The menagerie of people and world of ideas that they encounter on campus stir an anxiety about their inability to break out of the urban sprawl at the edges of our city and the mountains just beyond.

"Yep, I'm a townie," they confess, before we chat about what side of the lake they hail from and the best place to buy potato scallops.

One wry local, when asked where he was from, even quoted Homer Simpson who upon winning the trophy for travelling the least distance to attend his high school reunion announced, "It hasn't been easy staying in this rut!"

There is a much better role model for how to stay put and flourish: author and scientist Primo Levi.

Primo lived his entire life in the same apartment in Turin, Italy. The only exception was the two years that followed his deportation as a young partisan and Jew to Auschwitz.

If this is a man tells of his time in that death camp and is widely regarded as the most incisive and gripping account of the Holocaust. It kick-started his career as a writer of memoir, fiction, essays and poetry.

Primo Levi is one of the twentieth century's most important authors because he accounted for what was described as "The Age of Extremes" in a humble, hopeful and measured way.

This measured quality comes in part from the fact that he was also an industrial chemist who formulated his words with clarity, simplicity and force. Primo's collection of stories entitled The Periodic Table begins with the observation that "distilling is beautiful".

Drawing together the sciences and humanities, the physical and moral universes, he asked, "If the human mind has conceived Black Holes, and dares to speculate on what happened in the first moments of creation, why should it not know how to conquer fear, poverty and grief?"

While many have discussed how Primo survived Auschwitz (he always insisted it was sheer luck), there's been far less consideration of the virtues that helped him to prosper in Turin.

Philip Roth was astonished by how "intimately entangled" Primo was with his family, forbears, birthplace and local environment.

It is astonishing because creativity usually abhors the status quo and demands new experiences.

But Primo saw the avant-garde all around him. He was intensely curious and forever wondering.

As a small child, often bored and sometimes bullied, he gazed out of his classroom window and watched "the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite" as he thought, "I will understand everything, but not the way they want me to."

Throughout his life Primo lost himself in literature of every possible era and genre. Working in a paint factory for almost three decades, he associated as easily with those on the production line as he did with famous artists. He perceived mystery and splendour in subatomic universes. And like so many great thinkers, Primo Levi was an avid walker. On alpine hikes he engaged with nature, contemplated the stars and delved into the intricacies of the soul.

This persistent questioning was a source of both resistance and resilience for Primo when he was transported to Auschwitz. In his first days he grabbed an icicle and eagerly sucked it before it was knocked out of his hand. After asking the guard why he did this, Primo was informed, "That there is no 'why' here."

Yet he would continue to question, analyse and - with immense courage - record what it was like in the death camps.

He eventually reflected upon his experiences without hatred or "any violent or dolorous emotions", as they made him "richer and surer" and "taught him many things about man and the world".

Primo Levi would, I think, like Canberra because it is a bush capital, because of its mountains, industrial areas, lakes, TAFEs, cultural institutions, bus-stop murals, takeaway shops, crisp air and stunning skies.

He would proclaim the Australian Capital Territory marvellous because, "every unexplored territory is marvellous".

The point is not so much that the ACT was uncharted to him, but rather that it should be full of wonder for even those who have lived here for a lifetime because it is - at once distinctively and generically - a biodiverse, multidimensional, historical place that is constantly changing and ultimately what we make of it.

On April 11, 1987, Primo Levi fell from the inside landing of his apartment. His wife said at the time, "I feared it, everybody feared it. Primo was tired of life." Of the many reasons attributed to his death, a lifelong battle with depression seems most likely.

What is clear and imperative is that Auschwitz did not defeat Primo and that his life and work were animated by a connection to home, humanity and the cosmos.