Twenty-five years after his award-winning book was published, the Australian author revisits True History of the Kelly Gang
How very weird to return to this old manuscript, the scene of so much doubt and anguish, not to say obsession.
I was a baby when the seed was planted, three years out of school, two years since my devastating failure in the first year of a science degree. I had drifted into advertising where the gods determined I would fall among novelists and playwrights who would lead me to a place I could never have imagined.
My most important workmate was a former schoolteacher, 32 years old, the father of six children, but an apprentice just as I was, still waiting for the day when his copy would be accepted by our boss. I drove Barry Oakley to work. He gave me Kerouac’s Lonesome Traveler and other books he had reviewed, made sure that I saw Chekhov and Beckett and Ionesco, accompanied me to the first two art exhibitions of my life.
It was lunchtime at the office when we boarded the tram to see The Ned Kelly Paintings 1946–47: Sidney Nolan at George’s art gallery. I had no expectation of anything except the egg and lettuce sandwich waiting for me back at work, no idea that Nolan’s Kelly paintings were about to burn into my brain and leave their mark for ever.
