The story
Raised on a small farm in Queensland, Michael Cassimaty grew up with an insatiable curiosity about the natural world. Books opened the first door. Before long, that curiosity carried him far beyond the paddocks of his childhood — to turtle research camps on remote beaches, coral cays in the Great Barrier Reef, Jersey Zoo in the Channel Islands, the cafés of Vienna, the deserts of the Sinai and the rainforests of Lamington National Park.
Along the way, he worked beside pioneering conservationists, tagged turtles on isolated islands, abseiled waterfalls, crossed deserts, photographed wildlife and became involved in Australia’s emerging environmental movement. Much of the work was practical and unglamorous: night patrols, data recording, animal care, travel by boat, carrying equipment, finding work and making decisions with incomplete information.
Yet the greatest lessons were rarely about the places themselves. Again and again, they were about uncertainty, fear, friendship, belonging and the willingness to keep moving without knowing exactly where the next step would lead. The young Michael often appears more confident than he feels, and the memoir does not pretend that fear or self-doubt simply disappeared.
Looking back decades later, another pattern becomes clearer. The habits learned through fieldwork and travel — observation, patience, adaptability and attention — would remain important when life later changed in ways he could not have foreseen.
Spanning Australia, Europe and the Middle East during the 1970s and 1980s, Learning to Lean Back is more than a memoir of travel or conservation. It is the story of a life shaped by curiosity, by the people who opened unexpected doors, and by the gradual understanding that courage is seldom the absence of fear. More often, it is simply the decision to keep going.