When Michael Earle returned from his adventure on Timor in 1977 he knew there was a story to tell. But a concoction of desire and knowledge requires a catalyst to ignite a reaction in a busy life, and it arrived twenty five years later in the aftermath of a family bereavement.

Troubled that his Timor story would remain untold, Earle set about the task of creating a legacy for his family, but in rummaging among diaries, photographs, letters and boxes full of memorabilia going back forty years, he set free a genie bigger and more powerful than anticipated.

What happened on Timor was only part of a longer journey that the author started in adolescence. He did not fulfil the expectations demanded by his social background, and the reasons for this form the first part of the book as necessary context for the transformation of his character and the achievements at university; justifying the metaphor about a mountain to climb.

It took four months to write the first draft of the manuscript, and then four years to complete the published version. Born as The Lonely Journey in Search of Far Horizons, the baby became a toddler named A Wiltshire Boy: Journey out of the Wilderness before growing up into A Mountain to Climb on Timor.