Where in the world have you felt happiest?
“I’m most at peace at our place in Kangaroo Valley, a couple of hours south of Sydney – we have 12 acres of native Australian semi-rainforest. If I’m five hours into a day of trying to get rid of the weeds from a copse of trees, I’m pretty fucking happy, especially if my kids and my wife are helping me.”
Name a place that lived up to the hype
“Uluru. Most Australians don’t go, but we went, finally, a couple of years ago. It’s hard not to think: It’s a big rock, we’ve seen a squillion photos, how good can it be? But it’s really beautiful. I’m one of the world’s least spiritual people, but I do have a very profound sense of story, continuity of narrative and the tales that humans tell themselves to generate meaning in a meaningless universe. That’s my life’s work. And so, as an Australian, hearing those ancient stories about Uluru is transcendent.”
Perth, Australia
Matt Deakin
And where didn’t live up to the hype?
“I struggle with Midtown Manhattan. I feel overwhelmed by the grotesquerie of the virus of humankind. Standing in Times Square, I don’t go, Yay, I’m in Times Square. I go, No, this is filthy and obscene. This is the sort of city that would generate a man like Donald Trump. It is so shameless in its commercialism. There’s a field of study about how where you live affects your psychology. What I can’t bear about New York is you can never see infinity. You’re always in a tunnel, and you can’t see the stars.”
Describe a travel memory from childhood
“When my sister was only seven months old, my parents decided that we would drive across Australia to Melbourne from Perth, then drive some of the way back, and put the car on the train back across the desert. So we went for a month in a seven-seater Mitsubishi van. Dad had screwed in an oscillating fan and wired it to the battery. Three of us kids slept across the top bunk of the trailer, Mum and Dad in the trailer tent, and my sister in a fold-out cot. Absolutely bonkers.”
Where did you go on your first holiday without your parents?
“My older brother, Dan, took me and my friends Winston and Ben camping and surfing at Smiths Beach, south of Perth. We got up every morning and hit the waves.”