The son of a mining family, Bob trained as a mechanic and at 21 years old he was working in Nyasaland (now Malawi). He met his English wife, a nurse and midwife, in Salisbury, Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe), and together they spent the next forty years working and travelling around Africa and the Middle East. They spent six years working in gold mines in Tanzania and Kenya. Then, in, Uganda Bob met Idi Amin, who gave him a very expensive pair of Zeiss binoculas for recovering his amphibious vehicle He was also involved in moving the 'African Queen' of movie fame through Kampala to raise money for Cancer Research. He was in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's regime and, together with a colleague, had a very lucky escape just as the 1980 war with Iran started. While working in Nigeria, together with some American friends, they built a 44 foot ketch and later in South Africa they crossed the Kalahari, Namib and Karoo deserts and visited the Skeleton Coast and the Wild Coast, among other places; all this aside from all manner of pursuits from scuba diving to paragiding. They also spent five years in West Cork, Ireland, where they rebuilt a farm house, lived off the land and had a commercial fishing business.