Geo Explorer

From a young age, Sally was an explorer, always pulling part mechanical things, puzzling over shells in cliff rocks and seeking new places to buy chocolate. The age of 15 marked a turning point in her life when she learned of the devastating impact on local flora and fauna by replacing old growth forests with pine trees. From this, her interest in the world around us blossomed, and led to a career in geology.

Having a degree meant she was now qualified to spend several years sweeping the desert for microscopic gold with her dustpan and brush in the Australian outback.

With the siren call of overseas adventure constantly haunting her, she headed to polar reaches of northern Quebec to do a masters thesis, falling in love with the adaptations life makes to survive in the extreme conditions. And emerged with the qualification to dip a trowel into flowing streams...

A love of exploring in cold and/or mountainous areas became Sally's passion, and she continued to seek out gold, copper and diamonds in the Rockies, Chile , Russia and Venezuela (an aberration in the quest to work in cold climates!).

Scandals in the financial world saw Sally diversify in the late 90s and become a successful website designer/manager. She discovered that the same ability to see the connections between all natural things could also be applied to see the tangled threads that unite information within organisations. It was just an extension of looking for clues in the rocks or looking in the international press for global financial and political trends...

Over the last several years, Sally has been delivering earth science presentations on polar expedition cruise ships. This has proven to be richly rewarding as it allows Sally to dabble in natural science while opening the eyes of others to this fascianting areas as they journey to a new destination each day.

When not out exploring nature, Sally will roam the urban canyons of cities in search of the perfect hot chocolate drink. To date, the best hot chocolate is in a little home restaurant near the ski resort in Ushuaia, you can't really go wrong anywhere in Austria, Canada has some decent hot chcolate but a distant second (and don't even THINK about going to Starbucks - nothing more than dirty dishwater!), and there used to a cafe in Sydney (Hot Gossip in Paddington) which had a very decent cuppa... (Alas, the last time I went there in 2006, it had closed).