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After High School, I was fortunate enough to become a Technical Assistant at CSIRO Wildlife Research at Gungahlin. My major interest was birdlife and I was a keen aviculturist all my life. At the ripe old age of 18, not that long after leaving Telopea, I decided I wanted to work on larger wildlife and travelled to South Africa.
Work in wildlife conservation has limited opportunities especially when you didn't speak Afrikaans, the Dutch based language over there. I therefore worked as a Surveyor and eventually became a Civil Engineer and worked in the construction field. I was asked to lecture on Australian Parrots, parrots of the world being my obsession at a local bird club. The chairman of the bird club I lectured had a lovely daughter named Kathy and I eventually convinced her to marry me and we have just celebrated our 36th wedding anniversary, poor lass.
We had one daughter, Tracie. and decided to return to Australia in 1983 and bought a house in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast. I then worked in Civil Engineering there, but was offered a position in Darwin as the Engineering Sales guy for Hardie Iplex Plastics suppliers of PVC and Polyethylene pipelines. Not long after, I became manager for the Northern Territory. I had always wanted to work for myself and eventually started a company called Polywelders in 1987 and have been installing pipelines ever since. We moved back to Buderim and have 3 wonderful grandchildren. My hobby is now an obsession and I write articles for Australian Aviculture magazine as well as Papageien in Germany.
I have written a book on Lories and Lorikeets, a form of parrot, and have been invited to lecture in many countries around the world and will be in the USA in April 2010 doing the same. I have produced 4 DVD's on birdlife and do a lot of travel, photographing with both a DSLR and HD video.
My work has been published world wide and I am very interested in the conservation of parrots and for that matter all wildlife. If you are interested in seeing some of my images have a look at www.parrotimages.com.au.
I look forward to hearing about other past Telopeans, particularly in my year of 1968. I think this is a great idea.
Kind Regards,
Peter.