"I can't stay in a job and keep turning the handle," is his explanation for his penchant to move on once he's accomplished the job he's been commissioned to achieve.
Nor has his life been dedicated solely to academia and authorship. He's been a part-time Kiwi soldier, a Black Watch regiment member, yes, he did wear a kilt "it goes with the territory", and served in Britain's Parachute Regiment.
Each was in partnership with his school teaching years and ended when he turned 30. By then, he'd served in Cyprus at the time the Greek-Cypriot struggle for the island's ownership was at boiling point.
Reynold's career facets are quite some achievement for a boy from Northland who, and here comes the drop-out explanation, was told by a teacher he'd be better off elsewhere.
"He drop-kicked me out because I was, at best, a precocious pest."
Reynold got his own back, enrolling at North Shore Teachers Training College. Two years on, he was back in the Far North, fronting a class at Moerewa. "I was a surfie, I said I'd go anywhere near a beach."
An inspector cut his Moerewa time short. "He caught me speaking Maori to a pupil, it was a huge no-no then and I knew bloody well you [teachers] couldn't do it but being brought up in the Far North I was fairly bi-lingual."
For his heinous te reo crime, Reynold was "deported" to Kaitaia "to stop me going native".
When he met Nicki, she was already well-travelled, Reynold wasn't.
He rectified that by joining a brother in the navy, then based in Scotland. While teaching in Dunfermline, he joined the Black Watch before marrying Nicki in Leeds, her home city, with two Back Watch pipers in attendance. "I married up," he insists.
The newly-weds headed south. Reynold signed on as principal of one of five cluster schools in Basingstoke, a newly-established post-war town.
During that period, he completed a BA via the Open University, specialising in maths and management.
"The next step was to advance my education by post-graduate study into leadership."
He discovered a job that would let him do that in Perth "the Western Australia one", teaching maths to kids from elite families. That's where his blunt "boring as bat****" quote slots in. He hated it, moving south to the delightfully named Manjimup, teaching maths, playing cricket and studying from afar for a Masters through the University of New England (NSW).
His thesis won him a high distinction and a return to Perth, designing teacher leadership training programmes. That was until an invitation came from Melbourne's Monash University to teach educational leadership. With a PhD in his sights, he physically transferred to the University of New England, obtained his goal and taught for seven years before becoming the University of Tasmania's sub-dean.
Auckland University poached him specifically to help improve its teaching quality.
"Initially, I was met with huge hostility ... but we got results, teaching improved, enrolments increased."
In 2002, it was suggested he apply for Waiariki's top spot, its financial state was dire.
"It couldn't pay its bills. I pulled together a team of outstanding people, specialists in their fields in the academic and corporate worlds, it took us 3 years to get back into the blue."
Abu Dhabi University was his next challenge, skyrocketing the roll from 400 to 4000 in two years. "Every time a Middle East trouble spot blew up, we had a heap of enrolments from there."
Nicki had remained in Rotorua so it was home briefly before the itchy-footed Reynold was off to East Timor, helping reconstruct the education system.
Since then, there've been other jobs, including three months a year from 2009-2012 in Cornwall assisting set up school-based integrated health centres. He crows that the project was "pinched" from New Zealand, Rotorua in particular .
Around all this, his academic work at Macquarie University included, he's penned numerous academic papers and the extensive research which preceded writing his grandmother's biography Lovers and Husbands and What-not. Another on his father, who helped found the Social Credit League, is close to release.
Last year, Reynold stood unsuccessfully for the district council. He acknowledges he didn't campaign as hard as he could have.
"At the time, I was heavily engaged in the Far North helping, successfully, to tip out a couple of under-performers."
Does this man ever sleep? "Yes, but I guess I always have to have something to do; a challenge."
REYNOLD MACPHERSON
Born: Kaitaia, 1946.
Education: Kaitaia Primary and College, North Shore Teachers College, assorted international universities.
Family: Wife Nicki, two daughters, two sons, three grandchildren.
Interests: Family, gardening, golf, reading, "researching and writing, developing new ways of thinking and creating knowledge, there are still a lot of agendas bubbling away in the background."
Personal Philosophy: "Just keep learning."
