Roger was born in Sydney in 1955. Naturally intelligent and gifted, he scored in the top one percent of students in the 1973 Higher School Certificate. After a year studying medicine at UNSW, he switched to his true passion, the Arts, and graduated in 1979 from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor’s degree, majoring in fine arts, history and the philosophy of science, and English.

Roger’s other great love was the environment, and he was an early member of the Colong Committee, which successfully campaigned to create Wollemi National Park.

After university, Roger worked in Sydney as a freelance journalist, contributing to newspapers such as The Australian, the Australian Financial Review, and the Sydney Morning Herald.

Given his environmental passion and the emerging threat of a dam on the pristine Franklin River in Tasmania, Roger moved to Canberra in 1982 to work as a lobbyist for the Australian Conservation Foundation. He played a key role in the Franklin River campaign until the successful High Court decision in 1983 blocked the dam. Roger later wrote about the campaign in Battle for the Franklin (Fontana, 1984).

From 1984, Roger returned to journalism. He worked as a staff journalist for The Canberra Times, covering health, science, and the environment. Later, he worked as a journalist for ANU University Publications, mainly in science.

In 1988, Roger branched out on his own. He founded Green Words & Images, a Canberra-based publishing service, and Green Words Training, providing training in computer use, writing, and publishing. His clients included government agencies, national associations, universities, and companies. The business operated until 2001, employing around twenty staff. Following this period, Roger wrote another book, Good Business, Bad Business (Wrightbooks, 2002).

In the early 2000s, Roger’s life took a devastating turn when he contracted a rare brain infection. Though he survived after intensive treatment, the illness and its recurrence left lasting impacts on his health.

In later years, Roger turned increasingly to poetry and philosophy—writing poetry, attending readings at ANU, and composing a philosophical guide to life for his two sons. He completed a manuscript entitled The Bad Life, Beauty 1, Fear 0 before his health declined further.

Roger spent his final years in fulltime nursing home care and passed away just short of his 69th birthday in December 2024.

In 2025, Roger’s family established the inaugural Finding Beauty Poetry Prize in his memory to support emerging poets across the ACT region.