Scott Sturgess has a short attention span. After graduating in Veterinary Science from the University of Queensland in 1968, he was conscripted into the army and served in Vietnam in 1970. He subsequently spent eight years in private veterinary practice and five more farming and wasting money on racehorses.

A need for his family to eat saw him working as a government vet in western and far-north Queensland, during which time he was sent to Central America to work briefly with the United States Department of Agriculture. Three years in Landcare and Catchment Management then preceded a stint as a policy advisor in Queensland’s short-lived Borbidge government. Work in the United Kingdom’s Meat Hygiene Service followed electoral defeat, but he came back to Oz in 2000 as Manager of Industry Development in Western Australia’s Southern Rangelands. He then returned to England for a while when Foot and Mouth Disease broke out.

Back in Australia he bought a Darling Downs farm and worked as a Meatworks Contract Vet. An early 2008 visit to Antarctica was a revelation. Noting that penguins, if given the choice, would rather stay where they were than move to the Sunshine Coast, he pondered the possibility of settling down in the one spot. This led to the purchase of a lychee farm twelve years ago and he and his relieved wife, Flora, are still there in 2021.