Dear Readers,

The dilemma I faced in writing my autobiography did not lie in knowing what to say but where to begin saying it.  If I had followed the traditional path then it would have started at the beginning.  I would have taken you swiftly through my boyhood years pausing briefly to regale you with stories of a young man who fell deeply in love with his high school sweetheart and who set about moving mountains as proof of that love.  Yet this would only have lead to a tantalisingly voyeuristic journey as I indulged the innocence of my new-found passions with the sensualness that flowed from the girl I would one day marry.

No…   after much thought I decided to start many years from there at a time when events in life had become dictated by a different form of intensity.  A time when the lives of many hung precariously through the damaging effects of injustice.

However, it would never have been my wish to deny you a glimpse of those extended hours after school as I tarried with my bride-to-be in the shadowy recesses of the station shelter oblivious to the trains pulling in and leaving, each destined to depart without the personage so anxiously awaited by her family.  Nor would I deny you even a hint of the moments we stole as we took risks that only the blindness of love could cause.  I would get to all of this soon enough.

And so, I began my story just three months beyond my 50th birthday.

I had been summonsed to appear before Mr Justice Spender, Judge of the Federal Court... and in turn I would summons him in an effort to put a halt to the crippling damage inflicted on a group of innocent investors.

But this would not be the first time I had calculatingly stood toe-to-toe with those who had skilfully abused their powers - their office. My business history had become the subject of intense scrutiny and unfounded attacks since I first dared to aspire to more.

And unlike many, I had not been born into a family historically ensconced in commerce or law. My beginnings were far more humble, and even my inaugural flight from that environment was hampered by the shackles of a mindset that I needed to shed; and shed fast, if ever I was going to soar to the heights I had so often dreamt of as a boy.

My desire to scale those heights would begin in earnest from the bowels of the earth as a hard rock miner.  Thankfully, it was an innate hunger to expand my horizons that caused me to surface, look around, and drive hard at the goals I repeatedly set.  Yet strangely enough, the amassing of wealth was never my primary focus.  Standing at the cutting edge of technology development, creating unique business practices, and at times achieving for the sole purpose of feeling the euphoria of conquering a new summit, would be all I needed.

I am unashamedly one of the extremists in life who need to create, almost obsessively.  And with such an attitude - somewhat more tempered at times - comes the inevitability of failure and the oft-times loss of security, irrespective of the awareness of the risks faced; risks that hold little or no fear for the entrepreneurial mind.

I now ask you to hold these thoughts; for it is the journey of all those men and women across the globe who may struggle to come to terms with the indignity of failure so often integral to success, and the journey of those who, for the first time or once again stand hesitatingly at the threshold of pursuing achievement, that I find reason, in no small part, to share my story.