View Reviews of books by Paul E. Hardisty

Countdown with ...

Paul E. Hardisty

Canadian Paul E Hardisty is the author of the Claymore Straker series. He has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist.

He has roughnecked on oil rigs in Texas, explored for gold in the Arctic, mapped geology in Eastern Turkey (where he was befriended by PKK rebels) and rehabilitated water wells in the wilds of Africa. He was in Ethiopia in 1991 as the Mengistu regime fell and was bumped from one of the last flights out of Addis Ababa by bureaucrats and their families fleeing the rebels. In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a café in Sana’a.

Paul is a university professor and CEO of the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS). He is also a sailor, a private pilot, keen outdoorsman and conservation volunteer, and lives in Western Australia.

Interviewed 23 February 2019

Ten words to sum up your working life to date ...

Environment, people, justice, war, oil, water, oceans, reef, pollution, nature.

Nine things you can see from where you're sitting ...

Pacific Ocean
Palm trees
Magnetic Island
A full moon
The southern cross
Cars
Streetlights
Bats
My wedding ring

Eight minutes to prepare a meal. What's it going to be ?

Eggs on toast with mayo

Seven people you'd like to go for a drink with ...

My wife
My two sons
Richard Flanagan
Tad Dabrowski
My dad
My godfather Fred

Six things you can't live without ...

Strenuous exercise, challenge, sex, clean water, purpose, love.

Five favourite words ...

Truth
Beauty
Honour
Combat
Love

Four places you'd run away to ...

Margaret River, WA Australia
Bowen Island, BC Canada
Rowley Shoals, WA, Australia
Lake District, UK

Three books you've bought recently ...

Gould’s Book of Fish by Richard Flanagan
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Zorba the Greek by Nikos Kazantzakis

Two things that make you rant ...

Blind political correctness
Blind intolerance

One thing you'd tell your teenage self ...

Don't waste time. Any of it.