Questioning looks and self-conscious giggles greeted me for my first Feminist Studies tutorial at the University of Western Sydney. I was twenty-six, bullish and keen to understand why it was that my male friends were behaving so badly. I was also the only man in the entire Feminist Studies class of 1999. The fourteen very young women who joined me that day seemed awkwardly unprepared for my enrolment. And I in turn engaged their discomfort with crazed enthusiasm. I was there to learn about the impact the most profound movement of the twentieth century had had—on me!

Germaine said no, definitely no, when asked to pose. She followed ‘no’ with a tirade about the flawed and intrinsically narcissistic nature of Archibald portraiture—an argument I could barely disagree with. Nonetheless I persisted. ‘Please, Germaine,’ and ‘I do understand all of that, but we’re both here, you’ve had an impact on me and I want to, need to make a painting about you!’ When finally she said yes my heart nearly stopped. It was ten years since I had graduated from the University of Western Sydney. I’d made meagre inroads into answering the question about my mates and their behaviour and now Germaine Greer had invited me into her home in the rainforest of southern Queensland, for a 48-hour portrait session.