The book is now available on Amazon, hard-cover, soft-cover & Kindle.
We moved to Australia with our one-year old daughter, Angelique, in 1990. It had been my dream to move to this beautiful country after coming here on holiday in 1985. To me it was Rhodesia by the Sea. Having arrived here I found it met my all my expectations and more. I was extremely fortunate as a Captain flying for Qantas that I continually traveled the length and breadth of Australia and was able to experience the many wonderful facets of this diverse country; a lot that remined me of the beauty of Rhodesia. By the mid-nineties, the country that had become Zimbabwe was deteriorating in every aspect, through the mismanagement of the government. It was then I realized that even if I ever took my daughter back to that decrepit country where I was born in, it bore no relationship to the beautiful jewel of Africa that I grew up in. At that stage I decided to record my life prior to coming to Australia so that my daughter (and her younger sister, Amy, born in 2011) could conceive of my early life. My father had lived a remarkably interesting young life being brought up as the son of a colonial dentist living on the islands of Seychelles, St Helena, and Malta. He also fought in WW2, was captured, a prisoner of war, escaped and lived with Italian peasants for 9 months before the allies overcame the Germans in Italy. He talked a bit about that when I was young, but I would really like to have read his stories as an adult. Over the last 25 years I have written 2 box files full of stories of my life.

I am not sure my daughters will ever read them, but I did find that I enjoyed writing them because of the recall it generated, by putting it on paper. My father passed away 30 years ago, and recently, on his birthday, I posted a shortened version of a story I wrote about him on Facebook; Hawker Hunter, my Dad and the Cattle. It produced a flood of positive comments and I was encouraged to continue. Each one of them was received very well, particularly by the South African Air Force Facebook page and soon they were requesting a book. As these stories are written from memory and I mention people, some of whom might remember the incidents, I have tried to keep the stories true and I apologise for any inconsistencies. They were not my intention and certainly not to embellish the stories. During my stories I often talk about the joys of jet fighter flying and feeling totally connected to fighter I was strapped to.

To me it was a bond of man and machinery unlike any other. People have the same affinity and love of Train engines and Ships etc., but they are earthbound. These jet fighters are sleek, powerful, noisy, awesome, and heavy beasts that have actually carried us from the earth and performed much like predatory eagles, with almost the same full range of manoeuvres, but they can also fly to twice the speed of sound and beyond. In modern times they are front line weapons of war that ensure the safety of countries with their quick reaction, high speed, powerful radars, and the awesome weapons they carry. However, when they are retired, they are often neglected and it really saddens me, because to me they were living entities. I have preserved a Hawker Hunter that was due to be scrapped (www.huntythejetfighter.com) and will be on display in the Perth Aviation Museum, Bull Creek, Western Australia. Any profit from the sale of this book I will donate to the preservation of the surviving Mirage 3B/CZs that I flew in the SAAF, whose long-term future, I believe, is cause for concern.

I would like to thank many people especially my wife Cindy, and my daughter Amy for bearing with me over the last couple of months while I have been writing the shortened form of my stories for Facebook, and especially Cindy for her initial editing of the book and type composition. Also, Kobus De Villiers who encouraged me and introduced me to his publishers (Mike Grobler of Malherbe Publishers has been incredibly good to work with, and the speed in which he had the book ready for publishing has been amazing), and Murray Korff who I asked to write a 'Foreword' as he seemed to 'see' through me and what made me 'tick', and much like many others did. Then, I would like to thank all the positive reactions and comments to my stories in Facebook, especially the volume of them in the SAAF Facebook page, of which there was not one criticism that one hears so much about in social media.