Author: Peter

Do you or your family make any special dishes for the holidays? Christmas in Australia arrives in the middle of summer—long, hot days when the beaches are crowded, cicadas are loud, and markets overflow with seasonal fruit. While much of the world is roasting chestnuts, we’re trying not to roast ourselves. At times like this,…

If you didn’t need sleep, what would you do with all the extra time? If none of us needed sleep, the whole world would tilt on its axis.Cities would become genuinely twenty-four-hour places—not because of the nightlife, but because people simply had more life to live. We’d grab a coffee at midnight without thinking twice.We’d…

Who are your current most favourite people? Sometimes the people influencing you most aren’t the ones you see every day, but the ones whose words you carry quietly in your pocket. If I could send postcards to the thinkers and voices grounding me right now, they might look like this. Postcard to Kate Bowler Dear…

Beach or mountains? Which do you prefer? Why? On the surface, my answer should be simple. I’m Australian, and for over 30 years I’ve lived in beachside suburbs. The ocean has been the backdrop to my days—warm, lively, full of movement. There’s a sense of community at the beach that’s hard to replicate anywhere else.…

What are your family’s top 3 favourite meals? 1. Garlic Sesame Crumbed Chicken with Mango SaladYou always know summer is on its way when the roadside stalls start shouting the news before anyone else can: “Mangoes.  $10 per tray”. In our family, that’s the signal. The starting gun. My wife will inevitably call out, “Mangoes…

What’s your favourite month of the year? Why? November arrives in colour.Jacarandas burst into violet clouds, and lawns disappear beneath a soft, uneven carpet of purple. Every footstep becomes a whisper through petals. The air shifts too—not yet heavy with summer, but warm enough to loosen the shoulders, warm enough to invite the day in.…

What is your favourite place to go in your city? When people ask about my favourite place in Sydney, it’s easy to list the obvious ones. The Harbour Bridge, the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Botanical Garden—everything the postcards promise—are all within a short walk of each other. Add The Rocks, with its historic laneways…

What’s the first impression you want to give people? I still remember the summer of the 2019 bushfires. The smoke had settled over Sydney like a heavy blanket, and news kept coming in about towns under threat. As I followed the fire maps each day, I found myself thinking about where our college students lived,…

What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever found (and kept)? We were walking to school one morning when my friend Robert and I spotted a single banknote sitting on the footpath. No one else was around. To two eight-year-olds, it looked like a fortune — about fifty dollars in today’s money. We hesitated. We could have…

What part of your routine do you always try to skip if you can? My wife calls me a camel. She’s right — I can go long stretches without drinking. There’s always something else to do first: an email to write, a meeting to get to, a thought to finish before it fades. She sometimes…