Everything, everywhere with everyone – where creativity and culture belong

As long as we remember them, they are still with us. Increasingly people I have known for a long time seem to be dying - once we went to parties, now we go to funerals. Earlier this year I was notified that a friend and mentor, Wallace McKitrick, who I seemed to have known over my whole adult life, had died. When I heard there was to be a memorial in Adelaide, I booked my flight straight away. There are some moments in this life you just can't miss.

As I flew I reflected that I’ve travelled around much of Australia, never realising that beneath the landscape flashing past, I was crossing from one country to another, with languages changing like the colour and shape of the grasses or the trees. The parallel universe of Australia's own original languages is an exciting world in which, after many decades of sporadic contact, Wallace and I finally caught up again.

Labour Day march, Adelaide 1984.

Many forms, one cockatoo
Wallace had many different forms, while underneath remaining true to himself, but also proving he was able to remake himself. He was most recently Wallace McKitrick. At one time – a long time ago – he was Peter Hicks, and at one stage, he was also Joseph the Talking Cockatoo.