"It buzzed venomously into the air" - illustration by Paul Delprat

BUT BEFORE we get to the Quest for Cooley proper, two stars and a kangaroo (an Australian schoolchild award for good work) need to be bestowed on Australian political scientist Don Rawson, to whom should be given the credit for first raising the possibility that Lawrence had been leaning on truth and fact when he wrote Kangaroo.

In a article, "Political Violence in Australia", published in the local magazine Dissent [Canberra, autumn, 1968], Rawson, when pointing out that, contrary to general perception, political violence had a long history in Australia, cited a riot that occurred in the Sydney Domain in May 1921 in which - as in the "A Row in Town" chapter in Kangaroo - speakers, including "Jock" Garden, were counted out and their platforms assaulted by bands of ex-servicemen.

Rawson raised the possibility that the assaults may have been organised by the King and Empire Alliance...and, moreover, that Lawrence may have got some of his character Benjamin Cooley in Kangaroo from its secretary, Major-General Sir Charles Rosenthal.

Unfortunately, no one at the time - eight years before my own research began - took this inspired speculation any further. (I myself did not come across Rawson's article until some months into my research.)

Almost everything else that was written about Lawrence and his Australian novel either ignored or denied any possibility that Lawrence was leaning on actuality with the political plot of Kangaroo.