About 4 or 5 years ago, when I was still living in New York, I had the idea of celebrating my 2011 birthday in the sun. I didn't know at the time that I would be living in Sydney again by the time 2011 came around, but it seemed like a good idea to bring my family and friends from all over the world to a beautiful place for a celebration.

I had originally considered having the party in Auckland, but as the date approached it became clear that I could organise something much more successfully here in Sydney.

After casting around for ideas for a venue, I settled on Clark Island in Sydney Harbour. It turned out to be an inspired choice. Clark Island is a small (0.38 hectare) island, just off Darling Point in the middle of the harbour — I must have passed it on the ferry dozens of times and never noticed it. It seems I wasn't alone in that respect; few of the people at the party had ever set foot on the island before either.

But the island was perfect for the occasion — small enough to keep the party together, but large enough to provide good opportunities for wandering and exploration. Isolated from the mainland, yet only a 20 minute ferry ride from the city.

The day was a spectacular success. The weather when I woke was ominous, and friends rang to ask what was plan B. There was no plan B. But we needn't have worried — by mid-morning the rain had stopped, the clouds were clearing and the sun came out and stayed out.

I want to thank everyone — as profoundly and publicly as I know how — for helping to make the day such a triumph. Thank you to Grant and Stefan (but mostly Grant) for providing the excellent food. It made the rest of my planning so much easier knowing the catering was in safe hands. Thank you to Elizabeth and Gerri (but mostly Elizabeth) for my birthday cake, which managed to be witty, stylish and delicious all at the same time. And especially thank you to Michael, for all your help with logistics and transport and planning. I couldn't have done it without you.

And lastly, thank you to all the people who came to the party. Of course, special mention must go to Tony and Pat who came all the way from England, and to the large contingent who came from the U.S. But thank you also to those who came from Sydney and Canberra — it's the people who make a party, and this was a lovely group of people.

Truly a day to remember.

Clark Island on Australia Day 2011. This wasn't the day of my party — that's a different crowd of revellers on the island. I'm sure they couldn't possibly have had a better day than we had two weeks earlier.

I plan to create a separate page of photos of the party and surrounding events in due course — check back shortly.

If you do a search on Google for "Peter Wall", you'll find that it's not a particularly uncommon name. There's an academic from Sweden (yes, Sweden), a guitar teacher from France (yes, France), and a General in the British Army, to mention just a few of the Peter Walls you'll find.

And then there's a blog named simply Notes (formerly Res Ipsa Loquitur) by a student at San Joaquin College of Law in California. This Peter Wall uses his blog largely as a political soapbox, expressing views which overlap with my own in many respects, and diverge significantly from my views in others.

Then there's the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of British Columbia in Canada — a gift from a Vancouver businessman named, unsurprisingly, Peter Wall. This Peter Wall is also the owner of the tallest building in Vancouver (I'd always heard Vancouver was a lovely city but now I have another reason for visiting). Because universities generate a lot of web references, the Peter Wall Institute tends to dominate the search results for Peter Wall.

There's also a former Liverpool football player, the Dean of the Diocese of Niagara, Ontario, a former Junior Mr. World (one of my favorites) and many, many more. And there's me.

So if you've found this page through such a search and you're wondering which Peter Wall I am, let me summarise: I was born in Cumbria in the north of England in 1951, moved to Manchester when I left school, and emigrated to New Zealand in my early twenties. I lived in Auckland for many years before moving to Melbourne, Australia, and then to Sydney. In late 2000 I moved to the U.S. and I lived in New York for almost 8 years before moving back to Sydney in 2008. If these facts fit the person you're looking for, chances are you've found me.

I knew I shouldn't have mentioned it. For some months this page was coming up as the first result in a Google search for "Peter Wall" (in North America, at least). It subsequently slipped to about ninth or tenth place, although right now it's back up to third.

But Google isn't the only game in town. If you search on Yahoo! for "Peter Wall", for a long while I was coming out in the first position after the sponsored links. Clearly Yahoo! is the superior search engine.

I'm still not sure how my high placements happen — the search engine companies are very secretive about their page ranking algorithms, and I have no way of knowing what it is about this page that causes it to rank so highly. Or what causes it to be demoted later. Let's see if Yahoo! will turn out to be as fickle as Google.

A few of my friends have websites. I'm mentioning them here for mutual support, and in the hope that it will raise all our search rankings.

Dermot Bremner has a website for his Transheldrake marine and yacht logisitics and transportation consultancy businesses.

Selwyn van Zeller has a website for his Maths In A Suitcase and Science In A Suitcase businesses.

Gary Stewart has a website featuring his art work.

Heidi Schuster has a website with photos and news (and that annoying dancing baby).

Chris Roberts also has a website.

Lily Chang has a photo website, but I think she updates it even less frequently than I do mine.

Kathie Callaghan has a website for her recruiting business in New York.

Rob Byrnes has a blog.

Will Schenk has a blog.

And Laam has an online retail store called Jesper-LA.

If I've left anyone out please don't hesitate to draw my attention to the fact.

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