A RIPPLE PASSING BY is the autobiography of ADRIAN LIPSCOMB. It traces the various phases of his life - as a conscripted soldier during the 1970s, as an intelligence analyst with the Australian Department of Defence during the 1980s, as a hippie vagabond, a frustrated university lecturer, an eco-tourism consultant, a travel writer, a criminal lawyer, and a philanthropist. As a young man he explored Africa (where he climbed Kilimanjaro) and the Middle East (where he worked on a kibbutz in Israel), and he roamed the Hippie Trail to Afghanistan and India. In middle age his interest shifted to Southeast Asia and the South Pacific where he worked as a freelance writer for Lonely Planet. He eventually settled in Bellingen on the east coast of Australia where he undertook frequent pro bono work as a lawyer and he became a well-known community activist. RIPPLE is effectively a memoir combined with a travelogue and a social and historical commentary.