He accompanied Andrews on a series of expeditions through the fragmented China of the early 20th century into the Gobi Desert and Mongolia.

In 1933, Shackelford and George Dromgold traveled to the Great Barrier Reef and Papua, spending three months at Fiji.

The group spent three and a half months at Para, at the mouth of the Amazon, usually within a day's journey of the city, so that they could return to civilization for the night.

They ran out of imported food and had to subsist for five days on moldy doughnuts filled with small worms and on chickens which seemed to be 90 percent vulture.

[3][4] Shackelford's later career included work in The Bells in Old Town (1946, Klockorna i Gamla sta'n was the original Swedish title).