It's wonderful to be in contact after all these years, and I'd like to thank Ella for making the effort to find me and, by the look of it, others. I'm sad that I won't make the ANZAC Day bushwalk, but glad it's not actually happening on ANZAC Day (I don't think they ever did!).

For your amusement, you might like to know that I sang in a choir, for the first time in about 15 years, about 4 weeks ago, on the day I received the first message from Ella. I am in a community choir associated with my son's school (Brisbane Grammar) and we are singing bits of the Faure requiem as well as some junk (O sifuni mungu, which is not bad, and some pop stuff, which is). I have discovered that I have forgotten how to sight sing (well. I reckon I once could) and have lost lots of vocal range. I think I am almost a monotone, rather than a baritone!

Back in the 1970's I sang in two small and fairly good choirs at the University of Queensland -- the Renaissance Singers and University Pro Musica. They are both now defunct, and I have learnt from recent emails that UNCS is too (when did that happen??). I wonder whether it's too late for me to leave the Grammar Community Choir and thus save it from a similar fate.

I have done nothing but work in academia (and, in these days of budget stringencies it does start to seem like nothing but work!). I have earned a little over the years from somewhat rare consultancies, but not enough to get excited about (or, for that matter, to make early retirement a particularly attractive prospect). I moved in 1971 (while still in UNCS) from mathematics to higher education research and development (specialising in teaching and learning generally -- including assessment) and there I have remained ever since. You can see from my Web pages what I have done and what my academic interests are.

I moved to Brisbane at the start of 1974 with Josephine (who comes from the Netherlands) and we married in the Netherlands in December 1997. She is the pharmacist at the University of Queensland School of Veterinary Science. We have a son named David who is 15 1/2 and wants to be a Civil Engineer and who does not sing in choirs (nor does, or has, Josephine) and a 2 year old dog, Nick, who is a poodle/cocker spaniel cross (sometimes called a "spoodle"). Nick also does not sing in choirs, 'though his volume can be impressive.

We live in a comfortable, reasonably spacious but totally characterless house in the suburb of Kenmore. Kenmore is green and leafy, but, as it dates from about the 1950's, not particularly trendy. For us it has the advantage that it is only 10--15 minutes drive to the University where we both work, and that we can have a nice garden. We have the kind of house/suburb combination that's probably worth $700,000 in Sydney (full brick lower story, brick veneer upper, 4 brs, leafy suburb, pool, 15 mins drive to city, quite n'hood. cls schls, tpt --- hell, first to see will buy!), but only $250,000 in Brisbane. One of the reasons we are unlikely ever to move to Sydney or Melbourne. There's also a good gym ("The Indooroopilly Workout") between home and work and, believe it or not, we actually go there. Our other recreations are gardening, going to art galleries, going to concerts, and walking the dog. Taken together with the demands of our son, that make a fairly full agenda -- although I still manage to do a lot of reading.

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