Mr Ranford's retirement ends a 43-year career which has spanned periods in the public and private sectors of the resources arena with the Western Australian and Commonwealth governments and international mining companies.

Perth born and educated, Mr Ranford had wanted to become a chemist, but instead became a geologist who ended up helping make Western Australia the country's premier minerals and petroleum State and putting it firmly on the international resources investment radar screens.

The chance to travel convinced the University of Western Australia (UWA) undergraduate that geology was the path to follow, and his first job in the resources sector was a three-month spell as a mine geologist with Western Mining Corporation at its Copperhead mine at Bullfinch and Frasers Mine at Southern Cross.

During another UWA vacation, Mr Ranford worked at CRA's Rum Jungle uranium mine in the Northern Territory as an open pit supervisor.

"My introduction to what rough and tough mining life was all about was on my first night at the Rum Jungle mining camp. I was greeted by the diamond drilling foreman, with whom I was sharing a room, warning me in a gruff voice that he slept with a loaded .303 rifle beside him with the safety catch off," Mr Ranford said.

While at University, Mr Ranford was awarded a Bureau of Mineral Resources (BMR) cadetship to do an Honours year at UWA after which he joined a BMR field team and spent the next six years studying and mapping the geology and resource potential of central Australia's Amadeus Basin.

It was during this period that he met surveyor Len Beddell of Gunbarrel Highway fame, who was establishing a network of tracks through central Australia to service the Woomera rocket range.

In 1965, he joined giant United States miner, the Anaconda Company, and with literally a night in which to sleep on an invitation to go to work in South America, Mr Ranford had his wanderlust fulfilled further.

He, his wife and two young children were soon on their way to New York for intensive Spanish language training before being sent to Chile and Peru where he worked as a project geologist and mine geologist.

Eventually it was back to Australia as Anaconda's Chief Geologist and Exploration Manager responsible for a team of 90, including 20 geoscientists at its Australian subsidiary based in Kalgoorlie.

In 1975, Mr Ranford renewed his association with the Commonwealth public service in which he was to remain for the next 13 years - first as the BMR principal mineral economist and commodity specialist for uranium, nickel, cobalt and general energy matters.

Two years after rejoining BMR, and after a six-week live-in Commonwealth Public Service Board's executive development scheme program at the University of New South Wales' School of Management, Mr Ranford was assigned for work experience to the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Trade and Resources and National Development and Energy.

He was appointed to the position of First Assistant Director at BMR in 1982 and remained with the Burea until 1988 when he accepted the position of Deputy Director of the Geological Survey of WA. In 1988, he received an Australia Day Award from the Commonwealth Government for "outstanding contribution to the Bureau of Mineral Resources".

Two years later, Mr Ranford was promoted to the position of Assistant Director General of the Department of Mines and in 1997 became Director General of the Department of Minerals and Energy.

While his career has been studded with highlights, Mr Ranford says some of the more recent highlights include encouraging and facilitating the wider use of computers within the Geological Survey, the introduction of the Tengraph system, seeing the development of e-commerce within the Department, the passage of the Mines Safety and Inspection Act in 1994 and introduction of the Safety Case regime in the petroleum industry during the 1990s.

But he acknowledges that many of these far reaching changes were the result of efforts by a whole range of excellent people with whom he has worked in what is now the Department of Mineral and Petroleum Resources.

Mr Ranford says his greatest challenge while with the Department has been to improve the interface between the technical experts and those responsible for the development and implementation of policy in Government.

And while he is sad to leave the Department, he admits that it will be good to have a change and hopes he will be able to continue to undertake work related to the resources sector in Western Australia.

In 2000, Mr Ranford was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering for his contribution to resources exploration and development in Australia.