My musical journey began with my Mum, who was a high school music teacher at Mackellar Girls in Sydney. I saw her productions, like Jonah-Man Jazz with Balgowlah Boys, and she took me to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s school concerts at the Town Hall in the late Sixties.  

Susan Templeman MP. Photo supplied

We had a piano at home, but Mum said I wasn’t easy to teach. I can’t imagine why! Now I’m one of those terrible self-taught pianists who plays the first bits of Für Elise and the Moonlight Sonata for their own pleasure, and I struggle through the Billy Joel songs I later grew to love.

When I was seven or eight, Mum gave me a half-size violin, and then a full-size violin my grandfather had given her. I played in the Strathfield Youth Orchestra through high school and attended the NSW Department of Education and Pan Pacific music camps. 

I took my seventh-grade exams and did violin for the HSC. I don’t listen to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons very often, but I can still remember the solo I played in the Winter movement, while Beethoven’s Kreutzer Sonata...