Gordon Smith

author Gordon smith picture

Bio

Gordon has led an interesting life leading up to his retirement in 2013.

Raised in Melbourne, he was educated at the prestigious Balwyn High and as a teenager was a member of the RAAF’s Air Training Corps. When conscription was introduced, instead of waiting for his name to come out of the ballot, he volunteered for 2 years National Service. , During his tour of duty, he drove amphibious vehicles and for a while was attached to the Royal Australian Navy, This would mean that by the age of 22, Gordon had served in all three of Australia’s armed services.

After his time in the army worked in sales, married, had 3 children and divorced.For a time he worked as a taxi driver, and after becoming the runner-up in the Taxi Driver of the year award, he became the first Multi- Purpose taxi driver in Melbourne. This was a specialist taxi that transported both disabled as well as able-bodied passengers.

In mid-1985, after his favourite football team was being defeated in a miserable Melbourne day, he decided to leave Melbourne and move to Brisbane,

In Brisbane, he started driving Tourist Coaches and travelled Australia extensively as a coach captain/tour guide. For a short time, he ran his own tour business.

After meeting and marrying Kay, he started working for a traffic control company, and this led to his introduction to the civil construction industry.

He was offered a position planning, traffic movements around road closures during the construction of the iconic Southern Regional Water Pipeline.In a matter of weeks, he became the Traffic Project Manager for the whole 3ookm pipeline that passed through major residential areas.

On completion of the project, he was asked to look after the traffic management on a project building an elevated busway between a major road and Brisbane’s largest hospital. From there, his role was expanded to manage the overall traffic management on Major road and mining projects throughout Queensland.

Gordon was then sought out to Project Manage traffic on the construction of the Gold Coast Light Rail. This involved managing traffic through the busy tourist areas of the Gold Coast and also involved consultation with State and local governments as well as police and other emergency services.

In 2013 He decided to retire. He and Kay bought a small cottage on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.

As a hobby, he started to research his family history and discovered that he had a flair for research, but, more importantly, he discovered an interesting history about his family during world war 1.He felt this was an important story to tell as 6 members of his family went to fight and only 3 returned.

His first book “The Family That Went to War’ told their story.

The writing bug had now bitten him, so he decided to research and write about his family from the time the first family member came to Australia, To make the story interesting, he included a parallel history of Australia and the effects on his family. “An Australian Story” has become a best seller in the Australian History genre with Amazon.

His next two books are pure fiction. “The Ministry Communications Unit “ is set romantic story set in wartime Brisbane, While “Lady Ruth Bromfield” is an inspirational story about a Jewish girl who escaped Nazi persecution as a child and then grew to become an inspirational leader.

Gordon’s next book is set during the Vietnam War and is about the lives and loves of a special group of investigators.

Some of his books have been translated(or are currently being translated) into Portuguese, Italian and Chinese.

What has surprised Gordon is that he could have 4 books published while he recently discovered that he is mildly dyslexic.

(Gordon Smith, april 2017)