Abstract
Let me thank my audience for coming to listen to me today: let me thank the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies for inviting me to give this year’s Colin Roderick Lectures.<br />I like to think that Professor Roderick would have looked kindly on the choice of a lecturer drawn from the bleak, ambiguous demi-monde where journalism and literary endeavours meet - for he was involved, as many of you will know, during his days as an editor at Angus and Robertson, in the celebrated libel case in 1961 over “The Bandar-Log,” a novel, still unpublished, by the distinguished Canberra press gallery journalist, Alan Reid. Roderick’s own writings had a strong influence on me at a particular point in my path as an author: but the one act of his that resonates most strongly in my thoughts is the decision he made, 40 years ago, to establish a centre for the study of Australian writing here in the North.
Highlights
Let me thank my audience for coming to listen to me today: let me thank the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies for inviting me to give this year’s Colin Roderick Lectures
I like to think that Professor Roderick would have looked kindly on the choice of a lecturer drawn from the bleak, ambiguous demi-monde where journalism and literary endeavours meet - for he was involved, as many of you will know, during his days as an editor at Angus and Robertson, in the celebrated libel case in 1961 over “The Bandar-Log,” a novel, still unpublished, by the distinguished Canberra press gallery journalist, Alan Reid
I, like Colin Roderick, believe that the north exists, and is a specific place, with a literature and a perspective of its own: and I have spent long hours, in hazy discussions under twirling fans, or round isolated camp-fires, trying to frame the story of the tropics and remote Australia; trying to gauge the impact of that story on my mind and my character, and on the voices of other writers and artists who live and work in North Queensland, the Northern Territory, the Kimberley and Pilbara regions - the swathe of Australia many dream of, and few see for any length of time: the region my old editor Frank Devine believes we should christen with the name of Capricornia
Summary
Let me thank my audience for coming to listen to me today: let me thank the Foundation for Australian Literary Studies for inviting me to give this year’s Colin Roderick Lectures.
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