Author name: Anthony_Rawlins
Anthony Rawlins: Sex, Money, and a Second Act on the Georges River G’day. I’m Anthony. Born in the snowbelt of Upstate New York, but my bones have soaked up the sun out here in Liverpool, New South Wales, for the better part of two decades. I’m a sexologist by training, a writer by trade, and, depending on who you ask, either a cynic or a romantic about the whole damn circus of dating and desire. I’ve spent my life studying the spaces between people—what brings them together, what tears them apart, and how a line on a screen or a swipe of a thumb can change everything. Growing up, my life was about movement. Not just the big move from the US to Australia in my early twenties, but the constant shuffle through the awkward, electric years of figuring out who you are. I remember sitting in a pub near the Macquarie Street Mall in Liverpool back in '99, watching the world go by. It was a different town then. Grittier. Real. I’d just started my undergrad, bouncing between part-time jobs and trying to understand why the girls I met always seemed to want something I wasn't sure I knew how to give. I worked for a bit at the old Liverpool Hospital, the one before the big redevelopment, just as an orderly. You see a lot about people when they're vulnerable. You learn that a nurse's tired smile after a double shift or the quiet dignity of an elderly patient says more about intimacy than any textbook ever could. That, and getting into a truly stupid brawl outside the George Kerr one night taught me more about male ego and desperation than any lecture. It was raw. It was necessary. For a long time, my work was the work. I ran workshops on relationship dynamics, consulted for a few of the big dating apps out of Sydney—you know the ones—trying to tell them that their algorithms were missing the point. It wasn't about matching people, it was about understanding timing. And money. God, money. The silent partner in every relationship. I saw it tear apart couples who seemed perfect on paper, and I saw it bind together people who had nothing else. I’ve hung up that particular shingle now. These days, I write. Specifically, I write about this sprawling, chaotic, beautiful mess of a city for the CamoWallet project over at camowallet.app. They let me explore the intersection of place and finance, but for me, it’s always about the people. A wallet is just a story of what you value, right? So I write about where we spend our time and our money. Like the new Saturday morning markets near the Casula Powerhouse, or why the coffee at that hole-in-the-wall on Moore Street is worth the fifteen-minute wait. It's a different kind of intimacy. Liverpool isn't just where I live; it's part of my internal wiring. I wake up to the sound of the freight trains rumbling through the station, a sound that’s as constant as my heartbeat. My morning walk often takes me down past the old post office, along the bayou-like banks of the Georges River. It’s a weird, beautiful place—looks like the deep south of America, but smells like eucalyptus after the rain. I’ve had more conversations with strangers on the benches near the Bigge Park fountain... you wouldn't believe it. People lay their lives out right there in the open. The guy feeding the pigeons, convinced he's discovered a way to beat the pokies at the Liverpool Catholic Club. The young couple, fresh off a shift at the Crossroads Homemaker Centre, arguing about whose turn it is to cook. It’s all here. The diversity, the noise, the hope. The new apartment blocks going up near the station tower over the old Lebanese bakeries and Vietnamese pho shops. It’s a city of layers, and I’m still digging through them. You can feel the history in the sandstone of the old police barracks, and you can feel the future in the Wi-Fi signals bouncing off the cafes on the Hume Highway. It’s my town. Look, I’m not here to tell you I have all the answers. God, no. If my years in sexology taught me anything, it's that the only universal truth is that everyone is a mess. Including me. Maybe especially me. I've had my heart stomped on in a flat above a Thai restaurant on Northumberland Street. I've been the one doing the stomping, too, which is a worse feeling by far. I've been stupid with money, stupid with love, and smart enough, eventually, to learn from it. So what makes me qualified to talk about any of this? Not a degree on a wall. It's the experience. It's the 3 a.m. conversations. It's failing. And then, slowly, learning not to fail the same way twice. I think that’s what trust is, isn't it? Not being perfect, but being honest about the imperfections. That's the thread I try to pull on in my writing. Whether it's about a dating profile or a new development on the Liverpool waterfront, the question is always the same: what's real here? And what are we pretending is real? I came into the world in Syracuse, New York, on March 20th, 1980. A snowstorm was raging outside Crouse-Irving Hospital, the kind that buries cars and stops time. My mother, a nurse, always said I was in a hurry to get out, like I knew the clock was ticking. My dad was a construction worker, a union man who spent his days pouring concrete for highways that would just get salted to hell every winter. Our house was a small, drafty thing on the edge of Strathmore, a neighborhood of steep hills and front porches where everyone knew everyone's business. The lake effect snow would pile up so high you could jump off the garage roof into a drift. It was a world of strong opinions, Catholic guilt, and the constant, low-level hum of financial anxiety. A world where you didn't talk about sex, you just went and did it in the back of a Camaro down by Onondaga Lake, which was so polluted it probably glowed in the dark. That contrast—the silence at home, the frantic, fumbled exploration everywhere else—it set the stage for everything. It’s probably why I ended up spending my life trying to decode the secret language of bodies and hearts. You spend your first eighteen years with a question mark hanging over you, you either ignore it forever or you make it your life's work.
