I am a fifth generation Tasmanian. I left my home state as soon as I graduated from university. I started my academic career in England at the National Foundation for Educational Research. I have held academic posts in the University of New England NSW, Monash University, and the Universities of Alberta, Canada, Newcastle NSW, and Hong Kong. All this is narrated in graphic detail in CHANGING UNIVERSITIES.
After I retired from my last position as Professor of Education at Hong Kong University, like the autumn leaf in the Chinese proverb, I fell to my roots in Tasmania, where I live with my wife Catherine. We are both now exercising our right hemispheres, Catherine with several genres of craftwork, me with writing: mainly fiction, some memoir and local history. I have written 6 novels, a collection of short stories, a socio-political history of Tasmania, my academic memoirs See WRITER. Then there are numerous letters to the press and short articles written more in anger than in sorrow See POLITICAL.
We now live in Mount Nelson, 15 minutes from Hobart’s CBD, with fabulous views over the River Derwent (and overlooking the finish line of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race). I had resident wallabies to mow the lawn for me but now they have been replaced by rabbits (uninvited). When I’m writing and need inspiration, I look out of my office window only to be distracted by the view. Maybe writers should work in a windowless cell. Catherine and I married here in a private ceremony in 2008. Our marriage notice had a highly discouraging advertisement on the back:
In retirement, I like to travel within and beyond Tasmania, surprisingly little in mainland Australia, but quite a bit overseas. But now with corona virus and the likely collapse of the cruise ship industry I doubt that we’ll be doing any overseas in the medium term. I’ve been lucky in that an academic, even a retired one, often has cause to travel to nice places: Ireland, Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Canada, USA and Hong Kong; see Travelogues and Photo Gallery.
Apart from writing, I have become increasingly concerned with politics at all levels.