He served a tour of duty with the 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment during the Vietnam War, and on his return was posted to the Balmoral Naval Hospital in Sydney as a welfare officer.
After a few years as a self-employed cabinet-maker, he moved to Roebourne (a small town in the Pilbara), where he was employed as a welfare officer by the state government.
[1] Donovan first stood for parliament at the 1983 state election, but lost to Peter Coyne (the sitting Liberal member) in the seat of Murchison-Eyre.
[2] He was subsequently made deputy chairman of committees in the Legislative Assembly, holding the position until October 1991, when he resigned from the Labor Party to sit as an independent.
[1] Donovan had been a prominent opponent of the federal Labor government's decision to send troops to the Gulf War, although the "last straw" for him before his resignation from the party was the state Labor government's decision to grant land to the fledgling University of Notre Dame Australia, a private Catholic university in Fremantle.