IT’S always interesting to see your city through someone else’s eyes. In a new monthly column, ex-Sydneysider and new Bathurst resident STUART PEARSON will be talking about what he thinks makes this city special and offering some ideas for the future.
Allow me to introduce myself.
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My name is Stuart Pearson and together with my wife, Ingrid, we’re new arrivals to your beautiful city of Bathurst. I hope that you will continue to welcome us into your community and perhaps, if we’re very lucky, we may be able to call ourselves “Bathurstians” at some stage in the future.
I have been invited to write a monthly column on what a newcomer such as myself might see are the positive aspects of Bathurst, using a fresh pair of eyes to observe what is good about the present city and what could be an even better future.
But first, I should tell you a bit more about myself and then why Ingrid and I decided to move to Bathurst.
There have been several careers in my life. I started as a policeman in the NSW Police Force where most of my time was spent as a police prosecutor.
I then had a decade as a senior master in a private school on Sydney’s North Shore.
That was followed by 10 years in both the private and public sector as a strategist, adviser and business manager (I think a 10-year pattern was developing).
Finally, I transformed into an author and spent the past 10 years writing a number of biographies and family histories.
Ingrid is a different kettle of fish. She studied architecture at university almost 50 years ago and has remained a professional architect, which she loves, ever since.
So, why did we come to Bathurst? The journey starts with a person who was born and bred on the North Shore of Sydney gradually falling out of love with the metropolis he’d called home for almost 60 years.
Sydney had become too congested, too crowded and more aggressive.
One day, I realised Sydney had become a young person’s city with all its nightlife and ambitious professionals obsessed with real estate and living a hectic lifestyle.
In this fast-paced international city, I had become redundant and was no longer needed.
Personally, I felt that I still had the capacity to contribute, but obviously I’d have to find somewhere else to live.
Ingrid and I developed a number of criteria we wanted to see in any new location, then started plotting them against a dozen possible cities stretching from Queensland, through NSW and into Victoria.
We looked at statistics on health care, crime rates, economic indicators, climate, distance from the nearest capital city, infrastructure and a number of other categories too numerous to mention.
It was a process of elimination in which potential locations were whittled down when they failed to reach our requirements. Eventually, the list was reduced to two locations – Bathurst and Ballarat. Ingrid and I spent time in both cities.
Bathurst came out on top and, in the process, captured our hearts and imagination.
I hope my comments from time to time about some of the things I see that are positive about Bathurst will resonate with you. As well, I hope to offer a few ideas that could make Bathurst even better in the future.
Christopher Morgan of Abercrombie House has said that this city is entering a second “Golden Age” of prosperity. I agree totally.
In my mind, Bathurst is brilliant!