John van Tiggelen was born in Holland, grew up in country Victoria, graduated in science and worked as a tour guide in the Daintree rainforest before turning to journalism.

Since 1998 he has been writing for Good Weekend, the weekend magazine of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. He is the author of Mango Country (Pan MacMillan, 2003), a collection of essays documenting North Queensland, that was short-listed for the Colin Roderick Award for Australian literature.

He lives in Castlemaine, central Victoria, with his wife and five children.