I grew up on my family’s cattle property, 70km south of Cloncurry. I was educated by Correspondence School and Mt Isa School of the Air before boarding school in Brisbane. My first job was cooking for a stock camp and working at Expo ’88 in Brisbane before going to the University of Queensland to study accounting with the idea I would go back to the family station to handle the bookkeeping. But circumstances changed and I ended up in Brisbane where I worked in different businesses as an Accountant before going in as Chief of Staff for Natural Resources and Mines Minister, Andrew Cripps. My family had bought a chain of butcher shops in Brisbane and the Gold Coast and I ran them for 6 years before being elected to the Australian Senate for Queensland. I have three teenaged kids and I’m now based in Townsville.