From Water Rat to water warrior: Where is Peter Mochrie now?

Playing a detective sergeant on Water Rats has clearly stuck with Peter Mochrie — he’s now on a mission to save our oceans. Mochrie, now 60, was a regular­ on Aussie TV screens from 1979, with his first major role as swimmer Rick Moran on The Restless Years.

Playing a detective sergeant on Water Rats has clearly stuck with Peter Mochrie — he’s now on a mission to save our oceans.

Mochrie, now 60, was a regular­ on Aussie TV screens from 1979, with his first major role as swimmer Rick Moran on The Restless Years.

Peter Mochrie at his Darling Point home. Picture: Justin Lloyd

Over the years he has starred in some of the nation’s favourite TV shows including Holiday­ Island, Neighbours, Sons And Daughters, Blue Heelers and Shortland Street.

Teen girls had his face plastered on their bedroom walls, yet Mochrie didn’t marry and start a family until nine years ago.

“I’d been looking and I found her,” he told The Saturday Telegraph of his wife Sally.

“She and I just fell madly, madly in love and she said one day ‘Do you want to have a baby?’ And I said ‘Yes, I do’ and we’ve raised the most wonderful child.”

Mochrie with Lucy Bell in Murder Call.

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Together with son Cade, they live at Darling Point and juggle their many businesses and passions, including acting, auctioneering, production, motivational speaking and activism­ — which for Mochrie spiked after Cade’s birth.

“We’ve been around on this planet for 1.4 billion years and we’ve been through a number of ages,” he said.

“Now it’s the one of getting a little bit more spiritual­ and realising everything you do has a reaction.

“When I started surfing when I was 12 we didn’t have plastic in the water and now you paddle out and there’s garbage everywhere.

“We’re all doing what we can to make the world a better place — especially now that I have a child I want to leave him a great planet.”

The Water Rats cast including Mochrie (in grey suit).

Mochrie in Water Rats.

Mochrie and his production company Mane Collective are filming a campaign on plastic for Greenpeace.

He still acts from time to time but isn’t shy about his dis­illusionment with the rise of trash TV and subsequent downfall of the types of dramas that shaped his career.

On the cover.

“Young and stupid.”

“In my career there was always another job to go to but what Australian drama did you watch last night?” he asks.

“There is very little going on at the moment, reality TV has taken over that mantle. It’s the age of outrage. It’s car crash TV. People can’t not look.”

He hopes it is just a phase and the industry can learn before it’s too late.

Mochrie got his break in soap The Restless Years.

“A great saying is ‘to be old and wise first you must be young and stupid’,” he said.

“I came out of school and suddenly I’m on the cover of magazines and I used to think I was special.

Mochrie now juggles various business interests including environmental activism. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

“But I’m not, we’re just a grain of sand on a huge beach. I think we all have to aspire to be better.”

Originally published as From Water Rat to water warrior: Where is Peter Mochrie now?