Not a gallery. Not travel. Evidence of where my judgement was valued — and what it taught me.
For more than twenty years I have repeatedly put myself in places where difficult decisions were being made — early drone technology, a growing mining company, manufacturing in Indonesia, building businesses in Papua New Guinea. The industries changed. The pattern did not.
Every image answers one question: did something important happen here? Scale, difficulty, trust, innovation, relationships, leadership, or execution.
Scale
Standing beside a haul truck on a coal mine taught me that businesses look completely different when you are on site instead of in a boardroom.
I worked on the Aston Resources journey — from Maules Creek and a A$400 million IPO in August 2010, through ITOCHU and debt financing, to a merger with Whitehaven Coal announced in December 2011.
Reuters reported the deal at approximately US$3 billion — creating what was then Australia's largest independent coal miner. Aston ranked third among the top 25 ASX companies for total shareholder return in the year to October 2011.
These photographs and documents are about size — capital, equipment, and consequences measured in billions, not slides.
Scale
On site at a Queensland coal operation — where operational reality matters more than the deck.
Building a tourism platform in Papua New Guinea taught me that relationships travel further than technology.
Laikim PNG — tourism and commercial access in one of the hardest operating environments I have worked in. I created the strategy and raised capital with Erue Taunao and her PNG expertise.
Logistics, culture, government, security. No template. The work was earning the right to operate before anything scaled.
Difficulty
Enga Province — planning Laikim where there was no manual for any of it.
Execution
On the ground in Enga — the work that does not appear in a strategy document.
Relationships
Port Moresby — commercial relationships that had to exist before the platform did.
Relationships
Ongoing relationship work — trust maintained over years, not one trip.
Trust
Trusted in diplomatic settings while building Laikim — access earned, not assumed.
Riding twelve hours across Indonesia to meet a foundry reminded me that supply chains begin with trust.
Bronze Betty started from manufacturing relationships in Java — foundries, bronze and brass production, export into Europe, America, and Asia. Five hundred products, not a Shopify store.
You cannot advise on manufacturing from a laptop. You go to the source.
Difficulty
Twelve hours to find foundries — supply chains start with showing up.
Relationships
Supplier meetings — relationships that hold when orders and quality are on the line.
Execution
Advisory and supplier work across Indonesia — commerce built on foundry trust.
Execution
Hardware before commerce — building things that worked or failed in plain sight.
Working on drone autopilots in 2002 taught me to stay with hard problems long before the market agrees they matter.
In 2002 I was working on drone delivery ideas before civilian UAVs existed. Paparazzi flew on thermopiles when ITAR restricted gyros. In 2008 I bought a TWOG autopilot — I still have it.
OpenPilot's CopterControl was among the first consumer autopilots to put an STM32 32-bit processor, gyroscopes, and accelerometers on one board — sensors smartphones had just made available. I tested hardware, wrote documentation, and supported new users on the forum.
The same pattern repeated later: managed IT before the category had a name, real-time ERP before anyone called it that.
Innovation
The argument that led to OpenPilot — pushing access before the market existed.
Innovation
Paparazzi TWOG v1.0 (2008) — the autopilot I still own. Thermopile horizon sensing when MEMS gyros were restricted or unavailable.
Innovation
OpenPilot CopterControl — STM32 32-bit processor with gyroscopes and accelerometers on one board. Among the earliest consumer autopilots built that way.
Execution
Testing FPV hardware in the field — years before civilian drones were mainstream.
Innovation
Web Summit 2015 — pitching a platform with no category name.
Innovation
Forty-eight integrated apps when real-time ERP was not yet a category.
Innovation
Reddog Technology — flat-fee managed IT in 2004, before the industry had language for it.
Execution
Seventy iPhones — when they were still hard to get. Reddog moved early on Apple before most corporates would touch it.
Some of the rooms I am able to get myself into are exceptional — not because they are exclusive, but because trust was given when the stakes were real.
Approximately seventy countries in the past three years. Embassies, investor conferences, trade settings, dinners where the relationship is the work.
The location is not the point. Who trusted you, and why, is.
Trust
Australian Embassy, London — government trade access when client work required it.
Leadership
Australia House — trade and diplomatic settings where introductions carry weight.
Trust
Australian Embassy, Paris — international relationship work at government level.
Relationships
China — dinner where the deal is secondary to whether you will be trusted tomorrow.
Execution
Queensland Exporters — manufacturers and operators building across borders.
Scale
Stavanger — oil and gas meetings where capital, operations, and relationships all move at industry scale.
Scale
London Tech Week — founders and capital at global scale.
Innovation
VivaTech — where new companies meet capital before categories exist.
Innovation
Startup World Cup — early-stage companies before the market has named them.
