Siebrand Petrusma - veteran of the first E-Course, former CEO of the Bible Society and thorough gentleman – made it to Sydney from Tasmania this past week. And he brought with him a fascinating story about his late wife Carol, a baby grand piano and the most famous of Australia’s classical composers, Peter Sculthorpe.

Carol, from a Tasmanian family of long vintage, and an accomplished musician and singer, went to PNG with Siebrand in 1961, leaving her baby grand with mum and dad. While Carol and Siebrand were fighting the good educational fight at Agarabi in the Eastern Highlands, mum and dad, finding themselves short of a quid and needing a new motor vehicle, flogged the piano. Or to be more precise, they put an ad in the paper advising the community that said piano was for sale. This intelligence was not communicated to Carol, perhaps for obvious reasons.

A 30-something Launceston boy – who, as a child had been severely reprimanded by his piano teacher for not practising, so took to writing music under the bedclothes with a torch – saw the ad, saw the piano and concluded that “it was asking me to play it”.

The young man was Peter Sculthorpe, now approaching 80, one of Australia’s 100 Living National Treasures, one of only four Australians to be made life members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and much honoured in this country as perhaps our greatest composer ever. He has composed at Carol’s piano since.

This morning Siebrand visited the Sculthorpe home in Sydney to see the baby grand. And Peter Sculthorpe sat at the keyboard and played for Siebrand the first piece he had ever composed on it.

Photos: Carol Petrusma with twins Tim and Heather at Taurama Base Hospital, Port Moresby, 20 March 1969 [PNG Post Courier]; Peter Sculthorpe [University of Sydney]