How We Arrived Here..
Time to finally have a crack at putting down some thoughts on paper...! âď¸
Three years ago if you had told me that my best mate, Jordan (Geologo Trader himself), would be a substack writer (let alone an options trader) I would have choked on my beer (love ya mate!). But here we are, it has been epic to watch him put down thoughts on paper, successfully takeover twitter and create a really cool, engaging substack, which basically started out as a bit of a piss-take (as they often do).
After many months of GT encouraging me to do so (we have been bloody good mates for over 15 years), I thought I would have a crack at it myself, so here we are. I will document some travel stories from my own journey, attempting to keep to the âtell the quiet parts out loudâ theme of Jordans Substack, and hopefully add some interesting content.
I am not sure where this will go; but the idea is basically to put my own story and thoughts down on paper, deliver some very strong opinions that I tend to keep to myself, share some knowledge with similar-minded people, while imparting some travel advice on any other young blokes out there who are on a similar wavelength as Jordan and myself (black sheep).
I have been slow travelling for about nine months now, with no plans to go back to ârealityâ any time soon (everâŚ). I have zero debt and a networth north of half a mil AUD, with 99% of my networth invested in stocks, which is the âfreestâ way I have found to live my life in the current moment, travel slowly while my investments continue to grow (more on this at the end).
I am not much of a party boy anymore (though I still love a big blow out on occasionđĽ), and tend to keep to myself, but hopefully someone will find some value and or a laugh from some of my travel experiences.
 I âwarmed upâ in Bali in July 2023 (used to live there with Jordan pre-pandemic), then headed to Israel > Georgia > Turkey > Greece > Albania > Italy > Portugal > Morocco and then Madrid briefly before jumping over to Mexico, where I spent nearly four months (I was dating a gorgeous Mexicana who I had met previously in Australia during this period, so definitely had the âauthenticâ Mexican experience), popped down to Guatemala for a few weeks, back to Mexico, and then back down through Central America (Central America is massively overrated for a 30+ lad IMO.. Will write about why at some point).
I am now in Lima, Peru, fully parked up and doing not much (Lima in the summer is epic and has massively exceeded my expectations, will get around to writing something on it at some point).
This is a bit of a self-centered intro piece about my life in Australia up until I quit my well-paid gig as a Mine Geologist in 2023. For those who donât know much about the FIFO life in Australia (Fly In Fly Out), you may find it somewhat interesting.
Who the fk am I?
Just some bloke from Tasmania really (yes, it is a part of Australia). Similar to Jordan, I am (was) a geologist in Western Australia for over 8 years, having recently thrown in the towel of a high-paying Senior Mine Geologist position, after strong feelings of disillusionment with my own country through the scam-demic years, and a feeling of âis this it?â while continuing to climb the job ladder in my early 30s.
Without waffling on too much (as I have a tendency to do) my 20s was basically as follows;
Grew up in Northern Tasmania
I grew up in a small, regional city in Northern Tasmania, Launceston, which is essentially the turd in the âcrownâ that is Tasmania đŠ. Tasmania is a beautiful place, Gods Country to some, but Launceston is an absolute shithole of a place to be a young man who wants to see the world, have experiences and make memories, in my very opinionated opinion (to be fair 0.00001% of Tasmanians have such ambitions, which is fine). I say most of the above in jest, but essentially, growing up there was not very fun..
It is cold (by Australian standards), close-minded, 1 hour away from the nearest beach (2 hours from the closest nice beach) and there really is very little to do here besides settle down, buy property (much more on this in the future) and have a family; NOT conducive to the black-sheep 20-something male wanting to make money, meet women and travel.
I am saying this as a place to LIVE, not visit. If youâre in Tassie as a tourist travelling around, then the âTamarâ region is actually a nice place to spend a few days, lots of mountains, pristine bushland and vineyards etc.
Again, I say most of the above for dramatic effect, and must acknowledge that I am incredibly lucky to have won the âbirth lotteryâ and grow up in a place like this.
Quick tangent - One thing I notice a LOT that the âTwitter LatAm Brosâ talk about is how bad the food is in Canada and the USA, relative to Latin America. I must say that as an Australian (Specifically a Tasmanian), I can not relate to this at all. Cusine in Mexico and Peru is epic (and cheap), but growing up in Tassie I had pretty much the freshest food and produce on the planet (which I didnât appreciate at the time), epic meat (happiest cows on the planet đŽ), seafood, milk and fresh fruit (Tasmaniaâs nickname is the âApple Isleâ.
I digressâŚ
Anyway, although Launceston sucked as a place to grow up, my parents house actually backs onto bushland and an enormous gorge, which is the main tourist attraction for the city, pretty incredible. Their house is peaceful, beautiful and would be the dream home of many millions of not-so-fortunate people in the world (ok, redeemed myself).
University YearsÂ
I got myself a Science-Business degree in Hobart after 4.5 years of study (more on why I would absolutely NOT go to university again if I had to start again now in another piece). Hobart is the capital of Tasmania and about 100x nicer than Launceston, I 100% visiting this city in the summertime if you are ever travelling in Australia (it is beautiful and there is a lot to do and see in the area).
This is where I originally met Jordan, we were both studying geology.
Our time at university coincided with what was known creatively as the Australian Mining Boom. Essentially this was Chinaâs massive growth ramp-up during the GFC, which saved Australia from going into a technical recession (the federal left-leaning government of the day claimed it was because of their economic management, which is nonsense - Australiaâs economic prosperity is strongly correlated with global prices of mostly coal and iron ore, which saved us from recession during the GFC, though it is almost never acknowledged by politicians).
Anyway, our time at university coincided with ass-end of the Mining Boom, where at the time (cerca 2009) it was completely normal to land a gig as a graduate geologist straight out of uni, no Honours year, starting on AUD $110k (Mining engineers would start on $120k+ at this time), keeping in mind that at the time the AUD was about parity with the USD (hard to believe now!).
As luck would have it, about one year before we graduated, basically all commodity prices cratered, and the insanity of the mining boom years completely crashed in less than two years â and yes, not more 100k graduate jobs đťđťđť.
In fact, no jobs in mining at all! Impeccable timing for us.Â
Post Uni - 2013
Graduating from university after over four years of study was the MOST anti-climactic day of my life (now what? What was the point of that? Why is everybody crying and throwing stupid hats in the air??).
Sounds strange, but I could not have cared less about having a degree (technically I had 2 of the things), I just wanted a bloody job!
I worked as a chippys labourer (Chippy = Carpenter in Australian vernacular) for a mate in Hobart for about 10 months, saved up 20 grand ish and then spent the next year backpacking through S.E Asia and mostly Europe; meeting up with Jordo who was already in Europe after I had been solo for a few months in Cambodia and Thailand. Could write a book on some of the stupid stuff we got upto during this time, but it was over ten years ago now, feels like a different life!
Late Start to the Career â 2014
I came back to Australia as a somewhat washed-up 24-year-old with zero money (actually owed my parents a few grand), while Jordo decided to stay in Europe, snagging a gig working at a hostel in Amsterdam (he has some great stories from these timesâŚđ ). Â
Although the Australian Mining industry was still in the doldrums (no jobs anywhere), I managed to snag a gig as a âshit-kickerâ (technical term) on a mine site thanks to a referral from another good mate of ours, which eventually turned into a gig as a Graduate Mine Geologist in an open pit gold mine in Western Australia (the Rosemont Gold Mine for any WA FIFO reading..).
This was honestly an absolutely terrible work environment at the time, with tyrannical bosses (a pattern here of always late 30s female & usually divorced đ¤ˇââď¸) scared of teaching us graduates ANYTHING (we werenât even allowed on the computer for months) for fear of their own jobs becoming obsolete.
But, I was still so incredibly grateful for finally having a job in the field that I had studied for.
It was also very strange to be working with other graduates, much younger than myself (21 & 22 year olds) some of whom were my âsuperiorsâ; straight out of university, many had never left Australia (some never left Western Australia!), who still lived at home with their parents in the trendy suburbs of Perth (more on Perth in later pieces..).
I would tell them travel stories of double dinking bikes with homeless people in Amsterdam at 4am while high on mushrooms, changing my plans last minute to fly to Cyprus just to see a girl I met once in a bar in Budapest (she was super hot), and getting a stupid tattoo in Split, Croatia from a German techno DJ who was as high as a kite (it turned out alright); and they would just look at me with blank stares, and then go back to talking about their plans of taking out a loan to buy a house in Cottesloe (expensive beach suburb in Perth).
