13 Interests

I will discuss here a number of diverse extra-curricular interests, some of which are ongoing, some of which for reasons, sometimes beyond control, such as age and access, have concluded. Some of these will be more interesting than others, but hopefully they are of collective interest.

Family

My family is my number one interest. I have been fortunate to have been born to a good family, been given every opportunity, and I hope that the same follows me into children and further generations. However I think the rest of this site overall will give the details, so I won't add more here.

Architecture and Town Plans

Having spent my first 25 years living in Adelaide, I was always very biased towards Adelaide as Australia's best designed and most attractive town. But whereas most of those biases remain, living in Canberra for the next 41 years has given me a broader and more neutral perspective. I think all of Australia's 8 capital cities are beautiful places. It is unfair to compare them as there are a lot of different characters in the mix.

I do very favourably regard Adelaide for its design, aesthetics, wide streets, parklands, proximity to the hills, restaurants, pubs and wineries. But I do find the heat in the summer difficult. Sydney I regard as the most arch-typal "Australian" town, mainly because it is the oldest and largest, and especially around the harbour. Brisbane is also "Australian" to me, and its river has character. Both Sydney and Brisbane suffer from traffic difficulties because of the water, though, and having been settled too close to water before planning came into vogue.

Melbourne does not have this problem, because it was well designed with a grid pattern away from the river, like Adelaide. Melbourne I regard as the most "European" of Australian cities, probably because of the trams, which form the basis of the best transport system of an Australian city. And Melbourne's sport facilities leave their marks.

Perth has the water, either the beautiful Swan or the port of Fremantle or the beaches at Scarborough and Cottesloe, and the city exudes the pace generated by the strength of the resources industry. Hobart is beautiful, very similar to New Zealand counterparts such as Wellington, with the mountain and intimate southern maritime atmosphere. And Darwin has the truly tropical atmosphere, giving that very relaxed feeling and it is such an important city.

Which brings me to the remaining capital, Canberra. It is much maligned ("Canberra decided this, decided that"), even though the politicians come from Sydney and Melbourne), there is the image that the city is boring, and the image that Canberra is subsidised by the other tax payers of the country. I have personally suffered negative treatment in other parts of Australia as a Canberran, too many occasions actually, as have many Canberrans.

In fact I wish that the main development of Canberra was not during the 50s and 60s and designed for the motor car, but that is where it ends. Canberra is anything but boring to live in, has great cafe and restaurant precincts, great sports teams, is great for owning a bicycle and has plenty of spirit. It has great restaurant precincts in North Quarter, Manuka, Kingston, Kingston foreshores, Lonsdale Street Braddon, New Acton and Dickson.

But my purpose was not to get too deep into this debate. I have a lot of interest in the design of the city, by Walter Burley (and presumably Marion) Griffin, an architect with a strong mathematical bent, and what might have been or not have been given later changes. It is also a matter of conjecture as to why Frank Lloyd Wright would not speak with Griffin after his success.

Canberra's design has much more than the circles, which tourists often mention. Yes, there are concentric circles, concentric hexagons, concentric octagons, but the backbone seems to be the set of radial lines joining surrounding hilltops, joining at key nodes. I still discover new features, driving along a road and realise there is a mountain top in the direct distance. I keep an early map on a wall in my house, look at it often, and still make new discoveries. There is also a pleasant building architecture, including the Sydney and Melbourne buildings, Old Parliament House, Albert Hall, parts of the ANU, etc.

It is well-known that the plan was changed, sometimes by strong personalities, apparently including King O'Malley, and this annoyed Griffin. I also find the changes annoying, but maybe they are not so bad, as they have left some of the features more subtle, and then maybe more exciting when discovered.

The other feature discussed now is the Y plan and design of the greater city. The Y plan and the different towns, are meant to make public transport more viable. I have no problem with this at this stage, but I do bemoan the design of typical suburban streets in the new towns, which seem to wind endlessly all over the place. I much prefer the straight lines of Griffin, to be particularly found in North Canberra. Straight lines give vistas, which add to the aesthetic pleasures of one's surroundings.

