Alan Kyle was a good friend of Michael Hill (q.v.). At the age of fourteen, he left his family and followed the Hill family as they went cotton picking in Queensland. When he was fifteen, he went to Brisbane with Hill and they got jobs at the Councils making roads. At this time Kyle started professional fighting, and he joined the Jimmy Sharman's Boxing troupe when he was seventeen. Kyle travelled the country boxing professionally with the troup for a while but moved on to do labouring work in Mt Isa and Darwin.
In Darwin he partnered up with a man who killed crocodiles and barramundi for a living. Kyle hunted crocodiles, from Darwin across to Derby, before selling the skins back in Darwin. He then worked in Derby for twelve months, building roads, before heading to Port Hedland where he found contract work on the wharfs.
For his twenty-first birthday, he went back to Brisbane. From there, Kyle worked various jobs: operating heavy machines, crewing on fishing boats, bar work, costal seaman, mustering, and buffalo shooting. He has learned a range of skills from different industries but it was not until he was forty-two that Kyle felt confident enough to get serious about his sailing career and obtain his Master Class Ticket including correspondence courses in navigation.
