After completing a journalism cadetship at the Herald Sun at the age of 23, Patrick worked as the paper’s youth affairs reporter before interviewing rock stars and footballers as a music and sports journalist. He spent two further years working as a crime and court reporter, covering the 'underworld' murder trials before quitting his job, selling everything he owned and setting off to travel the world for the third time. Sideways is the result of those odysseys.

Patrick has travelled extensively through South America, Eastern and Western Europe, the US, Asia, Morocco, Egypt, Turkey and Australia. He has lived in New York, Colombia and Darwin and currently resides in Melbourne.

Among his many adventures overseas he:

• rode a mountain bike down the world’s most dangerous road
• was held up at gunpoint in Jamaica
• found himself stuck in a 40-hour traffic jam in the Bolivian Andes without food or water
• became stranded between two Eastern European border posts when one country refused him a visa and the other refused to accept he had just departed from its border
• dived with 150 hammerhead sharks in the Galapagos Islands
• was conned into swimming in the Amazon River among the crocodiles and piranhas.

Patrick’s travel pieces have appeared in The Age, The Herald Sun, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sun Herald, The Adelaide Advertiser, The Courier Mail and The Hobart Mercury.

His presentations can include the following topics:

• Travel writing workshops (tips for journal keeping, the writing process, getting a book finished, looking for angles and pitching stories)
• Writing style (writing for different audiences)
• Challenging yourself and tackling adversity
• Journalism (how to get in, famous people he has interviewed, the day-to-day reality of working in newspapers)
• Unconventional pathways
• Goal setting and achievement
• Turning your passion into a career