It was six o’clock on a winter’s night in Melbourne. I entered the Trades Hall and climbed the stairs. The bluestone steps were worn concave from a million workers trudging there before me. The place was dingy, deliberately so, as though it had not changed since the Depression, conveying a message that the workers were still downtrodden. Halfway up the stairs was a large poster of Gough covered in lipstick kisses. I entered Bella Hall and joined a throng of young middle class

Last April, Jill and I participated in an ASA Literary tour of the Southern States of the USA with 24 other Australians. The party was led by Susannah Fullerton who is famous for her work on Jane Austen. We were introduced to many southern writers, saw the homes where they lived and the places and the cultures they had written about. There were writers we were familiar with such as John Berendt , Margaret Mitchell, Scott Fitzgerald, Tennessee Williams, Joel Chandler Harris,