The most exciting development is the almost certain development of a light rail system, which the city will need ultimately but is in early development phase now, with the first phase going from Civic, up Northbourne Avenue and on to Gungahlin. There are many other ideas such as development of Constitution Avenue, as envisaged by Griffin, and possible major stadium adjacent to Civic, where the swimming pool is located, in a similar spirit to the impressive development of Adelaide's Oval.

Squash

I played competitive squash for many years, including first grade in Adelaide and Canberra and represented the Australian Capital Territory in 1972. I have been Vice President of both the South Australian and Australian Capital Territory Squash Rackets Associations.

I played in a first grade grand final in Adelaide in 1971, winning my rubber, and several in Canberra in the 1970s and 1980s, being in the winning Canberra team on three occasions. In 1978 I lived in the UK and was accepted as an entrant in the British Open. I also played in the Australian Open and Amateur Championships, and various state and regional chamionships during the 1970s.

Squash was a major sport in the 1970s. Australia was the world's leading country, with the likes of Geoff Hunt, Ken Hiscoe, Cam Nancarrow and Doug Stephenson, squash courts were always fully booked and the sport was covered weekly in newspapers such as the Canberra Times and Adelaide Advertiser. I was in fact the correspondent for the Canberra Times (unpaid) and I was also one of the three commentators when the Australian Open final, played in Canberra, was telecast live across Australia.

District (top grade) matches in Adelaide were played on Friday nights, with all the lower grade players from the home club contributing to packed galleries of several hundred and a lot of beer consumed in the crowds. The finals were very big and the courts with largest galleries barely managed.

It was a similar situation in Canberra, although matches were played there on Thursday nights so we had to go to work the next morning, but we still had late nights. There was a tremendous amount of what I would call here gamesmanship. By about 1995 I had slipped a grade or two and was starting to get tired of the regimen of the evenings, and retired from competitive squash.

Reading

Reading is certainly one of my interests, but I am not an avid reader, and am rather selective. Ernest Hemingway is my favourite author, and I regard "A Farewell to Arms" as probably my favourite book, despite sad components of the narrative, and interesting because Hemingway himself is likely the character. I sometimes take on one of the classical authors such as Thomas Hardy, but whereas I am a Jack Reacher fan, otherwise I prefer non-fiction, particularly backgrounds to sporting stories or selective historical or political books.

In retirement I have ventured into e-books, using a computer tablet, and usually have several downloaded books, normally of a non-fiction type, which I might be reading in parallel.

Cycling

Other than squash I have used various forms of exercise. Of the three main pursuits, swimming is the most friction free whereas it is also boring. I used to swim for exercise during my peak squash fitness, swimming a kilometre in a session at the AIS pool. Cycling is much more friction-free than running and allows the interest of experiencing the environment. But I admire the bicycle as a machine, how it get move you along efficiently, sometimes exhilaratingly, without fuel.

In retirement I have almost returned to my childhood, where I would ride for kilometres around the flat suburbs of Adelaide. Now I have a similar experience round the northern suburbs and lake in Canberra, and on a normal day I would ride between 5 and 25km.

I only ride in a recreational manner, not for racing, although I do follow the Tour de France and the top racing riders. I also follow the main brands and like the fact that one can buy the same bikes as the racers use if one wanted to spend say $16K. I have two bikes, an Apollo Japanese road bike with high tensile steel frame, which I have had since I used to ride to work in 1982, but in 2015 converted to a hybrid. The other bike is a recently acquired Trek hybrid with aluminium frame and carbon forks. I also have a similar Trek hybrid in Adelaide for when I am staying with Stephanie there and an exercise bike at home for magpie season and bad weather. Adelaide is a great cycling place as well as Canberra, and the Mike Turtur pathway which follows the tramline from the city to Glenelg is truly outstanding, as are other bikeways in Adelaide, particularly for me the one which follows the former Glenelg trainline from Mile End to Glenelg.  For tourists I strongly recommend the River Torrens path which goes between the foothills and the gulf near Henley Beach via the city, in either direction.

