You must be in Spartan shape to go into lengthy winter forums of any kind. There are hundreds of frustrated prose writers out there, and they can put the boots in any time they so wish. The topics rove from the satire of Swift to the grimness of John Cain. You have to be a bright spark indeed to amuse and distract them, without being a smartarse, which I happen to be for a living. I’ve been a smartarse for a great deal of time, as it transpires.

In my motel in Geelong, I stuffed the drawers with anti-indigestion muck. Mylanta: the friend of the moribund, light-hearted writer. Quick-Eze: the constant adviser to the comic crusader. Only trouble is one can unavoidably swallow fragments of silver foil whilst adlibbing at the mike.

I took many precautions before fronting eighty-three country writers. I confuse the CAE with the CIA, as writers confuse life with death on the road. Spies seem to be everywhere. Your health is cancelled, and yet you must grin and cheer up unpublishable bores as well as genuinely beautiful and cultivated bush-folk who slaver for the chance to pick one’s leftover intelligence. At one public library, my nausea overwhelmed me as I shook hands with, it seemed, ewes. I think this was at Belmont Public Library, where the public swallowed giddy cups of cheap red in front of Chris Beck and me. They chomp into gherkin relish. They gawk. They want your jokes. Your head. It is too warm for jokes and they all look identical, like Wilfred Owen with a toothache, with one big frontal lobotomy and square front tooth the width of a beaver’s one. You are chatting amiably to beavers chewing Sao Crackers and gargling disinfectant-smelling cheap grog. It’s hard to talk.

The seasickness abates and you’re engaged with some-one really fascinating who knows all about ‘William Buckley the Wild Man who lived with Blacks.’ But this lady is a white lady. And you are going to faint from passing your blood upon an author’s tour of somewhere you never go in your life.

But people can be very kind to a total and complete stranger; they sure can. Chris Beck was entertaining and did book signings as you conduct séances. I sold three books in Geelong. I don’t believe that sort of thing has happened before. And Geelong regional librarians were perfectly charming and delightful. It’s just that I was sick, so sick, and you have to, of course, sing for your din-dins. Perhaps illness makes a writer sing the sweeter.

It was only a couple of days on the road, but it was a real sea-change. Country kids read their heads off. You find this in the scrub or in a town like impoverished Geelong. Bush kids, any young ones, are given appallingly poor press. You meet prodigies on the road, young ones who vindicate your choice of career, you really do. Indeed, it’s the only way to meet charms themselves.

I got home and expired of gratitude.