I am a great believer in a website author including sufficient information on themselves so that readers can assess their credibility.
My name is (Dr) Brett Edgerton. I am a 38 year old ex-scientist, now stay at home dad to a beautiful 3 year old boy. I completed my PhD at JCU. I am actually a leading expert in aquatic animal health - my specific area was diseases of freshwater crayfish (e.g. yabbies, redclaw, marron) - you can see my professional website here. I have worked as a research scientist for Queensland Department of ?Primary Industries, have worked on quarantine policy development in Canberra for AQIS, and have held several prestigious international research fellowships to work in Finland, France and Germany.
So I was part of the brain drain. On returning to Australia I was unable to obtain a job or convince funding authorities to continue to fund my research. My wife and I had delayed starting a family for my career, and we did not want to do that any longer. So, when my wife fell pregnant, I quit "the dream" and, as it turns out, found a much more enjoyable and fulfilling job raising our boy.
My wife is an accountant with 14 years experience. For personal reasons related to our little boy, I will be a full time stay at home dad for a while yet. We not only delayed starting a family for my career, we also delayed buying a home in order to travel overseas to develop my career. (When we left, we thought that we would be away quite a few years and did not want the complications of owning a house at home.) That is why we are relatively old, and highly qualified, would be first home buyers.
I am not an economist and do not purport to be a financial planner. Any reader of this website should seek their own independent financial advise tailored to their specific situation. I am just a guy of reasonable intelligence and reasonable wordliness, who takes an interest in what is happening around him. I have an interest in business and economics and I been an avid reader for over a decade. For those who wish to knock me - and I am expecting that there will certainly be some, given the amount of money in the Australian property market - I would suggest that my opinions are well within the standard deviation of Australian economists' opinion. Moreover, in a world where the boundary between bank advertisement and business news is blurred, and where precious little economic analysis is genuinely free of political or organisational conflict of interest, I would argue that my opinion is just valid as the next persons. I have no conflicts of interest other than a strong desire to purchase a family home in, hopefully, the not too distant future. I have no political associations or relationships with any industry groups. The opinions expressed by me on this site are entirely my own. |
