David – “I moved up here 22 years ago, living in Lennox Head but working in Lismore the whole time. I tell some of my coastal friends how good it is here and a lot don’t believe it. Maybe it’s their loss! I remember when I first came here, I’d see things that made me laugh. I’d tell my friends that are still back in the big law firm in Sydney about the characters we have here, all of whom are interesting to me and people in Lismore accepted those characters in my view. Instead of looking them up and down they rejoiced in the fact that they were different, so the diversity of the place is a huge attraction for me. I’ve been a solicitor since July 86, worked in the big smoke, then London…my wife’s from this area so we moved here. All my kids have grown up here, one of them was born at Lismore Base and have all gone to high school in Lismore.
In the cultural side of things I’m a big supporter of the Art Gallery, I’m involved with Norpa and I happen to be the chair now so I’m lucky to have that involvement. It’s great! ‘The Railway Wonderland’ last year was fantastic and the one we did a couple of years ago, ‘My Radio Heart’, that brought a tear to a lot of peoples eyes.
More and more so I love just being in the natural environment, in a physical way. For our holidays we often go to developing countries and we like to get out to the non tourist places. My wife Sharne and I not long got back from Central America where we cycled 500kms through Nicaragua, Panama and Costa Rica. I saw a crocodile for the first time and I also saw a Toucan.
We do do lots of bushwalking in Tasmania, we did the overland trip as a family early this year which goes past Cradle Mountain. We love exercise but in more unusual places I guess. Two years ago we did a long walk called the Tour Mont Blanc, which went from Chamonix, through 3 countries and you climb all these mountains as part of the walk. It took 12 days, into Courmayeur in Italy.
This year with the same group we are doing Coast to Coast. There’s 16 of us, 8 couples and we are all friends. So we go from St Bees in The Lakes District in the UK and it ends at Robin Hood Bay. The trip is 16 days and we walk over 500kms.
People always get me confused with John Page. John’s a lawyer too though these days he lectures at uni. They are good friends of ours. Often we are both at the art gallery and I was one of the subjects in the last Portrait Prize. Gary Murphy, the GM at the council on opening night saw the portrait, he musn’t have read the blurb and he went up to John and said ’I love that portrait of you!’ and he said ‘It’s not me, its David!.’ We are both tall with lots of grey hair,
Lismore has a lot of great people and great food. I love the markets too not only for the quality but the social aspect. Lismore’s good like that.”