BUSINESS Paul’s write mix of thrills and science
ENVIRONMENTAL engineer and top- selling thriller author is an unlikely combination but it is one in which Australian Institute of Marine Science CEO Paul Hardisty excels.
Not only that but he showed great business acumen in selling an engineering and environmental consultancy in 2006, which he co- founded in Canada, to Worley Parsons for a reported $ US25.5 million.
Now, after a year in the AIMS job and living in Perth, he has moved to Townsville.
He and his wife, Heidi, live in the Director’s House at the institute’s Cape Ferguson base overlooking the Coral Sea.
In the late afternoons they enjoy a walk hand- in- hand along the beach.
“For a couple of Canadians who grew up believing that one time they would live in the tropics, it’s just about heaven,” Mr Hardisty said.
Mr Hardisty has spent 25 years working all over the world as an engineer, hydrologist and environmental scientist on oil rigs in Texas, exploring for gold in the Arctic, map- ping geology in Eastern Turkey and rehabilitating water wells in Africa.
In 1993 he survived a bomb blast in a cafe in Sana’a in Yemen and was one of the last Westerners out of that country before the outbreak of civil war in 1994.
He has drawn on these experiences to write a series of thrillers which have won critical acclaim the like of best- selling British author Lee Child.
Mr Hardisty launched his latest, Absolution, the fourth in the series, at Mary Who? Book Shop last night.
“They are thrillers with a social justice theme. They challenge people to think about life and what’s happening around them,” Mr Hardisty said.
Another book – a more serious literary work about growing old, love and loss and being a man in the 21st century – is due out next year.
Mr Hardisty said he was committed to exploring ways to achieve both good economic and environmental outcomes and was keen to put this to work at AIMS.
With marine ecosystems among the first to be challenged by climate change and AIMS monitoring showing shallow- water coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef dropping by half since 1985, Mr Hardisty said it was never more important to balance the needs of people, the environment and the economy.