Bob and Judy were born during the Second World War in Melbourne. Judy spent her first 20 years in Melbourne's outer semi-rural suburbs, while Bob grew up on three successive Victorian soft fruit, dairy and poultry farms.

Following his father's distinguished wartime service as an RAAF Beaufighter and weapons test pilot in Europe, Bob joined the RAAF in 1961 and qualified as a fighter pilot in 1963, marrying Judy and taking her to start a family in Malaysia in that year. Their subsequent 40-year family life to date has been quite adventurous, living in England twice and in every Australian mainland State and raising two wonderful children who quickly became adept at making new friends!

Bob and Judy with alpaca herd sire Clancy

Bob spent many years as an experimental test pilot specialising in fast-jet aircraft and was actively involved in the operational development of the RAAF's Mirages, F/A-18 Hornets and F111Cs, flying 5500 hours in over 40 types from sailplanes to the F-16. In his later career he specialised in strategic Defence planning and in RAAF personnel management, finally spending several years as an air vice-marshal looking after RAAF personnel and resources management and later Deputy Chief of Air Force. After part-time Reserve duty conducting a major review of the Defence Cadets organisation recently Bob will completely retire from the RAAF in 2003.

Several of our 26 homes over 40 years have been in the country, and during the 1990s we part-owned a 2300 acre beef, wool and cropping property at Canowindra NSW. Here we first bought two alpacas in late 1993, and later decided to move to a smaller property to concentrate on alpacas as a 'lifestyle and semi-retirement enterprise'.

We've always supported the need for both a regional and a national focus on the development of the alpaca's outstanding potential as a valuable fleece animal. We firmly believe the alpaca is even more suited to the commercial production of high quality natural fibre for the top-end apparel market than is the world famous Australian merino - the most important provider of natural animal fibre in the world. So while remaining active on the AAA Southern NSW Region Committee, Bob was elected to the Alpaca Association National Committee in 1998, concentrating on improvement to governance, financial planning and administration and member communications. He was re-elected in 2000, elected as Vice-President in 2001 and again in 2003. He and Judy also continue to actively support the Committee of the Southern NSW Region, Judy becoming Assistant Secretary in 2003.