Gary Meadows

About Me

Place of Birth: Perth, Western Australia
Family: Wife Marita, and two children, Brandon and Jacinda
Parents: John & Mary Jane Meadows
Siblings: Two sisters, Karen & Dawn

Favourite Food: Seafood
Favourite Drink: Bourbon
Favourite Musicians: Kenny Rogers, Garth Brooks
Favourite Memory: My wedding day
Favourite Moment: Meeting Kenny Rogers in Hollywood in 2004

Favourite Quote: If you love, and the love dies, it goes back in to the heart and returns in the form of tears to wash away the hurt. (Lucy DeBardin)

Briefly speaking…

I was born and raised in Perth, Western Australia. I attended Yale Primary School in Thornlie and Wesley College in South Perth. My father was an Electrician by trade, and after finishing his studies and a few jobs in England and South Africa he brought my mother and two sisters out to Australia in the early 60s.

We had a great upbringing. Sport was always a major part of life for me, both as a child and well in to my late 20s. I also enjoyed script writing and poetry, and was published in the 1989 Anthology of New Australian Poets.

After leaving school I was employed in a variety of IT roles, primarily in CAD/CAM, network administration and database management, until enlisting in the Australian Army at 21. I had hoped for a cartography position with Survey Corps, but this employment stream was being civilianised at the time and I returned to network administration. Surgery following an injury sustained during a volleyball match (of all things) highlighted a knee condition that brought about the end of my military career. Ironically, I was only asked to fill in for the Battalion’s inter-unit volleyball match because our rugby team had the week off.

Marita and I had been pen pals since the age of 16. When I was 18 I left Perth and travelled across this great country of ours to visit my pen pal in Melbourne, Victoria. Whatever our intentions were at the time, I simply never went home. I had found my soul mate, and we were married at the Puckapunyal Army Base in 1992.

Since leaving the Australian Army we have owned, operated and subsequently sold Aussie Hosts, and undertaken a sea change move to Tasmania where we initially opened a retail store (music and concole games) which Marita ran together with some local casual staff while I had a gap year/midlife crisis and travelled. “Retail” didn’t really appeal to either of us though, and we sold the store in 2007 so that Marita could return to fulltime studies.

We have definitely caught the travel bug. We have travelled quite extensively throughout Australia and we’ve visited Bali and Fiji. We’ve also been on three P&O cruises throughout the South Pacific. I have toured around the United States for work (Los Angeles, Long Beach, Hollywood, Houston, San Francisco, New York, Washington DC, Cincinnati and Philadephia). In 2006 I embarked on a 7 month tour of the UK, Western and Central Europe. More recently (2009) we have travelled to Malaysia and Bruneii, and Marita is taking a New Zealand cruise with her Mum at the end of this year.

We’re currently enjoying the more casual and relaxed lifestyle that this beautiful island state of Tasmania offers, and both of us are studying fulltime at the University of Tasmania. I am studying towards a Bachelor of Tourism, and Marita is studying towards a Bachelor of Nursing.

Member - Golden Key International Honour Society

In a previous life..

PC User Magazine
Web Hosting Award

Founder - Aussie Hosts

Aussie Hosts was voted the Number 1 Web Hosting Top Buy by the Australian PC User Magazine in 2003.

Hostingtech, a leading industry news portal, ran a feature article on Aussie Hosts in March 2005:

http://www.cheaphostingdirectory.com/featured-host-aussie-hosts/

http://www.hostingtech.com/?m=show&id=716

After 7 and half years of unrivalled service to the web hosting industry, we sold Aussie Hosts in June 2005 to pursue other interests in a more offline environment.