About the author...

Rob Holmes was born by happenstance, in a small town on the north west coast of Ireland, sometime in the wrong half of the last century – his Mum being caught out between India and South Africa.  After World War II his family initially settled in Johannesburg then moved to Port Elizabeth and later on to Cape Town where he attended high school and then Cape Town University – later finishing a BSc (Hons) and PhD at the University of WA – the Tiliqua logo being the thesis front cover.

Rob is a keen aficionado of sports that can be done sitting down – apart from paragliding over the last eight years, his previous passion was competitive sailing – hence the articles published in the popular press on both sailing and paragliding downloadable from this site. Rob also has a hang gliding licence but found it difficult to develop this aspect of gliding given that flying weather does not always happen every weekend in Perth.

Rob started his environmental consultancy, Holmes Environmental Pty Ltd in early 2010 that has turned out to be the best job ever.  Rob’s background includes twenty years as a biologist in the University system with post-doctoral work at Melbourne and Monash Universities.  Going over to environmental work he has accumulated ten years working as a regulator and ten in consultancy.  Self employment has the benefit of being able to sneak out and do some flying while others are doing the wage slave bit and to do some writing when there is a lull.