Most of all, in those early days, there was the sense of intellectual excitement and fervour in the air: the University was growing and developing, and everyone was looking for opportunities, which were plentiful. Everyone was thinking about where they could take things, which made for an exciting environment.

The physical landscape has totally transformed. When I first came out here in 1969 from the University of Sydney, I could have wept. Sydney, with its elegant sandstone, prompts a sense of privilege (whether deserved or not), but out here, we just had three buildings: W6A and W6B, E7A and E7B, fairly ‘brutalist’ in style, and the original library [now the MUSE building].

At that time, walking between the buildings felt like quite a trek – partly because the ground all along was mud and clay. I remember that Wally Abraham – who Wally’s Walk was named after – explained that the brown and grey of the bricks and cement of the buildings was chosen to replicate the Australian bush.

It’s now, of course, a beautiful campus, but in those early days it was a very different place.

 I’m going to miss the excitement that comes from teaching – one of my favourite things about teaching has been the give-and-take of classes. I always love being interrupted in class, especially with questions to which I don’t immediately know the answer and falling further and further behind in the lectures because of the conversations that I’d have with the students. I will miss the buzz of teaching, and being a part of that. Macquarie’s early commitment to small-group teaching in the tutorials (something that universities cannot afford these days) was, I think, a magical part of my early working life. It meant that you got to know your students well.

A large grant was given to the University many years ago by Colleen McCullough, with the aim of producing a Dictionary of ancient Roman biography. A series of Colleen’s novels were set in Rome’s Late Republic, and her keen interest in the period — together with her close association with my colleague Professor Alanna Nobbs — led to this donation.

The research I do, alongside my colleague and partner (in life and academe), Dr Lea Beness, is largely focussed on the politics of that era, so, apart from an archeological site in northern Greece that very much excites us (above and below water), we’re working on that; at this stage, we’re looking at multiple volumes that will take years to finish. The great regret is that Colleen hasn’t lived to see the full project come to life.

I’m really looking forward to going into research full-time; I still have things in manila folders that haven’t been digitised, so I’m looking forward to going through all of them page by page!