Born into an ever-growing family and raised in the Melbourne beachside suburb of Seaford, Patrick's childhood consisted of footy, floundering, running through tea tree, bone collecting, and ten part harmonies in the family spluttering bright orange VW combi van. Even back then Patrick was writing stories, with the Powerful Patrick series a serious hit with his parents and rabbit Snowball.
Confusion, insecurity and his desire to be Michael J Fox took him down the corporate path. That took him to Melbourne University and seven years later, after a commerce degree and a three-year
stint with a gigantic mining company he realised that he was possibly the world’s worst accountant. That took him to Perth and then back to Melbourne, in pursuit of a career in Sports
Physiotherapy. In 2000 Patrick was qualified and celebrated with a dream job at the Sydney Olympics. He’d found half of his career calling. The other half kept nipping away. Poems for retiring
colleagues, love letters to Lisa – his first girlfriend and wife to be, epic emails of adventures abroad, stories gathered from the confessional physio-plinth. And then: a flood. Patrick’s first
son Noah was born, followed by Reuben and Grace. He’d found his life calling – as a Dad – and with that the second half of his career – as a story teller.
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Born: 4th December 1970
Nationality: Australian
Family: Married to wife Lisa with two sons (Noah and Reuben) and daughter (Grace)
Started writing: Age 4 or 5 (for a good 15 years) and started again when I was about 35.
Reason as a 4year old: to live out my dreams on a page (and so Powerful Patrick was born!)
Reason as an adult: Not much has changed other than my dreams are now for my children (and so 'That's what wings are for' was born.
Favourite Authors: Roald Dahl, Banjo Patterson, Ernest Hemmingway, Patricxk Ness, Khalil Gibram, CS Lewis, and Saint Theresa of Avilla.
Next Book: Tiny Dancer (Due for release 2019)
Hobbies: Toe Wrestling, Bird Tickling, Trampolining, Snorkling, Beat-boxing and strumming my Yamaha guitar.
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(1) Anything by Roald Dahl (especially The Twits, The Witches and George's Marvellous
Medicine
(2) The Iron Man - Ted
Hughes
(3) Storm Boy - Colin
Thiele
(4) The Little Prince -Antoine de
Saint-Exupery
(5) Skellig - David
Almond
(6) A Monster Calls - Patrick
Ness
(7) Warhorse - Michael
Morpurgo
(8) The Treehouse Series - Andy
Griffiths
(9) The Polly and Buster series -
Sally Rippin
(10) Elephant - Peter Carnavas
(1) When the wind changed - Ruth Park
(2) Mulga Bill's Bicycle - Banjo Patterson
(3) How to Catch a Star - Oliver Jeffers
(4) Where the Wild Things Are - Maurice Sendak
(5) The Enormous Crocodile - Roald Dahl
(6) The Gruffalo - Julia Donaldson
(7) Hooray for Fish! - Lucy Cousins
(8) Oh the Places You'll Go - Dr.Suess
(9) Journey - Aaron Becker
(10) The Snail and the Whale - Julia Donaldson