Principal
Instructor of the ‘Melbourne Chinese Martial Arts Club’
David Peterson, 47, has been training in the Chinese martial arts
since 1973. He became a student of Sifu Wong Shun Leung after travelling
to Hong Kong in 1983. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne,
where he majored in Chinese studies, and a teacher of the Chinese
language for over twenty years, having now taught at two of Melbourne's
most prestigious private schools, 'Ivanhoe Girls' Grammar' and 'Camberwell
Grammar School'. Peterson is a speaker of both the Mandarin and
Cantonese dialects, and principal instructor of the ‘Melbourne
Chinese Martial Arts Club’ (MCMAC) which he established in
1983, and where he instructs in the “Wong Shun Leung Way”.
Peterson
is one of only two qualified instructors of Wong’s system
in Australia, authorised by Sifu Wong personally before his death,
and a fully endorsed member of the world-wide ‘Wong Shun Leung
Ving Tsun (Wing Chun) Martial Arts Association’ and the Hong
Kong-based 'Ving Tsun Athletic Association'. Peterson interpreted
for his teacher whenever Sifu Wong conducted seminars in Australia,
and in 1996 was employed as script translator on Jackie Chan’s
‘Mr Nice Guy’, which was shot on location in Melbourne.
Actively involved in the local Chinese community, Peterson is the
only non-Chinese member of the 'Melbourne Chinese Masonic Society'
('Man Ji Dong') and a prominent member of their Lion Dance Team.
He is a former Victorian Chairman of the 'Federation of Australasian
Kung-fu Organizations' (FAKO), a position he held for eight consecutive
years, and an Accredited Coach under the 'National Coaching Accreditation
Scheme' (NCAS) run by the Australian Federal Government.
He
is also a freelance writer whose articles have appeared in many
local (Australian) and overseas journals, including ‘Combat’,
‘Inside Kung-fu’, ‘Black Belt’, ‘Masters
of the Martial Arts’, ‘Impact: the Action Movie Magazine’,
‘Eastern Heroes’, ‘Australasian Fighting Arts’,
‘Blitz Australasian Martial Arts Magazine’, ‘Traditional
Martial Arts Journal’, ‘Impact Martial Arts Magazine’,
‘Qi Magazine’, ‘Australasian Martial Arts Magazine’,
‘Martial Arts Illustrated’, ‘Kung Fu Qigong Magazine’,
‘Fight Times’, ‘Ging Wing Chun’, ‘Kicksider’
and ‘Kung-fu Illustrierte’. More recently, his articles
have featured on several international Web sites, including ‘wingchunkuen.com’,
‘Planet Wing Chun’, ‘Wing Chun World’, ‘vtmuseum.org’
and ‘WongShunLeung.com’.
In
1998, Peterson was invited to America for the first time by Sifu
Jesse Glover, the late Bruce Lee's original student, teaching in
both Seattle and Los Angeles. In November 1999, Peterson was a guest
presenter at the '1st World Ving Tsun Conference' in Hong Kong,
presenting his views on the future of the Wing Chun system. A highly
respected seminar presenter of the ‘WSL Method’ of Wing
Chun, both in Australia and overseas, Peterson travelled to the
USA for a second time in 2000 to conduct seminars and workshops
at the 'Ving Tsun Museum' in Dayton, Ohio, and to an enthusiastic
group of Wing Chun and JKD enthusiasts in Orlando and Fort Myers,
Florida.
In
July 2003, on the invitation of devotees of the ‘WSL Method’
there, he travelled to the UK for the first time, conducting seminars
and workshops in Manchester, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, Southampton and
London (St Albans). While there, he was interviewed by both ‘Combat’
and ‘Martial Arts Illustrated’ magazines, two of Britain’s
most prominent martial arts journals. As a result of the success
of this trip, a second trip to the UK took place in September with
seminars and workshops being presented in Whitley Bay, and again
in both Newcastle and Manchester. A third trip to the UK is to take
place in April of this year (2005). Peterson is the author of ‘Look
Beyond the Pointing Finger: the Combat Philosophy of Wong Shun Leung’,
the first-ever English language book on his teacher’s interpretation
of the Wing Chun system, published in September of 2001.
David Peterson can be contacted by mail at: PO Box 150, Ivanhoe,
Victoria 3079, Australia; by telephone at: 0407-043-303 (International:
+61-407-043-303); or by e-mail at: dmp@cgs.vic.edu.au
and the website of the ‘MCMAC’ can be found at: www.wslwingchun.com
and www.citywingchun.com.au. For a large selection of articles written
by him on the WSL Wing Chun system, take a look at: www.wingchunkuen.com/why/columns/peterson/index.html