Peter Bycroft

Peter Bycroft’s career has spanned research, academia, and consulting, with notable contributions in areas such as environmental psychology, regional economic development, and Indigenous studies.

Peter is a polymath who draws on multiple complex sources to assist him in better understanding human nature and the world. He holds an honours degree in Architecture, a Master of Science in Environmental Psychology. He has worked cross-sectorally as an environmental psychologist and business management consultant to the Australian Federal, State, and Local Government sectors for over 25 years, earning multiple awards for his work in research, organisational modelling, and evaluation strategies.

He has held Head of Department, Professorial and senior academic positions at four of Australia’s leading universities. He is a secular humanist whose main interest is in the origin, and history of religions.

I was brought up in a family of Catholics. From the age of seven to the age of fourteen I was an altar boy in the local Carmelite Church. This role introduced me to “the theatre of religion” – like the priest and the other altar boys, I had a costume, I had memorized Latin prayers (without knowing, and still not knowing, what I was saying) and I performed the same functions and theatrical role every time I was called in by the priests.

Over time, my whole family, including both my parents, began to collectively question their faith. We all eventually left organized religion and became what I can now, in retrospect, describe as secular humanists — enquiring, ethical, rational, evidence-based, believers in the value of history, science, evidence, evolution, and human nature. But more importantly, we believed in— and lived lives that supported— the innate fairness, generosity, empathy, and natural sense of wonder of the human species.

I spent many years as a senior academic before being elected as a Local Government Alderman to the Noosa Shire Council in Queensland, Australia. At age 33, I was one of a group of young politicians who brought in policies that have positioned Noosa as one of Australia’s most iconic and attractive ecologically-minded, tourism and residential locations.

In the late 1970s whilst working with Australia’s First Nations Indigenous communities on Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpentaria, I was made an invited member of the Australian Indigenous Barramundi Dreaming clan of the Ganggalida Nation. The Ganggalida Nation’s country covers the north-west of Queensland; this stretches from the Northern Territory border in the west to the eastern town of Burketown in the Southern Gulf of Carpentaria.

In the late 1980’s, I established a nationally renowned research consulting business entitled Corporate Diagnostics Pty Ltd which operated for more than 25 years in consulting to all levels of government in Australia. During this time, I won multiple international awards for my policy, research, and consulting commissions.

I have developed a somewhat unique and comprehensive skill in the fundamentals of scientific research and writing. I have published in refereed and peer-reviewed journals in the fields of Indigenous Australians, Government policy and practice, Art and Culture, mental health, Organisational, and Environmental Psychology, Regional Economic Development, Performance Management and Evaluation.

I retired in 2018 and I have been applying my research skills to my hobby—a passionate interest in mythology and religion. I am specifically interested in the prehistoric origin and previous mythological influences on the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament.