How We Arrived Here..
Time to finally have a crack at putting down some thoughts on paper...! ✍️
Give this a like if you had a read!💘
Three years ago if you had told me that my best mate,
, would be a substack writer (let alone an options trader) I would have choked on my beer! After many months of him encouraging me to do so, I thought I would have a crack at it myself, so here we are.I am not sure where this will go, but the idea is to;
Put my own story and thoughts down on paper.
Document the (hopeful) growth of my networth while living and travelling overseas.
Deliver some strong opinions that I tend to keep to myself (if you are offended, please simply close the tab, tall-poppy syndrome is rampant in Australian culture, & we already have enough keyboard warriors 😀).
Have a bit of a laugh in the process.
I’ve been slow travelling for about nine months as of March 2024, with no plans to go back to ‘reality’ any time soon (ever…). I have zero debt and a networth north of half a mil AUD, with 99% of my networth invested in stocks, which is the ‘freest’ 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 ‘warmed up’ in Bali in July 2023 (used to live there 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, 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).
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 don’t know much about the FIFO life in Australia (Fly In Fly Out), you may find it somewhat interesting.
Who the hell am I?
Just some bloke from Tasmania really. 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 ‘is this it..?’ while continuing to climb the job ladder in my early 30s.
Finances & Investing
Briefly - my investment portfolio has ballooned out to north of half a million AUD since I left Australia in mid-2023 (with a long way to go in the uranium, oil and coal bull markets). This is part of the reason I am able to travel slowly while planning the next stage of my life (big shoutout to
and more on investing in future posts).Plan to use Substack as a blog to track my networth growth over my 30’s. Plans for the future include;
Setting up some sort of a base in Latin America (probably CDMX, and potentially eventually Baja California Sur).
Pivoting gains from uranium stocks in 2025/26 into my own location independent, cashflow focused online business.
Planning to get Paraguayan & Mexican residencies to start diversifying away from Australia, potentially more in the future.
Hopefully eventually breaking tax ties with Australia (It is a lot more difficult than you would think, in my specific financial position).
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 (future post ranting on Australian property); 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 ‘poor’ as I haven't yet figured out a concrete cashflow strategy (cashflow is 👑), but I have plans for that over the next few years. I also am of the opinion that every man (women too but more important for a bloke IMO) 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 ‘entrepreneurship’, something I never thought I would say.
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). Tasmania is a beautiful place, Gods Country to some, but in my very opinionated opinion, Launceston is a bit of a shitehole of a place to be a young man who wants to see the world, have experiences & make money & memories (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 in ‘Launnie’ 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; again absolutely nothing wrong with this, but certainly not conducive to a black-sheep early 20’s male wanting to travel, meet like-minded people and of course (as a young man) meet women.
I say this as a place to LIVE (as a teenager), not to visit. If you’re in Tassie as a tourist travelling around, then the ‘Tamar’ region is actually a nice place to spend a few days, lots of mountains, pristine bushland and vineyards etc 🍇.
I should acknowledge that any Australian is incredibly lucky to have won the ‘birth lottery’, especially growing up in a place like Tasmania.
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 Years
Got myself a Science-Business degree in Hobart after 4.5 years of study.
I would absolutely NOT go to university again if I had to start now or go back in time (may discuss in another piece).
Hobart is the capital of Tasmania and about 100x nicer than Launceston. I 100% would recommend 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
, we were both studying geology.Our time at university coincided with what was known creatively as the Australian Mining Boom. Essentially this was China’s 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 - Australia’s 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 (4th year of degree in Australian undergrad), starting on AUD $110k (Mining engineers would start on $120k+ at this time). Keep 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 – and yes, not more 100k graduate jobs 🎻🎻🎻.
In fact, no jobs in mining at all! Impeccable timing for us 🥲
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?? Funny to me now how much people tie up their identity to their job (as I did for 8 years).
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. Feels like a lifetime ago now.
Late Start to the Career – 2014
Came back to Australia as a somewhat washed-up 24-year-old with zero money (actually owed my parents a few grand). Although the Australian Mining industry was still in the doldrums (no jobs anywhere), I managed to snag a gig as a ‘shit-kicker’ (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 🤷♂️) scared of teaching us graduates ANYTHING (we weren’t 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, even if I was starting somewhat late compared to most.
It was also very strange to be working with other graduates, much younger than myself (21 & 22 year olds) some of whom were my ‘superiors’; 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.
I was well out of place, but I had a job, started saving money, and 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 ‘Good’ Job!
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.
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 wasn’t uncommon for me to receive a phone call from the CEO in Perth in the morning, asking 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, after working as a Mine-Geo for just over eight years in the above environment brings me up to Q2 2023.
The epic thing about 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 ‘white collar’ workers (engineers, geologists and surveyors), with 8 days on 6 days off the most common.
So, the ‘2&2’ gig allowed me, for nearly 3 years (up until the lockdowns) to travel once per month to South East Asia (For non-Aussies, Perth to Bali is 3hr 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 – 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 didn’t start saving any money until I was about 26.
About every three months I would do a break in Bali with
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 a Bali villa with
& permanently. Life was fking amazing, and I looked forward to the next five + years (then I became imprisoned in Western Australia for over three years thanks to the authoritarian Western Australian Government, a story in and of itself…😞).Anyway that’s me – Basically an opinionated 34yr old Tasmanian bloke with a contrarian streak that I am finally itching.
It is soon time to have a crack at ‘entrepreneurship’, something I never thought I would say.
Appreciate anyone who actually read this far, click the like button por favor 🙏
Cheers for now, from Lima, Peru!
Tom – 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.