9ASM 2018 Steve is a Chartered Fellow of Engineers Australia. He has been a member for over forty years and still retains his passion for engineering. Since graduating, most of his work has been in the water industry where he has practiced in Civil, Mechanical and Environmental Engineering fields. He is a businessman who has retired a few times, only to be drawn back for a special cause. He has recently been working on extraction of PFAS from groundwater because a friend got him excited. After finding the necessary design criteria he is back to his personal writing and editing, hoping to publish his next book before Christmas.
Since 2004 he has been active in promoting action on climate change and in 2007 he paddled and dragged his wheeled kayak on a journey from Brisbane to Adelaide down the Darling and Murray river system. That journey is detailed in his book, Cry Me a River. Since then he has made many long distance paddles that involve dragging the kayak when there is no water. All of these journeys involved observations that led him to question his engineering knowledge, some of which you will hear about this evening.
In 2017 he dragged his kayak back to Engineering House in Canberra two years after he had left. In the meantime he paddled into the Eiffel Tower and became the only person to have paddled up the Mississippi in a flood.