I was composing before I realised I was a composer. It came more or less naturally. There were a couple of old ladies lived next door to me, and I frequented their house more than I did my own, because it had all those marvellous things in that that old ladies do have. And they had a piano, and I used to play around with that; they showed me how to read music and I used to play to them.

I had great difficulties learning to play initially because I could not think rhythmically properly, although it's an even-paced rhythm, I was not phrasing properly, I was too Western. It took me a while to learn to think in needed form, and the only way I could learn was just by ear.

The one thing I never did, I was never strict in my techniques. I might have pretended in the past at times that I did work serially, or something like that, but I never did, it was always I let my ear tell me what to do.

I was not happy as a traveller, I did not feel really at home anywhere I went, even in Spain which was the most I felt at home, I still was a foreigner. I missed Australia, and I can't tell why. It's just this is what I grew up with and this is the things I wanted to make meaning of in my life.

I've always worked at the piano; I like to hear what I'm doing, I like the sound, to hear the actual sound. I get bored just looking at a manuscript.

There's only just so much you can do; I prefer to do only a couple of things and go to some depth in them.

I was composing before I realised I was a composer. It came more or less naturally. There were a couple of old ladies lived next door to me, and I frequented their house more than I did my own, because it had all those marvellous things in that that old ladies do have. And they had a piano, and I used to play around with that; they showed me how to read music and I used to play to them.