Expertise
David has a broad reach of issues and topics. He is versatile in his approach with clients and sources, giving him the ability to research and write across an extremely wide variety of subjects. In fact David’s primary expertise does not lie in his superior subject knowledge of any issue or topic at all but, rather, his ability to converse with people, listen to their answers and incorporate these views into articles in magazines, newspapers and websites. David uses the skills of listening and writing to develop documents, books (including ghost writtten books), coffee table books, promotional material, biographies and histories.
Topics and issues
Some of the diverse range of topics and issues on which David has been published include:-
Environmental and farming
Rural and farming issues – a wide range of topics covered,
Water movement patterns in the Australian landscape,
Carbon sequestration in soils,
Soil carbon,
Cattle and the carbon cycle,
Pasture cropping - a method of building soil fertility,
Breakdown of methane belched by cattle,
How methane gas (CH4) is a part of the carbon cycle,
Organic food production,
Permaculture, biodynamic farming methods and hydroponics,
Aquaculture,
Bio char - a new way of producing carbon rich soils,
History of Grain Growers Association
Business and commerce
Personal interviews and profiles of achievers in business,
Daily market wraps on the Australian Stock Exchange,
Commentary on stock market capital raisings,
News and articles on the mortgage broking industry,
Supply chain issues including collaborative supply chains,
Human capital issues in Australia, Asia-Pacific and India,
Coal mining safety issues,
Government regulatory environment,
Australia/USA free trade agreement
Shipping and trade,
Port briefs such as Singapore, Kaoshiung, Hong Kong,
Australia's world class aluminium ship building industry,
Coal exports from Australia,
Australian exports to Asia,
The effect of the USA Jones Act re shipbuilding,
Other topics
History of CommInsure (a subsidiary of Commonwealth Bank)
Personal biographies and histories
Articles on Defence related topics
Examples
The best guide to evaluating David’s versatility in covering a wide range of topics is to click main menu link to ‘Examples’ and follow the links to samples of published articles covering many different fields.
Commissioning editor enquiry about potential articles is always welcome.
Photography
David is a competent photographer. A recently published coffee table book containing hundreds of images included 20 of David's photographs ranging from full page shots to small insets. He supports most of his articles in Small Farms Magazine with on-farm images of farmers, crops, livestock, machinery and farming methods. In his work in supporting the landscape hydrology research of Peter Andrews, of Natural Sequence Farming, David has taken a vast number of photos illustrating aspects of water movement in the Australian landscape. These have included images to illustrate points about flood plains, water flow, mulch accumulation, reed bed growth and other aspects about the management of rivers and floodplains in an environmentally way but in a way that also lifts agricultural productivity.
Books published
Should meat be on the menu? – Carbon issues in our food, paddock to plate
ISBN 9780646531373 (85,000 words) This book explores the widely held misconception that sheep, cattle and other grazing animals are responsible for an enormous net production of new global warming gases. The Dewey Number for this book is 363.7387, Atmospheric carbon dioxide – Australia, Meat industry and trade – Environmental aspects – Australia, Global warming, Food chains (Ecology)
Akos Kovacs - an Hungarian Australian Odyssey
ISBN 0 646 31886 1 (75,000 words), covers the life and work of a Hungarian refugee who escaped communist rule in 1949 and moved to Australia to become something of a Perth, Western Australia, legend.
A Footnote to my Epitaph
ISBN 0 646 14295 X (80,000 words), the biography of a resident of the Hunter Valley, NSW, who was in the Red Army during the Second World War.
Fields of Gold – 50 years of Grain Growers Association
ISBN 9780977502929 . A coffee table book of 150 pages with extensive text, tables and images relating the story of how Australia’s largest grain grower organisation was formed, grew and prospered.
We Built a Bridge
ISBN 0 646 21991 X (20,000 words) The story of Sam and Rita Buttigieg who migrated to Australia from the island of Gozo, Malta, in 1949. It covers their early life on the island prior to the Second World War, their experience in the war, and the effort and success of settling in a new country.
Ghost Written Books
David has completed two ghost written books in recent years. The details of these books are confidential.
Current writing projects (1)
David is currently researching further information about livestock and the issue of methane emissions.
He is also researching for a book about the issue of our energy future.
Current writing projects (2)
Like all writers and journalists, David has a book sitting in his mind that he can never quite get to. It goes by the working title Patches of Brilliance—my diary in a hut. This book covers David’s early 1990's wilderness experience when he lived in a small corrugated iron hut in the Australian bush for 14 months. The experience was neither by choice nor through the desire to explore the alternate lifestyle. It was forced upon him by unexpected financial and personal circumstances. The life was rugged but it brought some unexpected benefits and insights even in its darkest moments. Publishing enquiry about this book, either for book publication or for magazine serialization, is welcome.
