The dank editorial offices of the Bulletin in Sydney’s lower George Street in the 1950s were a daunting place for a raw teenager from the remote south-western Sydney suburb of Revesby. I found myself there in response to an advertisement for a copyholder to the proofreader, and landed the job.

Overawed at first by the Dickensian ambience of the offices, I enjoyed a lift in spirits when introduced to the associate editor, Cecil Mann. A grey-haired, balding, bespectacled man in his sixties, seated at a massive oak desk, he looked up from subediting with a steel nib dipped in red ink and exclaimed, ‘A likely-looking colt.’ A friend at court, I sensed, confirmed on learning that Mann’s father had raced horses in the NSW Northern Rivers region. My father had a small plastering business and trained and drove trotters.