A new year and many new challenges ahead

2012 was a year of working on the book and documentary of Breaking the Cycle. The projects have taken longer than I had hoped

A boat trip to Lambay Island, just north of Dublin

as I had to juggle work at the Royal Melbourne Tennis Club (to pay the rent) with everything else. The good news is that the end is in sight and I have another exciting expedition in the development stage.

Putting everything into a demi-pique serve, Australian Open Doubles final 2012

Breaking the Cycle in Africa is being made in to a feature-length documentary. I am working with an independent Irish production company, Lateral Vision, based in Dublin. With 160 hours of footage and a multi-faceted story, the film has been complex to make. But the good news is they are nearly there. Martin and Peter will be visiting me in February to do the voice-overs. By then the composer will be working away on an original score and the colourist will be grading the images. We aim to have it completed by April in readiness for the film festival circuit.

With the book I am up to the second last chapter and hope to have the first draft completed in a month to six weeks. From there I have everything in place to publish Breaking the Cycle in Africa worldwide as a hard copy and as an e-book. I plan for the book to be published in July/August this year. In the mean time, my first book, Out There and Back will be published as an e-book.

I haven’t been focusing on giving presentations and therefore have only done a few. The next will be at the Australian Adventure Travel Film Festival in Bright, Victoria from February 15-17.

It’s a little early to announce the next expedition, but the purpose will be to raise funds to support some of the causes I learned about in Africa. A small clue though – I am going to Svalbard to do a training run in March.