Ian Irvine - Career

Career

Irvine was born in Bathurst, New South Wales, Australia, in 1950. He was educated at Chevalier College and the University of Sydney where he received a PhD in marine science, studying the management of contaminated sediments.

Setting up his own environmental consulting firm in 1986, Irvine has worked in many countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Indonesia, Singapore, Philippines, South Korea, Papua-New Guinea, Mauritius, Bali, Fiji and Western Samoa. During the course of his career he played a role in developing Australia's national guidelines for protection of the oceanic environment and still works in this field. He was the principal author of Australia’s National Environmental Assessment Guidelines for Dredging, 2009.

During 1987 Irvine began writing the first in his The View from the Mirror series. He continued working full-time as an environmental scientist and so wrote the series in his spare time. The first book in the series was published in 1998 and since this time Irvine has been a full-time author, although he still undertakes some environmental consulting work when he has time.

Irvine is married with four grown-up children and lives in the mountains of northern New South Wales.