No dog with a multiplicity of tails was ever as proud as I when informed that I had been awarded the Australian Literature Society’s Gold Medal in 1940 for that novel of mine, Capricornia. Never before in my life had I been conceded even mediocre ability in anything. Although I went on to university level with my schooling, it seemed only to be by an amazing series of flukes, as if the few things my half-wit intelligence could grasp of a particular subject were always set at the examinations I sat for. At least that was the impression I was given by my teachers and other superior people with whom I rubbed shoulders.

Similarly when I took to writing. Although I was successful from the jump in the matter of getting published, my editors and literary mentors generally were ever ready to tell me that, for all the native talent they conceded me, as literature my efforts were just lousy. That was the consensus of the reviews of Capricornia when it appeared a year or so before I was, to my joyful astonishment, awarded the Literature Society’s Gold Medal.