Early Life and Career
He was born in 1874 on at a remote work camp in New Zealand where his father was building a bridge. He attended Otago Boys' High School, Dunedin in 1888-89. At the age of 17, he was apprenticed to his uncle who was the general manager of a gold mine in South Africa. For two decades, specialising in gold and tin, he worked as a mining engineer all over the world - Australia, China, Russia, Malaya, Mexico, Uruguay and Nigeria.
During World War I, he was a quartermaster in the British Army. In his efforts to source food and supplies for the British Army in Mesopotamia (today's Iraq), Holmes travelled widely through the Middle East and may have heard rumours of a possible oil seepage on the eastern seaboard of the Arabian peninsula. This, together with a close study of Admiralty maps of the area, appears to have triggered an abiding interest in oil in the region. By 1918, he was writing to his wife that "I personally believe that there will be developed an immense oil field running from Kuwait right down the mainland coast ".
Read more about this topic: Frank Holmes (geologist)
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