Mike's love affair with travelling began when he and a friend breathed new life into an old Honda Prelude and preceded to clock up over 10,000km traversing the Australian outback. It became their ticket to personal freedom, as they threw off the shackles of modern, first-world rights-of-passage and delved deep into a life of unplanned, unfiltered and socially-engaging experiences.

Their desire to disregard the rule-book led them to rural parts of Australia, and then onward to Asia, Europe and Africa, as the two of them ground out a hand-to-mouth existence through unconventional work, with the primary focus set on forging new relationships with their global neighbours.

Mike's obsession with writing and all things literary soon took on a new shape, as he began writing short stories about his experiences and sharing them with the wider community.

You could say these are the roots of Sun Rider Press.

MIKE ROBERTSON

Editor

The origins of Luke's obsession with art and global travel can be traced back his birth on a sailing boat in the Virgin Islands. As a child, growing up in rural New Zealand, he and his brother spent countless hours absorbed in comics, video games and literature.

Enamoured with the idea of 'the struggling artist', Luke took the blind plunge to Bristol, UK, when he was only 19. He met Mike not long after, in the basement of an old printing factory-turned-hostel. It was there that they began working together, sharing their artistic styles and channeling the attitudes of many of their idols - Jack Kerouac, Dylan Thomas, Hunter S. Thompson, Bukowski, Krumm, among others. Their bromance quickly formed..

Luke's own journey took him back to NZ, where he underwent a rigorous 2-year tattooing apprenticeship that would soon put him back in the northern hemisphere - 15 minutes from the Colosseum, to be exact, finding his artistic roots in Rome, with a cig and bottle of Italia's finest in hand.  

LUKE WHITEHEAD

Graphic Artist

ROBYN BAINBRIDGE

Literary Editor

Web Developer/Digital Consultant