Between a Rock and a Bar: an Antipodean Couple Retire to Spain - E-book - ePub

Biographie de Colin Pain

Colin Pain was born in New Zealand and was raised on a sheep farm near Masterton. This explains why he likes mutton. After primary school in a one-teacher school at Ihuraua, taught some of the time by his mum, he was sent to boarding school in Whanganui where he learnt enough to enter the Department of Geography at the University of Auckland in 1963. Graduating in 1968 with an MA in Geography, his first job was at the University of Papua New Guinea.
Between 1969 and 1985 he spent upwards of 10 years in PNG, either living there or on research trips. During that period, he also completed a PhD at the Australian National University and spent two years with the New Zealand Soil Bureau. Subsequently, Colin worked at the University of New South Wales, and at the Bureau of Mineral Resources, now Geoscience Australia, in Canberra. He also worked on consulting jobs in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates.
While in Dubai he learnt to drive on the wrong (right) side of the road, a useful lesson that prepared him for retirement in Spain. He moved back to Australia in 2018 and became marooned in Melbourne because of Covid. In most of these endeavours he was accompanied by his wife Josefina, who sadly passed away in December 2023. He occupies himself with editing and writing, and wonders where he found the time to work when he had a job.