Peter Harrison

Making lives easier

A block away from Melbourne’s historic Fitzroy Gardens sits a modern, three-storey building with a white facade. The Mercy Place East Melbourne complex is home to 110 residents and inside its walls is a man who knows this site like no one else does.

Peter Harrison walks all of Mercy Place’s many corridors, floors and subterranean car parks each day. The location is steeped in Mercy history, sitting as it does, adjacent to the site of the old Mercy Hospital for Women, (since relocated to Heidelberg).  But for Peter, whether he’s working with old or new systems, every shift is busy. He can clock up a solid 8km while ensuring the site is in tip-top shape.

And yet, at the end of the day, Peter’s chief focus is not the building itself. It’s actually about looking out for the people who call the building home:

“Fifteen years ago, a Surveyor told me the way he’d tell if a building was functioning well was by observing the interactions between everyone in it. Because that’s what a building should be designed for. So, myself, I’m not here for the walls and the wires and the pipes; I’m actually here for the humanity side of it.”

Peter’s deep belief in our value of hospitality means when he’s hiring new maintenance staff and contractors, that their attitude towards residents is just as important, if not more, important than their maintenance skill set.

“The bottom line with this work is, regardless of your role, you’ve got to be able to engage with residents and patients. So, it’s having those conversations and it’s asking yourself, how does the infrastructure work for the residents? Does the new room layout make their lives easier? If you know you can be present for the residents and the patients, then this is the job for you!”

Into a caring career

Peter has always been handy, but if you dialled the clock back 40 years, you’d find him wielding a set of drumsticks instead of a screwdriver.

Initially training in fine arts and illustration, Peter went on to build a decade-long career as a drummer. He was good at it, too, travelling around Australia from gig to gig and town to town, performing alongside some of Australia’s top talent.

It sounds glamorous, but every time Peter lugged his gear back to the van after a gig, he’d think to himself, “I might as well become a carpenter or plumber.”

So, when Peter relocated to Cairns to care for his mother and father-in-law, he decided it was time to “retool”. First, he found a job on a construction site and started studying for qualifications in facility management, then he secured a maintenance role at a local hospital.

From this point on, Peter’s natural aptitude for engineering and maintenance saw his career grow quickly until he was Head of Maintenance at a busy Melbourne hospital. The job required Peter to be on call 24/7, often for long stretches. That meant responding to boiler shutdowns, smoke alarms and sewer failures at 3 am.

Inevitably, Peter burnt out and decided to move into aged care maintenance, officially joining the Mercy Health team in 2015 when we acquired the historic Abbotsford Aged Care Home. Peter initially thought he’d only stay a couple of years. So, what’s kept him?

“Well, a lot was happening when I started, like fire safety upgrades and major infrastructure work. It got me interested. Plus, giving the Abbotsford building a few more years of life mattered because the people who lived there just loved the place. It had a great vibe, and to keep that going a bit longer was a real career highlight for me.”

A profound, everyday impact

When Abbotsford officially closed, Peter transitioned to Mercy Place East Melbourne. He says the challenge of managing a large, integrated site, alongside the chance to make life better for residents, still keeps him engaged.

Peter also values the flexibility he has to pursue his passion outside work – he’s a mad keen AFL fan! Peter has gravitated towards AFL in Papua New Guinea and the South Pacific and now acts as Tour and Media Manager and Photographer for the national PNG junior and senior teams.

“One of the things that has kept me at Mercy Health is the fact I have a work-life balance. I disappear two or three times a year to tour with the footy teams. It keeps me ticking. My Service Manager at Mercy Health says, ‘As long as you give Peter his time, he’ll come back happy.’”

And he does!

With his parents in their 80s, Peter is conscious of just how challenging it can be for people in aged care. So, he likes to add some fun and joy to Mercy Place.

“I see it as keeping the vibe up. It’s little things like high-fiving the residents. We have this team where we all feed off each other. It’s all about the residents and the patients. We had an Accreditor once who said, ‘I’ve never seen an atmosphere like this before.’”