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I was born and brought up in the United Kingdom but travelled widely as a child, including months spent exploring the coast of Western Australia.
It was there that I impressed my parents with my sense of direction.
Driving down a dusty outback road, they took a left fork and I shouted: “We’re going the wrong way!”
My parents’ immediate reaction was to carry on. How could a five-year-old barely able to see out of the window possibly know where to go?
But 5km later they turned around, realising they had taken a wrong turn and bemused at how I knew which way to go.
A geographer was what I was destined to be. I studied the subject at school and university, landing my first job with Landmark Information Group, the UK’s leading provider of environmental risk and planning intelligence.
Landmark developed a unique database based on ordnance survey maps dating to the 1800s, each area surveyed and remapped regularly over 200 years.
The detail was astonishing – each property, village store, even individual trees drawn in. Also, the locations of mines, mills, foundries and factories.
There were multiple instances where homes, schools and hospitals were built on significantly contaminated sites and huge legal cases ensued.
Landmark pioneered the development of environmental searches to help lawyers. Over time, they became a mandatory part of the conveyancing workflow. I loved the job but, after a few years, I revisited Australia and stayed.
My friend, colleague (and now business partner) Peter Rodgers and I launched Lotsearch in June 2014. Naively, we assumed the startup would be relatively straightforward. Technology had improved, database storage and software licences were cheaper and there were fewer barriers to entry.
What could possibly go wrong? We started building the database and, while we found some fantastic old maps, they were often one-offs or limited to only a part of a town or city.
Realising there was not the same depth of mapping as in the UK, we had to quickly pivot to other sources.
One was old trade directories and phone books. While it was challenging, we found new ways to locate former businesses and their activities.
Further research identified potential contaminative sources such as gasworks and landfills.
Today, we have the most extensive historical land use database in Australia, with millions of business entries, old
It has enabled us to identify more than 260,000 known, or potential, contamination hotspots and deliver more than 100,000 environmental searches.
Having celebrated our 12th birthday, I’m incredibly proud of our team and everything we’ve achieved.
We’ve built the nation’s most comprehensive environmental information platform but, more importantly, it’s a business with purpose.
Every search helps someone make a more informed decision about a property, whether it’s a family buying their first home, a lawyer protecting their client or a developer understanding potential risk.
Australia is an incredible country and I genuinely believe we all have a responsibility to leave it in a better state than we found it.