I was well out of place, but I had a job, started saving money, and I was grateful (especially for the free buffet style minesite food, after living off spaghetti and olives as a broke backpacker for 12+ months)!
Finally Landing a âGoodâ Job!
I spent about the next three-ish years bouncing between three different mining companies in Western Australia (all of them terrible places to work with horrible superiors, which is why I kept moving) before landing at a small underground nickel mine in far northern remote Western Australia, in an absolutely stunning part of the world known as The Kimberley. I worked here for the next five years (including all of COVID) and eventually ended up as the Senior Mine Geologist.Â
This job turned out to be awesome; I finally had a great boss who wanted to impart knowledge upon me, the mine was small so I actually had a lot of input with the day-to-day operations, the team was small enough that it wasnât uncommon for me to receive a phone call from the CEO in Perth in the morning, asking me a question about the grade of nickel we expected from underground over the next 48 hours, plus we also got to do surface geological exploration in The Kimberley.
I could talk about the specifics of this job at length, which would probably bore 80% of people, so instead here are a bunch of photos from those years working as a geologist in The Kimberley, exemplifying how beautiful the area is, and how cool the job was (I loved working underground).
Summary/Wrap-up
So, five and a half years working as a Mine Geologist in the above environment brings me up to Q2 2023.
The epic thing about my time at my last job was the roster, it was 2 weeks on, 2 weeks off. This roster is VERY uncommon in the Western Australian Mining industry among the âwhite collarâ workers (engineers, geologists and surveyors), with 8 days on 6 days off the most common.
So, the â2&2â gig allowed me, for nearly 3 years (up until the scam-demic lockdowns) to travel once per month to South East Asia (For non-Aussies, Perth to Bali is 3hrs 15m flight, over an hour closer than it is to fly from Perth to Melbourne..).
The setup was pretty awesome. At the time I was 27 â 29 years old, earning > 120k AUD (a lot more when I finally became the senior), had no rent, no car, no debt and had just hit 100k in my stockmarket portfolio, which is not bad considering I didnât start saving ANY money until I was 25.
Jordan was living in Bali at the time, and about every three months I would do a break in Bali with him and another good FIFO mate of ours (shoutout to Pug Cass), otherwise I would be in Sri Lanka, The Philippines, Thailand etc etc.
In mid 2019 I moved into the same Bali villa with Jordan permanently. Life was fking amazing, and I looked forward to the next five + years.
As we discussed on our first podcast chat, our lives were turned upside down when Covid hit, I was still in Bali in March 2020, just before the border closed.
Anyway thatâs me up until very recently â An ex-geo who threw away the Australian dream to.. Well I am still figuring that out!
Basically an opinionated 34yr old Tasmanian bloke with a contrarian streak that I am finally itching.
Finances & Investing
I should also mention that my investment portfolio has since ballooned out to north of half a million AUD (with a long way to go in the uranium, oil and coal bull markets), which is part of the reason I am able to travel slowly while planning the next stage of my life (big shoutout to TraderFerg and more on investing another time). Will write about this in future posts.
The decision to not follow the sheeple in Australia and go into massive debt to buy property just because I had a decent salary in my 20s; and instead investing into cyclical sectors and patiently waiting, allows me a much more flexible and free life, which is perfectly suited my personality and more contrarian way of thinking.
I still do however consider myself âpoorâ as I haven't yet figured out a concrete cashflow strategy (cashflow is đ), but I have plans for that over the next few years. I also am of the opinion that every man should aspire to get to a networth (excluding debt obv) greater than USD $1million before they turn 40. I have a long way to go, but am well on the way..
It is soon time to have a crack at âentrepreneurshipâ, something I never thought I would say.
Appreciate anyone who actually read this far!
Next time Iâll pen my thoughts on Bali, from when I returned in 2023 after the lockdowns â spoiler alert, it was not the Bali we left in 2020 âšand it seemed that the Russians actually outnumbered Australians.
Cheers for now, from Lima, Peru!
Tom â Van Diemen.
Looking forward to the next one, very nice article.
As a German geo that landed in Perth very recently, I start to see what you and Jordan are talking about. Will figure out the details myself - and take the money.
Cheers!
Great post mate.
Keep writing.