Born in Cronulla, ten years into the post WWII baby boom, he spent twenty years growing in the clean air and sterilised politics of an optimistic middle Australia so prevalent in the new suburbs of the Sutherland Shire. He played sport with passion but limited ability and despite representing The Shire at cricket, his goal of a Baggy Green is a dream which he, as yet, refuses to have analysed.
After a series of jobs which taught him much about people but little about himself, he moved to Armidale to nearly die twice in car accidents, learn about learning, fall in love and graduate in drinking. Only one of these was fatal. In Armidale, he began to write.
Peter began a teaching career at Nowendoc in 1981 … and a family in a nearby farmhouse, the same year. Son Chris and daughter Sarah were born after he moved to Baan Baa as Teacher in Charge. At 27 he was a father of two, a lover of one, the star of the local cricket team and a pretty hopeless teacher. He still wrote.
It was back in Armidale at Ben Venue School that he really became a teacher, thanks to a supervisor he didn't like. She didn't like him either but she was good at showing how and he was good at listening. He played cricket on Saturdays and ran it the rest of the week for Waratahs CC - his only passionate affair outside of marriage. Son Sam was born. Peter presented radio shows and wrote for local papers, notably in a weekly column as the satirical “Slasher”, about all things cricket.
The next ten years were lost as a Principal of small schools at Wongwibinda and Tambar Springs and whilst this second half of his teaching career was unquestionably his best teaching (including major teaching awards), the demands of the job had his writing full of desperation and so was family life.
In 2000, his robust world collapsed when he got tired and stopped holding it up. After 14 months of grim existence, he recognised he was at the whim of mental health issues but the right medication and excellent therapy somehow managed to put Humpty back together - but he has since avoided the wall.
Peter writes or edits his way through most weeks, preferring to see himself as a story teller than a poet. Some stories are personal, some observational and some are as old as man’s existence and woman’s discontent. A few are his stories but most are ours, just retold through his vision.
"Six Nines" (Dec 2009) was his first book of poetry, a second collection "Head Full of Whispers" (May 2012) followed and the third "Straightening My Tie", was launched by Eric Bogle in January 2015. A second edition of Six Nines appeared in early 2016 and "While I Wasn't Looking", in March 2017. His fifth and most recent collection, "Poems At A Social Distance" went on sale in February 2022.
Individual poems have previously been published in newspapers and anthologies such as “Semaphore Dancing” – Poets At The Pub (2009) and on the websites of the ABC and The Black Dog Institute. In November 2011, "Self-Portrait of a Difficult Pleasure" was selected for the 1000 Words exhibition at NERAM in Armidale and in January 2012 "When Dougie Did The Double" was selected for the 100 Years of Tests exhibition at the Sydney Cricket Ground. "His Favourite Chair", "Losing Weight By Proxy" and "Susie" from the first collection have all been selected and dramatised on stage at the Armidale Festival of Short Plays. In 2019, his poem “300 Feet” was responded to by the artist Liz Priestly as part of Art, Word, Place, an exhibition that opened at the Tamworth Regional Gallery and then toured NSW and ACT. Two further short plays were performed by the Armidale Drama and Musical Society in 2021. "Respite", a poem commissioned by NERAM, will form part of their Objective Subjective exhibition in 2024.
In March/April 2017, his first full length play, Geoffrey, went onto the stage in Tamworth. A very powerful production by Tamworth Dramatic Society, it disturbed audiences with its portrayal of a man in crisis as his world implodes. By using stripped-back sets and clever lighting, a single defined area of the stage had the audience almost forcibly drawn onto the stage with the actors to endure Geoffrey's ordeal, including auditory hallucinations. Yet, it was a treatise on love not mental health.
Peter also contributed an essay to “Journeys With The Black Dog” (Allen & Unwin 2007) and has written feature articles for the Northern Daily Leader, The Armidale Express, The Weekly (Mudgee), the Daily Examiner (Grafton) and frequently appears in the letters section of the Sydney Morning Herald.
In the period 2013-17, he worked as a volunteer for the Black Dog Institute, combining his life experience and his teaching expertise in delivering community presentations on mood disorders and teenage depression and speaking with groups of medical practitioners about a client's perspective of their services. In January of 2014 and again in October, he was a guest on ABC radio's Conversations with Richard Fidler.
He no longer plays cricket but still hits a ball on a string and sends his hat size and phone number to Cricket Australia every September, just in case. Such optimism is evident in his poetry.
