The Hotel Triton is a friendly little hotel near the gates of Chinatown in downtown San Francisco. In that spirit of friendliness they put on a happy hour in the evening for guests. At a loose end, I betook myself down to the lobby for a convivial beverage. Barely had I popped the top on […]
Author Archives: pete
We’re staying in an apartment in the city (of Sydney) for a few days, and decided to take ourselves out to eat. We got really lucky with the “Spicy and chilli restaurant” in George St, on the edge of Chinatown. It serves Hunanese food; lots of offal, seafood, and as promised, hot and flavoursome! We […]
My wife and I lived in a five bedroom house by the beach for twenty five years or so, but sold it when our sons reached adulthood. With the proceeds we bought a nice little cottage closer to the city, and put some money into a hobby farm. When we moved into the cottage we […]
Walking through a back lane at 7.am one morning recently, on our way to our current favourite cafe for an early morning caffeine fix, we were trailing slowly behind a garbage truck, so as no to get too close to the stench. Ahead of us a door opened and a young woman wearing […]
Near our farm in Western Australia grow magnificent red tingle trees (Eucalyptus jacksonii), the only place in the world in which they grow! They grow to 70 metres, and up to 20 metres around and they have a broad buttressed base and beautiful lumps and bumps under their weathered bark, that make you want to […]
When I was a boy, in the late 1950s, I spent every Christmas with my Grandma in a little town called Richmond, in North Queensland. The mighty Flinders River ran through Richmond. Well, not through, but near, a mile distant perhaps. And it didn’t run, but was an empty, sandy, sinuous declivity on the landscape, […]
In the early 1970s, when I was a young, strapping lad, just dropped out of university and fresh out of cash, I took a job as a builder’s labourer at Kings Cross, not the most salubrious part of Sydney. The project in hand was the refurbishment of a run-down restaurant. It was a three-storey building. […]
When I was about seven years old my father bought a labrador retriever, who was a remarkably intelligent dog. His name was Leroy. Remarkably also, he lived for seventeen years. Leroy accompanied anyone who left the house, and insisted on carrying something, a basket, a purse, a beach towel, his lead, anything he could get […]
One afternoon, thirty years ago, when my medical practice was still quite new, a feisty old lady marched through the door and straight into my consulting room. Thumping my desk with her fist, she declared “I want that flu vaccine, young man!” “Certainly,” I replied. “I’m happy to write you a prescription, but you’ll find […]
I could almost have been famous! An awfully long time ago, in 1972, I was approached by a young lady I knew, who worked for Cleo, a new women’s magazine, with a proposition. After swearing me to secrecy, she confided that Cleo was about to publish Australia’s first ever nude male centrefold. The magazine staff had […]
life echoes 