A Sliding Doors Reflection

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If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

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To be honest, I’m happy where I am.
Sydney has been home for most of my life—its light, its seasons, its familiar rhythms.
But every now and then, the imagination wanders.
I find myself thinking in parallel lines, picturing the other lives that might have unfolded if one decision, one opportunity, had tilted a little differently.

Not alternate universes, really.
Just the other Peters who could have existed.

1. The Sydney Peter — The Anchor Life

This is the life I’m living now, and the one I’ll likely keep living.
Thirty years on the Northern Beaches leaves a mark on you.
I know those headlands the way you know an old friend’s face—every curve, every change, every reaction.

We have a modest apartment two hundred metres from the beach.
Across the road is a park—nothing fancy, just a good open space to throw a ball for the dog.
Down at the southern end of the beach there’s a designated off-leash area where dogs can run free, bounding in and out of the surf as if joy were a simple, physical thing.

I imagine walking those stretches again, dog running ahead, the sea already awake and eager.

There’s comfort here. A sense that life has settled into something solid and generous. If this is the whole story, I’m content.

And yet, in another timeline…

2. The Northern Rivers Peter — The One Who Stayed

In another life, I never came back to Sydney after living for three years on the Northern Rivers.

There is still something in me that leaps when I see that landscape.
It’s a physical reaction—like recognition, or memory stored deeper than memory.

That version of me would know the smell of rain before it arrived.
He would learn the names of rivers that don’t make it onto maps.
He would be shaped by stillness, slowness, and the quiet hum of country towns that hold both beauty and hardship together.

I think he would be gentler in some ways, more weathered in others.
He would belong to that place with a kind of loyalty that only grows when you stay.

And then there’s the third version…

3. The Re-wilding Peter — The Steward of Land

This is the timeline where I buy acreage instead of a beachside apartment.
Somewhere inland. Somewhere needing repair.

I picture this version of me walking out each morning with a mug of coffee, scanning the land for what needs care.
He would plant trees, watch them take root, and track the slow return of birds and animals whose habitats have been stripped back.

This Peter is driven by hope more than nostalgia.
He believes land can heal.
He believes people can heal with it.

There’s a deep pull here—something vocational, something about stewardship and restoration. A life shaped not by the sea, but by soil.

And then, of course, the dreamscape…

4. The Tasmanian Peter — The One Who Chose Wonder

This is the romantic version of me—the one who falls for the old streets of Hobart, the untouched wild of the Southwest, the vast hush of the Tarkine.

He lives with cold mornings, historic sandstone, and the kind of wilderness that reminds you how small you are.
He loves the beauty but wrestles with the distance—from old friends, familiar places, long-standing belonging.

Tasmania is a dream many Australians hold: rugged, elemental, somehow truer than the mainland.
In this timeline, I chase that dream, knowing full well that loving a place and living in a place aren’t always the same thing.

What These Lives Teach Me

When I let myself imagine these parallel lives, I realise the question “Where would you live?” is really a question about belonging, desire, and the pieces of ourselves we leave scattered across landscapes.

Sydney anchors me.
The Northern Rivers shaped me.
The re-wilding dream calls to the steward in me.
Tasmania stirs my imagination.

Each life is true in its own way.
Each life reveals something I love.

But in this timeline—in the life I actually inhabit—I am grateful.
Grateful for the home I have, the people I know, the landscapes that have held me, and the ones that still whisper from the edges of memory.

And maybe that’s the real answer:
Not choosing one place, but acknowledging all the places that have quietly impacted me.