From his earlier days living on the beautiful North Devon coast, located in the far South West of England, Robert, CEO of First Mallorca, was well and truly a fishing and shooting country boy. In those days he couldn't imagine living under the pollution of city lights and concrete. No television, no ipads, his life was lived outdoors in every weather. Until his early twenties Robert spent all his free time fishing or shooting on the farm, or with his pet, magpie, crow, rook and owl. He brought them up from either the egg or from a few days old. They were free to fly, as they did of course, but they never ventured far from Robert, because they thought of him as their father. It was not unusual to see Robert cycling on his bike with either a freshly caught salmon tied to his cross bar or a magpie clinging to his shoulder as he rounded the many bends of the Devon country lanes.

Though his feet were firmly in the North Devon mud and had his family of birds to look after, he did have a slight envy of those travellers up above him producing vivid aircraft trials over his Atlantic coast while en-route to London from the Americas.

Little did he know then that his rural peace, the flowing rivers, still lakes and the breaking seas would last only another 10 years before being replaced by world travel to big cities, jungles and tropical islands. Robert loved fishing, he wrote articles for the national angling press. In the late 60s he opened a fishing tackle business, his trademark expression was "go fishing it's fun". In all his articles and short stories he never failed to mention "when you are fishing you can think of nothing else ... fishing cleanses the brain". Robert was early to recognise the advantage of using light fishing equipment when deep sea fishing and was soon winning worldwide competitions with revolutionary ABU Svangsta fishing rods and reels. "I think like a fish" was Robert's secret to winning the world's top international fishing competitions. But it was the beginning of his overseas travel, paid for by fish, which preferred his bait.

Robert was an all round sport fisherman, he ate well from the Devon salmon & trout rivers, and loved the sweet taste of freshly caught flounders & bass from the river Taw estuary, his neighbours too. The fishing lakes and ponds were the pearl of tranquillity, whereas the deep sea fishing trips required a strong arm and stomach but his favourite challenge was to be perched on rocks side stepping the Atlantic swells and not knowing what would bite next. That was true peace. The sound of the breaking swell and salt air excluded the rest of the world. Travelling to fishing competitions was beginning to unsettle Robert, and in 1972 he left Britain's shores arriving in Madeira on a cruise ship, with his car, in order to collect his thoughts. That was the start of over 20 years of building a reputation in the tourist industry, which took him to expand or develop tourism programmes in North & West Africa, Sri Lanka & the Maldives, India, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia and in exciting Far East cities. His employers were based in Zurich and sometimes fell off their chairs at his far distant methods - but in the days of slow communication I had time to be proved right, he states with a smile. During his life abroad Robert bought property in two Balearic Islands and in 1996 Robert came back to the Balearics to liquidate those assets and return to the Far East. But instead he and Heidi Stadler stayed to establish First Mallorca and have since expanded the company to be the leading real estate agency in Mallorca. Whilst expanding First Mallorca two little fisherman, Timothy & Julian, arrived into the world and now their daddy has taken up the fishing rod once again, well 3 rods, to fish off the rocks from their weekend home in Sant Elm..