I have both a practical and a professional background, and a background in both rural and urban New Zealand. In my younger days in the Hawke's Bay, where I was born, I've cleaned water troughs, drenched sheep, driven tractors, picked apples, pruned pine trees, and picked up thousands of hay-bales and transported them around the countryside, stacking them into haysheds. As a teenager, I went to high school in Auckland. I should say that it was with mixed success, as my high school career was ultimately unsuccessful and I left without University Entrance, and then went on to spend a number of years in the school of hard knocks. 