Alberto Giacometti, Self portrait, 1921

Leo. Wood Snake. 6’1″. Bushwalker. Yogi. Writer. Reader. Ex-amateur footballer. Ex-rock climber.
Born and raised in Melbourne’s semi-rural outer southeast. Spent one year in South America, another in India, four years in Eildon, two in Tennant Creek, and eleven years in Alice Springs. Relocated to Launceston, Tasmania at the beginning of 2018.
I have been a computer operator, computer programmer/analyst, stagehand, outdoor educator, indigenous ranger coordinator, trekking guide, arts administrator, bus driver, supermarket shelf-stacker, uranium explorer, outdoor travel & adventure retail store manager.

In 2008 I hauled a custom-built cart loaded up with food, water and equipment for 24 days across the Simpson Desert. The 450-kilometre trek from Bedourie, Queensland to Old Andado homestead in the Northern Territory was completed alone, without any assistance, and without following vehicle tracks. In pre-colonial times, Indigenous people lived in, and roamed around and across the Simpson Desert. Since their self-exile from the desert in the early 1900s, and prior to my traverse, a completely self-reliant trek on foot across the Simpson Desert from east-to-west had not been attempted. And has been not since.

Despite physical similarities, I am not (as far as my younger brother’s genealogical searches reveal) related to the Swiss sculptor and artist from Borgonovo near Stampa. I am from the Someo village Giacometti’s, a Ticinese, from Felice Giovanni Battista Giacometti (1832-1881), who emigrated from Switzerland to Australia in 1855, and settled in the Daylesford district of Victoria (with many other Italian-speaking Swiss) and whose sons inter-married with the daughters of immigrant Cornish miners.

My first language is English. Non parlo Italiano.

Don’t try to follow me on Facebook or Twitter. I’m not there. #iamnotthere

Writers write Themes 

Writers write stories. But more importantly, writers write themes. And the same themes, their personal themes, resonate throughout all of their writing. Different characters, points of view, eras, even genres can be used. But the themes generally remain the same.

Despite the setting or the people involved in my stories, I feel that most of my stories are ‘Buddhist’ stories; Buddhist in the sense that the main character is either caught in the cycle of suffering, of samsara, or makes some effort to transcend and break free from it. Desire, Fate, Unbreakable Cycles, and Transcendence.

Current projects

Small indie publisher Spineless Wonders published My life & other fictions, my debut collection of short stories with an accompanying exegesis at the end of 2017. My haiku collection, Portraits of country, was also published in 2017. The first print run has sold out, but it is available as an e-book from Amazon; a second print run is being considered.

In 2012 I received an Arts Development grant from ArtsNT to develop and write an outback-gothic novel, my first, This landscape of failure. I am still working on it. I am also preparing The book of orogeny, a fictional non-fiction guide to unclimbed or unclimbable dream-mountains.