Alumni Profiles

Rick DOBBIE

• Graduated :

  1973

Description

After graduation to RAAC I was posted to Puckapunyal as a Centurion Troop Leader at 1^st Armoured Regiment where I held a number of other appointments as well before moving north to Holsworthy in 1977 as a Squadron 2IC and later Adjutant of 2^nd Cavalry Regiment. From there I was appointed Adjutant of the Armoured Centre and returned to Puckapunyal followed by a posting as a Squadron 2IC back at 1^st Armoured Regiment.

I then went back to OCS in 1984 as a tactics instructor in Advanced Training Wing and from there I was appointed as a Leopard Squadron Commander and returned to 1^st Armoured Regiment before attending Staff College in 1988.

I was then posted as a member of the Australian Army Project Team Malaysia as a military adviser and specifically as the Senior Instructor in conventional and counter-insurgency warfare at the Malaysian Army Combat Training Centre in Johore, Malaysia, training principally Malaysian Army Officers but also Officers from other countries in the region.           Instructional experience culminated with my appointment as the Army Operations Instructor at the Australian Defence Force Warfare Centre in 1990. I was appointed as the Australian Liaison Officer to US Central Command (USCENTCOM) for Operation Restore Hope in Somalia and then as the Director of the Australian Defence Force Peacekeeping Centre in 1992. After briefly working in Defence Recruiting I was then posted as Head of Section, International Branch (J7), Headquarters, AST.

I left the ADF at the end of 1999.

I then worked briefly in the film industry that included work as a 1^st Assistant Director and roles as a stunt double/stand-in, principally for Billy Connolly and Bryan Brown.

I joined the Jamieson Consulting Group in 2001 as Director Training and Development Programs responsible for the Group internal and client training and learning programs. I was head hunted from there and joined Revolution Ash Consulting in 2004 before setting out on my own as the Founder and Principal Consultant of my own business, SAFAR (Arabic for ‘journey”) in 2010. SAFAR is a small management consultancy focusing on Leadership Development, Project Management/Leadership, Planning and Decision Making Processes and Joint Venture Alignment.

SAFAR programs are based on a combination of experiential learning and expository instruction and we have conducted programs as far afield as Brazil, Chile, the UK and US, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia as well as within Australia and New Zealand. We are hoping to expand into China and Myanmar through a joint venture between ourselves and with ANZSOG and the University of Canberra in 2014.

Over the past two years I have been involved in expeditions to both the Antarctic and the Arctic. In the Antarctic in November/December 2012 we trekked part of Shackleton’s journey across South Georgia. Next year we will take part in a traversing of the North West Passage following the route taken by Roald Amundsen as well as a dog sledding/snow mobile journey in northern Finland.