A Western Australian, university graduate and trained teacher, Roger taught for two years before joining the Australian Regular Army in 1954. He served for 21 years in a variety of command, staff and training appointments in Australia and Papua New Guinea. His final Army posting was as Director, Operations and Plans in the then newly-established Natural Disasters Organisation (now Emergency Management Australia) in Canberra, where in 1974 he was involved in coordinating the national response and relief operations following Cyclone ‘Tracy’ and other major emergencies of that period. Appointed Deputy Director and Chief Instructor of the Australian Counter Disaster College (later Emergency Management Institute) at Mount Macedon in Victoria in 1975, in 1985 he was engaged by the Victorian Government to participate in the State-wide reviews of emergency management arrangements following the 1983 ‘Ash Wednesday’ fires, which resulted in the development of that State’s Emergency Management Act 1986. In 1987 he returned to the College as Director, where he was responsible for national emergency management education and training policy and programs until his retirement from that post in 1994. Since then, he has undertaken a variety of national, regional and international consultancies in the field of emergency management, specialising in public safety risk management concepts and their application. Between 2000 and 2006 Roger worked primarily in the Pacific as a consultant to the South Pacific Applied Geoscience Commission (SOPAC). In 2006 he was appointed a Director and Deputy Chair of the Board of the Victorian State Government’s State Emergency Service Authority, retiring from that position at the end of 2014.