Cameron graduated from the University of Western Australia in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts (Honours, 1st class) in Anthropology and Philosophy. After three years as a welfare worker, he embarked on a PhD in Anthropology at Charles Darwin University in the Northern Territory. Fieldwork on Ngamanbidji Station, an Aboriginal-owned cattle station in the western Victoria River region, was the basis for his thesis on the moral subtext of Aboriginal oral history. During his time as a PhD candidate, Cameron worked as a consultant anthropologist on Aboriginal site surveys and land claims in Western Australia and the Northern Territory. On moving to Adelaide in 1999, he worked for State Records of South Australia, then for a communications company, Ecocreative, while simultaneously establishing himself as a writer of history, short stories, film scripts and a novel, First Person Shooter, which was optioned by Factor30Films in 2017. Since 2010, Cameron has worked in various roles with the University of South Australia and is currently employed as Lecturer in UniSA Creative.