Wild, honourable and loved: The Age farewells its man of letters

Peter Anthony called himself a comma mechanic. The job description is classic Anthony: wry, self-deprecating and such a clever turn of phrase you can’t help but think, “Damn, I wish I thought of that.”

It was also true. In his editing roles at The Age, most recently shepherding letters, Anthony fine-tuned a hell of a lot of syntax.

“He used to say he was saving the world, one comma at a time,” says Grace Anthony, one of his four children.

Anthony was still impassioned about words in his final days before he died of gastric cancer. (His description of his illness was, of course, so much more evocative: “My stomach is like a relief map of the Himalayas.”)

When old friend and fellow fungi forager and language lover David Trounce visited towards the end, they discussed Anthony’s storied life, his greatest source of joy (his children all returning to live in Melbourne), and, yes, grammar: should the “r” in Aussie rules be capped?

But as passionate as Anthony was about language, he was more passionate about people.

He developed relationships with Melbourne’s most prolific letter writers – “Angry of Alphington, Furious of Fitzroy,” he used to quip, “Happy of Heidelberg just doesn’t write in.”

Regular letter writer Margaret Callinan (Heated of Hawthorn perhaps?) recalls Anthony ringing her to check she was happy with changes he had made in the editing process. “He made you feel like a person and not just some nutcase who writes letters to the editor,” Callinan says.

Anthony was many things to many people: journalist, chef, father, brother, son and friend; erstwhile rock ‘n’ roll musician in New York (Borders Books and Music once described him as Lou Reed meets Pete Seeger); purveyor of truffles with childhood pal Simon Friend; and raconteur with a sense of the absurd.

His children called him Mon Pierre; his Age colleagues called him Pants (a nickname derived from his computer logon); and Friend, who knew him from his primary school days, called him Ants.

Anthony grew up in Lakes Entrance, the son of newsagents who worked seven-day weeks. He went to Melbourne Grammar, but woe betide anyone who pegged him as a silvertail with privilege.

“The truth is slightly left of centre,” Anthony used to say. “There’s a historical reason for that, and that is the working class has only been contributing to written history for the last 300 to 400 years. To the victors not only go the spoils, but also ownership of the narrative. So there’s a hell of an amount of catch-up.”

Anthony studied law for a year but the thought of another semester of torts brought on dread so profound he almost had a panic attack.

His mother, Pat, whom he adored, suggested journalism, and in 1978 Anthony was hired as a cadet at The Age.

Anthony lived with writer Kathy Kizilos in a Dickensian share house behind the Windsor Hotel (address: Chuck Lane, he would quip), which became a bohemian hangout.

“We would have a lot of metaphysical conversations,” Kizilos says. “Peter was Anglican; he told me in the hospital he still had the Book of Common Prayer in his backpack.”

Journalist and lifelong friend Malcolm Maiden said Anthony loved live music, drinking and arguing – not necessarily in that order. “I loved him because he was simultaneously wild and honourable.”

In 1990, Anthony and his then-wife, Susanna Rodell, moved to the US. Anthony read about an “upstart bond trader” called Mike Bloomberg who was starting a business news service.

He offered to be his first reporter in Connecticut and was hired over the phone, later becoming the inaugural editor of the Hartford Business Journal.

But when his marriage ended in the early 1990s, Anthony quit journalism to go rock and rolling.

For two years he gigged at coffee shops, theatre restaurants and biker bars in upstate New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Anthony had three things on his music bucket list: play at CBGB, a famed punk rock venue in Manhattan’s East Village; get on a bill with rock singer Graham Parker; and meet guitarist Steve Forbert. He did all three.

His muso friend Judith Russell recalls Anthony being introduced at open mics and gigs as the Aussie Bob Dylan. “In truth, he was somewhere in the mould of Paul Kelly, Billy Bragg, perhaps a little Richard Thompson.”

Anthony was a bit of an enigma, Russell writes, the leftist business journalist with the crumpled clothes who could drag more emotion and energy out of a single guitar string than anyone she had ever met.

“Never could quite figure out Peter. When he started, he played a beat-up guitar held together with duct tape. His playing did not seem to suffer. Peter touched my life with his music, his smile, his impish nature, his fragility.”

Anthony had always liked cooking, but it was during this period – when he supplemented his income as a waiter and chef at high-end restaurants owned by the Max Restaurant Group – that he really developed his love of good food.

His seven-hour dinner party marathons were legendary and often featured multiple truffle courses.

“It was impossible to be bored in Peter’s company; he was a ludicrously entertaining man,” says longtime friend Tom Ormonde. “He didn’t do anything half-heartedly.”

Eventually, Anthony returned to journalism in the US, rising to the rank of associate editor at Forbes magazine, which is renowned for its meticulous fact-checking.

Anthony brought this rigour to The Age when he moved back to Melbourne in 2009 and was rehired by this masthead. He also had a side hustle working for fine food company Friend & Burrell supplying truffles to high-end restaurants.

What started as a couple of tram trips to reacquaint himself with his beloved Melbourne quickly became “a thing” and Anthony travelled every centimetre of the city’s tram network. “I’ve done it; sound the gong indeed,” he declared jubilantly in 2021.

He also explored the state on road trips with his mother, Pat.

To Anthony’s great joy, his four children – Besha, Fred, Grace and Ruby, of whom he was ferociously proud – all returned to live in Melbourne. After years apart, theirs was a tremendously close bond strengthened over a mutual love of food; pub trivia; whisky; debates about politics and music; and fungi forages.

Anthony had a voracious appetite for life, and he was pissed off about dying, especially now his family was back together.

“The light this time of year is gobsmackingly beautiful. I’m going to miss this splendour,” he posted on Facebook recently, after venturing out for yet another round of chemo.

In his final months, Anthony’s diet was mostly pureed vegetables, chicken and fentanyl – an especially galling regimen for a foodie, for whom Iron Chef Italian specialist Masahiko Kobe once whipped up a five-course feast in Tokyo.

There were notable exceptions to his diet, however – caviar, champagne and vodka – and Anthony’s “foodie partner in crime”, Simon Friend, became his caviar dealer.

The two would yarn, as they had since the days they went yabbying as children, their conversations veering all over the place. They landed on the fact mushrooms have genetic similarities to humans, which they decided helped explain people’s fascination with fungi.

The last time they saw each other, Anthony said he thought he had discovered a new spot for morels, which are notoriously difficult to find, and was distressed he would never get to visit.

Friend reassured him his family and friends would find the patch. He said Anthony could hitch a ride on their shoulders.

Peter Anthony died on July 28, 2023. He was 63. He is survived by his mother, Pat; sister, Kathryn; brother-in-law, Charlie; children Besha, Fred, Grace and Ruby; nephews Thomas, Lachlan, Duncan and David; and his cat, Maxine.

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