Cattle Breeding

We lived from 2001 to 2009 on our own farm about 40 km from Canberra. On this property we bred Murray Grey beef cattle as the Sunny Corner stud.

Cattle Bred

We bred the following registered Murray Greys:

• Sunny Corner Blue X1 (sold as bull)

• Sunny Corner Bruno Y1 (sold as bull)

• Sunny Corner Doris Z1 (sold as bloodstock)

• Sunny Corner Basil Z2 (sold as bloodstock)

• Sunny Corner Ben Z3 (sold as bloodstock)

which were sold to commercial farms. Blue and Bruno, at least, were highly successful as bulls, and all five had pedigrees dominated by forebears from one of the two original Murray Grey Studs, The Glen, on the upper part of the Murray River, where it was noted that Angus bulls mating Shorthorn cows produced grey offspring with excellent meat and character properties. Our stud was Sunny Corner, Keewong was a stud near us. Temar Lotus, who stood at The Glen, was the highest rated Murray Grey bull in Australia at his time.

Elly dries down her calf Bruno shortly after giving birth. The placenta is still there, but not for long. Bruno was a paternal grandson of Temar Lotus and his presence in the district caused major interest among the local Murray Grey farmers. He became a massive individual bull as I last saw him approaching maturity at Gundaroo, maybe weighing more than a tonne. 

Lois with cows Doris (left) and Elly (right) and Doris' bull calf Blue on 30 Dec 2002 while Blue was about to have his first vaccination.

Music

I have completely diverse taste in music. Originally rock when young to the level where I could handle heavy metal at the level of Black Sabbath, also folk, Dylan, country and western, and then classical, Beethoven Mozart, Tchaikovsky and all the main ones. In recent years I have started more to appreciate music (as well as movies) of the 40s and 50s, and in particular jazz in various forms. I am more interested in quality than genre. When young the best concert I attended was a Bob Dylan concert in Adelaide, when most of the audience left after the interval when the Band emerged with Folk Rock. My recent pleasant discovery was attending a performance by Kazakhstan heavy metal band Ulytau, who played at the Opening ceremony of the International Mathematical Olympiad in Astana in 2010.

Athletics

I was a qualified starter with Athletics Australia and for a number of years started at meetings of the Australian Capital Territory Athletics Association. I retired from this in 2001 after moving to a rural property.

Photography

Photography is one of my most important hobbies. It is important to me despite having no formal training, nor great skill nor great cameras. It is important from the personal point of view because it is one of the main ways we have to combat the progress of time. Every photograph freezes that moment in time.

It is not only important for preserving images of people but also to capture landscapes. My favourite topics include religious sites, particularly churches and mosques. Whether one is religious or not, religious sites often are the dominant architectural feature of a town, and so are important in associating themselves as part of the town's image and culture. I have collected many of my own photographs in a religious site collection, and this can be found in Chapter 14.

My first camera was an Agfa Clack, which took black and white film, 8 photographs per film. I eventually graduated through slides, mainly on Agfa cameras, through to 35mm prints, normally on Olympus cameras. When digital came in I bought in 2002 an Olympus 2 megapixel camera, which essentially had the same menuing as for the Olympus 35mm cameras. I graduated through to a 3.2 megapixel, 6 megapixel and eventually to a 14 megapixel Olympus SP compact. In June 2013 I bought a Nikon SLR, with 24 megapixels, two lenses, etc and adapted to it quickly. I am looking forward to even better results now on a number of upcoming travel opportunities, and in 2013 and 2014 these have been substantially very satisfying.

In 2016 I went whale watching off Narooma and started getting an interest in photographing wild life also. I repeated this in 2017 and plan to do this more regularly.

In January 2018 I was in Bali on a cruise where my camera suffered water damage. I replaced this with a Nikon 7000 series camera and am now seeing enhanced outcomes, including a photo of a shy albatross (above) over Paterson Inlet in Stewart Island, New Zealand, which I regard as my best. Professional photographers and camera shops tell me I can't really now get a better camera for landscape and wildlife.