Walter is a travel writer and speaker with a special interest in spirituality.

Born in 1970 I spent my childhood in rural North Queensland, including some years doing correspondence school on a remote tin mine. On returning to “town” I devoted my life to singing, acting and the arts, and was constantly performing from the age of 12 – 17.

In 1988 I moved to Bathurst to study Theatre at Charles Sturt University. In 1991 I went to UNSW to study Chinese. I didn’t manage to graduate from either of these courses.

For many years I was a bookseller, working at Berkelouw’s on Oxford St., and later at Adyar, the famous metaphysical bookshop in the Sydney CBD. I later moved into a key role in a buying group for independent booksellers, and spent several years working with many of the most famous and long-established bookshops in Australia. Later I worked in various low-level roles in publishing, mostly in the area of sales and marketing.

I first visited Vietnam in 1994, and have been back many times since (so many I have lost count – somewhere between 9 and 12). Most notably I spent 3 months there in 1996 travelling the country with an eccentric Vietnamese-Australian Buddhist monk, living in remote monasteries and hermitages; in 1999 I spent 6 months at the Ho Chi Minh Social Sciences University studying the Vietnamese language; and I spent three months travelling and writing Destination Saigon over 2008/2009.

My latest book, Destination Cambodia, was published in September 2013 by Allen & Unwin.

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