My father, John Sticpewich, has died unexpectedly at the age of 80. After a life that took him through the jungles of Papua to Kenya's Northern Frontier District and the Sahara he was buried near his home in North Carolina. A petroleum geologist, John was one of the last of the professional explorers, men who combined scientific knowledge with survival skills and a romantic sense of discovery. He was as comfortable with chromatic spectroscopy or reading a seismic survey as he was with shooting a crocodile or boiling a billy for tea.
John was born in Newcastle, New South Wales, the only son of Henry, a steel mill engineer, and Jean, and studied geology at the University of Sydney. He met his future wife, Margaret Champion, in the fencing club there, and they married in 1956. A talented epee fighter, John was invited to join the Australian Olympic training squad in 1955, but his first job took him off to Papua, where he led extensive geological surveys into unmapped jungle, accompanied by only teams of local bearers. He later joined BP and worked across east Africa and later in Libya, where as chief geologist he supervised work on the Sarir field, the world's largest oil reserve of its day.
A life spent in drilling camps or offshore rigs gave him a facility with many languages, not only drilling-patch French, but also Arabic, Swahili and Motu. In his travels, he also picked up a lasting love of the theatre. From playing Petruchio in Mombasa, Kenya, through directing a production of Salad Days in Benghazi, Libya, to reading with the Autumn Players in Asheville, North Carolina, he brought a sense of the dramatic to everything he did. Even from a hospital bed in his final years, he exerted himself to charm his nurses and doctors.
My childhood in the US was peppered with tales and objects from places that my friends had never heard of, words from languages no one spoke. For all that difference from those around us, John was an unconditionally generous man, welcoming his children's friends with open arms and involving himself in local activities wherever we lived.
During his retirement in Asheville, he helped in local environmental work, and produced a substantial study of the transportation of nuclear materials through the town. His mind was acute until the end; with the slightest encouragement, he would recite whole pages of Shakespeare – or Boyle's law.
He is survived by Margaret; three children, me, Tahani and Toby; and five grandchildren, Miranda, Milo, John, Laila and Haidee.