SUZANNE: Hi Piers. As a widely travelled mainstream journalist of long-standing, you have a high profile outside the Bays community. Yet – and perhaps I’m just speaking for myself – we don’t know a lot about you from a more personal perspective. So, thank you very much for participating in this Q&A interview. Could you please start by telling us a little about yourself?
PIERS: I’m a 72-year-old father of two daughters who is blessed with two grandchildren. I am most fortunate to have lived an eventful life, during the course of which I was invited to spend a weekend on Pittwater 53 years ago. Forty-four years ago, I brought my wife here and 29 years ago we managed to buy a home in Towlers Bay.
SUZANNE: Piers, that’s great, thank you. But I think you’re being a little stingy with your introduction. Are you sure you don’t want to add a few more words?
PIERS: Suzanne, I’m used to writing to deadlines. Here are a few more paragraphs:
I was born in New Guinea and came to rural WA as a child, one of three sons, and we later had a sister. I am ashamed to admit I was a disruptive student and apologise to any of those unfortunates who tried to teach me. I only paid attention to disciplines I liked, history, mathematics, French and Latin and English and woodwork. I was thoroughly disciplined by teachers of other subjects.
With an incomplete matriculation, I went jackerooing, then worked on the Mt Newman railway before taking a cadetship in journalism. That launched a career which took me from Perth to Melbourne, Sydney, New York, London, Adelaide, Melbourne again, Washington and then home to Towlers Bay.
I met my wife, another Suzanne, in Newport, Rhode Island, where she was a professional sailor and we married whilst living on a houseboat in Connecticut during a freezing winter. She was then working as a sailmaker but returned to practise law in Manhattan and later in Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne before starting a tourist company specialising in those interested in local Aboriginal culture.
Her perseverance through many moves and many absences on my part should earn her a special place in any shrine to marriage.
SUZANNE: What a marvellously edifying and entertaining introduction. Ok, question time, please. What is your idea of perfect happiness?
PIERS: A decent library. A complete kitchen. The company of intelligent articulate people, literacy helps, and an ability to discuss without rancour any topic over a thoughtfully prepared meal.
SUZANNE: What is your greatest fear?
PIERS: The groupthink that pervades the ever-growing bureaucracy and the unwillingness of swathes of the population to confront the descent into innumeracy and illiteracy.
SUZANNE: What is the trait you most dislike in yourself?
PIERS: I find I must check myself when dealing with bureaucrats who clearly don’t understand the tasks they are employed to perform. Without being patronising, I’m actually pleased when I manage to help someone on the other end of a phone or across a counter understand the deficiency in their training and am able to assist them perform their job to their greater satisfaction.
SUZANNE: What is the trait you most dislike in others?
PIERS: Wilful ignorance displayed in the groupthink of social media echo chambers.
SUZANNE: Which person (living or deceased) do you most admire, and why?
PIERS: I admire so many musicians, artists and skilled tradesmen that I could not nominate one person above another. “Cometh the hour, cometh the man”, we see many instances throughout the course of history where in a crisis an individual emerges who galvanises a population (Churchill comes to mind, or Roosevelt, Kennedy perhaps) but the people later forget – as Harold Nicolson wrote in his diary of Churchill “Once the open sea is reached, we forget how we clung to the pilot in the storm.”
SUZANNE: Which person (living or deceased) to you most despise, and why?
PIERS: Historically Adolf Hitler is a standout for the sheer evil that he encouraged the German people to follow, Joe Stalin, obviously; currently, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping for their grotesque claims of humanity as they commit murder and genocide.
SUZANNE: What is your greatest achievement?
PIERS: Others can judge but I’m pleased to have served as president with the West Pittwater firies when we convinced the state government we needed a fire boat, not more fire trucks; I’m not totally satisfied that the parking issue has been resolved but some progress was made when I served on the WPCA when Pittwater was a separate council, I’m glad the high voltage link to the Western Foreshores which I argued with the state government for is almost completed giving greater energy security to those living in Elvina, Lovett and Towlers, and I am pleased to see that the lantana that grew in profusion along the Towlers track below the Youth Hostel hasn’t -re-established itself to the extent it was back in 1993.
SUZANNE: What is your greatest regret?
PIERS: Like many active parents, I regret not having spent much more time with my children as they were growing up as parents are able to do today.
SUZANNE: Which talent would you most like to have?
PIERS: Any talent would be a blessing. I’d like to be able to draw and paint or play a musical instrument (all solitary pursuits but I’d get great satisfaction from the achievement).
SUZANNE: What is your motto?
PIERS: I don’t have one but I always liked the quote Nikos Kazantzakis gave to Zorba: “I hope nothing. I fear nothing. I am free.”
SUZANNE: I would, of course, like to ask a final question that teases out of you your greatest achievement outside of the Bays, but I expect you’ll demur. Instead, I’ll ask about music: what kind(s) of instruments would you like to be able to play? And two related questions, please: is it too late to start, and why?
PIERS: No, I’m pleased to have been in senior media positions. I know that the editorial positions I was responsible for helped change things for the better in South Australia and Victoria and that my input into UK thinking on the Maastricht Agreement has been justified.
I am always pleased when current journalists, and I don’t think Adele Ferguson or Emma Alberici would mind my naming them, give me credit for recognising their abilities and giving them their first jobs. There have been others and some mistakes, but overall, a better than average judgement of character.
As for instruments, maybe something as simple as a recorder to reacquaint myself with reading music and from then who knows. I think it would be wonderful to follow a score knowledgeably. As for being too late, best answered by the potentially suffering neighbours.
SUZANNE: My neighbours can only wish for the gentle sound of a recorder wafting on the breeze. Instead they have to endure full-throated singalongs. Actually, you must join us sometime because I believe you can sing. In the meantime, thank you again, Piers. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed our interaction.
Note: This Q&A was adapted from Antionette Faure’s 1886 questionnaire. It was made famous by its first contributor, Marcel Proust, and is now known as the Proust Questionnaire. Of course.
Suzanne Plater.