John Nicholas

John has led a varied and sometimes colourful life. In his youth he was an "A" Grade polo player and expert skier but gave up the former to concentrate on his university studies. It didn't help that his father fell on hard times and could no longer support such expensive sports. As an experienced stockman and horse breaker he worked for a period as a jackeroo in western New South Wales. After graduating with a Bachelor of Economics he wound up doing an Arts degree in New Zealand in English and Chomskyan linguistics. With a wife and two young children he then travelled to England and set up a printing and exhibition business that failed after 6 years. Returning to Australia, he worked in the evaluation of a bilingual school program for indigenous students, in data mapping and accounting system review for several government departments, in government policy development, economic strategy, and indigenous development. He also worked part-time as a commercial bush charter pilot in the wilds of Northern and Central Australia with 80 bush airstrips in his logbook. On returning to the United Kingdom, he co-founded the company that built Europe's largest biodiesel production facility and then a company that has developed a process that converts woodchips and sugarcane waste into biofuels, biochemicals and jet fuel. He is a late entrant to the movie business. His son is a world champion sailor who works as a schoolteacher and his daughter a general practitioner in medicine. He has four grandchildren. .