans after all. Besides his CFA commitment, he volunteers as an L2P driving instructor to help Learners build up hours behind the wheel before sitting their tests; if nothing else, his students know understeer from oversteer and can heel-and-toe.

And he rides motorcycles. A lot. Since he lived in Aden when he was nine years old. In 2017, he and life-partner Liz rode their Adventure bikes 40,000km - the distance around the world - through 16 countries, on four continents. He did the second half with a broken ankle after being hit by a taxi near Machu Picchu.

Defying Apartheid laws and death threats, he and Liz started the world’s largest motorcycle charity event, The Toy Run. By its 35th anniversary, over three million people had benefited, but like Spike Milligan, he expects a knighthood is unlikely. He scuba-dives when it’s warm, skis when it’s not and in between, flies an aircraft about the size of a shopping trolley.

Despite being a daily-published journalist for years, this collection of short stories (‘Such is Life’) is his first book, but there are several more fermenting away. Keep an eye (or ear) out for the audio-book of ‘Such is Life’ narrated by the author and the pictorial and text versions of  One Dream, Two Ride, the story of their epic motorbike ride, due out later in 2018.