Learning to Lean Back

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. Each new landscape demanded something different, yet the greatest lessons were rarely about the places themselves. Again and again, they were about uncertainty, fear, and learning to trust experience more than certainty.

As the years unfold, another journey begins almost unnoticed. Small physical changes, first dismissed as fatigue or old injuries, slowly reveal themselves as the early signs of Adrenomyeloneuropathy (AMN), a rare progressive neurological disease that will eventually reshape the course of his life. The skills learned in the wilderness — observation, patience, adaptability, and the willingness to keep moving despite uncertainty — become essential in ways he could never have imagined.

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.

Rich in observation, place and lived experience, this is a memoir about adaptation, reinvention, and the enduring curiosity that remains when almost everything else has changed.