A RIPPLE PASSING BY is a memoir, a travelogue and a social and historical commentary. ADRIAN LIPSCOMB played many parts during his lifetime – as a conscripted soldier during the early 1970s, an intelligence analyst with the Australian Department of Defence in the 1980s, a hippie vagabond, a frustrated university lecturer, an eco-tourism consultant, a businessman, a travel writer, a criminal lawyer, and a community volunteer, among other things.
He traveled widely throughout the world, and became a keen observer of the foibles, the cultures and the customs of the people he encountered. As a young man he explored southern and eastern Africa (where he climbed Mount Kilimanjaro) and Israel (where he worked on a kibbutz), and he roamed the Hippie Trail through Iran, Afghanistan and India. Later, in middle age, his interest shifted to Southeast Asia and the South Pacific where he worked as a volunteer with Australian Volunteers International (AVI) and as a freelance travel writer with Lonely Planet and other publishers.
Adrian was particularly enamoured of the life and times of his great grandfather, WILLIAM SIMPSON, a celebrated Victorian artist and commentator who had traveled and sketched in remote corners of the world over a century earlier. His journeys frequently retraced Simpson's footsteps.
Adrian and his Dutch partner, Barbera, eventually settled in the picturesque shire of Bellingen on the east coast of Australia, which was (and still is) a melting pot for artists and “alternative lifestylers” wishing to escape from the pressures of big city life. Here he undertook frequent pro bono work as a lawyer, and he became a well-known community activist.
In 2015 Adrian was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM).