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My friend Tony Barnett, who has died aged 81, was one of the hardy survivors of the 1960s counterculture and an inveterate traveller who began his adventures on the hippy trail in 1962, setting off overland to Morocco.

Even in much later life he was still travelling for months at a time through India, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Laos with a kit bag weighing less than 10kg. It was on such a trip, in Sri Lanka, that he fell ill with pneumonia and died shortly afterwards.

A science teacher by trade, Tony taught in various London schools across a 30-year career, travelling in the long holidays and in extended periods between jobs. After retirement he worked as a science technician at King’s College London, helping to train young teachers.

Born in Kettering, Northamptonshire, to Daniel, a commercial artist, and Nancy (nee Gates), a housewife, Tony grew up in Hampstead, north London, where he attended William Ellis grammar school, and where he and I became friends. As a teenager he joined the Aldermaston marches and became a regular at Hampstead Young Socialists meetings, as well as at the local Witch’s Cauldron coffee bar, a gathering place for aspiring bohemians.

Travel was his great passion. In 1962 and again in 1963 he journeyed to Morocco in search of adventure. Further long trips took him through Istanbul, Beirut, Lebanon and, in 1965, overland to Afghanistan, where a cholera outbreak trapped him until he was repatriated via the British embassy. He later rode his motorcycle to Morocco, drove across the US, and later made diving trips to the Red Sea, Indonesia and the Maldives.

Meanwhile, after a period working in various jobs, including as a motorcycle courier in London, Tony built a career as a science teacher. Trained at St Mark and St John’s College, Chelsea, he later took an Open University degree in physics and taught in a number of London schools, including at Hampstead comprehensive, where I was a teacher alongside him.

His life was marked by stark contradictions and formidable willpower. He experimented with opiates in the 60s and battled heroin addiction for more than a decade, yet never allowed it to interfere with his teaching. In the mid-70s he quit abruptly, and decades later, when warned by doctors about his drinking, he gave up alcohol just as dramatically, never touching a drop for the last 20 years of his life. He joined the Emin, a mystical cult, in the 70s, but abandoned it when he grew cynical about its organisers.

To his friends Tony seemed indestructible – a force of nature whose optimism, humour and loyalty enriched countless lives.

He married Maggie Gearson in 1969, and they had a son, Julius, before Maggie’s death from an accidental methadone overdose in 1971. In addition Tony fathered a daughter, Jessica, as a sperm donor to two friends who wanted a child, and he kept in contact with her throughout his life.

He is survived by Julius and Jessica.