These images are all of the early days of Global Ballooning which was -at the time – called Balloon North West. I had purchased Balloon North West from three Tasmanians from Davenport in 1991 along with VH-JSD a Kavanagh 105. This became my first passenger balloon which I began flying in Mansfield and then in the Yarra Valley.

The Witches Brew in Mansfield became our first breakfast venue –Mansfield attracted me as a business location due to it being a natural basin of spectacular beauty with lots of tourist passing through. These where very lean years – life was simple and my motivation ran high to get the business ‘off the ground’.

Andrew Crawford who owned the Witches Brew also sold me my first computer after Katie Clegg my first unofficial and then official employee insisted that computers were the way forward.  I looked at it for nearly 3 months before I had the courage to begin using it and then I still had to be shown how to switch it on. I spent many hours with Katie trying to set the Solitaire record.

Katie, my sister Brook, Zephyr and I lived in Maindample in Roy Friday’s old ramshackle farm house with squeaky floorboards and a bit of a lean. It was a time filled with much and laughter with mad friends and lots of shenanigans as we began to find our feet in life.