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George Dunford
Growing up in regional NSW, Australia, George Dunford hitched a ride to the big smoke of Canberra to go to the Australian National University. The smoke wasn't quite big enough, so he took off overseas to do the Australian rite of passage that is backpacking in Europe in between working in the UK. He worked at Raasay House off the Isle of Skye, which remains one of his favourite places in the world (though it's in stiff competition with Singapore's long Bar). He lived and worked (illegally ? shhhh!) in the United States, and travelled to countries from Finland to Thailand with few other lands in between.
After returning from overseas, George worked in pubs and libraries before settling on the compromise of both that was Lonely Planet's Trade and reference area. He lurched sideways into a unit that changed its name from New Media to Digital Publishing Unit before finally settling on Those Web Guys, where he rose to a title that nobody knew what it was. Using a whiteboard was crucial to this dynamic role as was using words like "vision statement" and "benchmarking". After patenting the word "solutioneering" George jumped the fence to research Australian and New Zealand on a Shoestring.
While on this trip he kept the first online journal for Lonely Planet (http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/dunford/). From here George scored the prestigious job of doing outback and industrial areas for Adelaide and South Australia with locals asking the question "How can one city boy eat so much chicken parma?" for the Singapore chapter of Southeast Asia on a Shoestring 13 the question varied ? "How can that ex-pat guy eat so much dosa/chilli crab/??" For New Zealand 13 they just thought his all that eating was a bit unnecessary.
As a freelancer web producer/writer/editor/information leafblower he's worked on projects for seek.com.au (Australia's largest job site) and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's youth site www.rollercoaster.com.au, as well as doing reviews for Melbourne's Cheap Eats and writing freelance articles for the likes of The Age, Australian Traveller Magazine and The Big Issue. He contributed to the Rough Guide to Melbourne. For Lonely Planet he's worked on various freelance projects including bestseller The Travel Book, The Gap Year Book 2, The City Book and anything else that liked the article.
He writes fiction with publications in Going Down Swinging (www.goingdownswinging.org.au), Verandah and SBS' Cornerfold site. He's a founding member of the short fiction collective Cardigan Press (www.renewal.org.au/cardigan), which publishes new short fiction by Australia's freshest writers. He teaches travel writing and literature at Melbourne's CAE (www.cae.org.au) while putting off writing a novel and being shy of the third person.
