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Being born in South Africa and not knowing anybody to have traveled before, I didn’t envision a future where travel would be a part of my life.
After moving to Australia after high school, I completed a diploma of Engineering at Curtin, and then discovered a new found freedom of being able to earn enough money to be able to buy an airplane ticket to another country.
For the next 4 years, I worked a whole bunch of casual jobs to fund my travels and adventures - which include hitchhiking from Perth to Broome, cycling from Gold Coast to Cairns and spending a year in NZ - 6 months working the rest of the time living in my van and then concluding the adventure by cycling 3,000 km from the top of the North island to the bottom of the South island.
Since getting back from New Zealand in 2019, I have competed in multiple ultra-endurance cycling events, clocking 10’s of thousands of kilometers in races and training.
Travelling is still a fundamental element of my adult life. After meeting the love of my life, we embarked on a 7-month road trip around Australia, and got married when we got back to Perth. If we could spend 7 months living in a van together, I had no doubts we could weather any storm that came our way!
Traveling and adventuring has fundamentally shaped my worldview, and I wouldn’t be the person I am today without those experiences - I wouldn’t have the tenacity, mental toughness or determination if I didn’t experience those oftentimes difficult and challenging situations and get through it all.
My work life
After working so many casual jobs, I knew I had more to offer than just being a pair of hands to get work done. I wanted to contribute meaningfully and make an impact with the work I was doing.
I’ve been drawn to reducing bottlenecks in processes and increasing the efficiency of process flows. Which is what I found myself doing when I was promoted to warehouse manager of a company I was working for in Perth. I proved that I could do more than just be a pair of hands and drive a forklift - I updated the processes to ensure that we didn’t miss or forget any orders (which was a massive issue), created a dynamic run sheet for deliveries which reduced the amount of time our delivery driver spent out on the road, and implemented stock control procedures.
The company had a workshop section too, and after proving myself with the warehouse, I was put in charge of stock control procedures for the workshop section as well.
After the natural conclusion of that part of my life, I found myself working at a security company, in their Cash-In-Transit department where I was in charge of managing their cash room - that is, packing money orders and ensuring all figures were always balanced. Pretty soon I found myself updating all their manual operations (pen and paper) to much more transparent and easy to work with solutions - spreadsheets. The amount of data points I was able to gain from those spreadsheets was quite extensive, but it soon became too complicated and messy since there were multiple people trying to use the spreadsheets and some of the formulas and values started going ‘missing’. I knew there had to be a simple and elegant solution.
This is when I started learning web development as a tool to build an elegant and all-encompassing solution to the problems we were facing. Since getting started in web development, I’ve been a part of a few projects, most notably a directory for local food and drink vendors, which has been very rewarding to help bring to life.
As a result of working so many casual jobs (at least 17 different roles), I’ve gained a broad range of skills and knowledge pertaining to those roles. It has also given me valuable insight into how a variety of businesses operate and the similarities and differences between them.
I consider myself a generalist, and am always keen to try new things and tackle new challenges.
