Our first major insight in Perth came from back-issues of local newspapers filed in the Battye Library. An issue published the day after Lawrence arrived on the Orsova revealed that Lawrence had been interviewed on the wharf by a Mrs Zabel, a "stringer" for a local newspaper, who also ran the Booklovers Library in Perth.

From her familiarity with contemporary literature, she would have known who Lawrence was - at that time a little-known, rather avant-guard, English author. She would have been keen to learn what his literary intentions were in Western Australia.

He told her (so she reported) that he planned to stay some time, and wanted to visit the apple-growing region south of Perth. She invited him to come to the Booklovers Library, which he later did, holding court there with the local literati. (It is indicative, considering what later happened in Sydney, that in Perth Lawrence made no effort to avoid contact with the local literary community.)

But Lawrence did not tarry. After he got his mail, several hours later, from Mrs Jenkins, he booked on the next available boat leaving for Sydney - no doubt because he had opened a letter from Hum, confirming or reiterating an offer of help when he arrived in Sydney.

Sandra, meanwhile, was trying to track down the descendants of the people who may have met Lawrence in Perth. It was in this pursuit that she became aware of what a small, interconnected place Perth is today...as small and interconnected, perhaps, as Sydney was in 1922, when Lawrence stepped off the Malwa's gangplank.

The manuscript librarian at the Battye had a relative, Mary Brazier, who was particularly helpful.

It turned out that her maiden name was Burt, one of Western Australia's most prominent families. (Mrs Jenkins was also related to the Burts.) Mrs Brazier arranged for Sandra to contact her cousin, Sir Francis Burt (a former Chief Justice and Lieutenant-Governor of WA). Among other things, he told Sandra that Mollie Skinner's family - the Leakes - were also related to the Burts.

According to Mary Brazier (who lived in Leake Road, Peppermint Grove, Perth's most prestigious suburb) Mollie Skinner's "Leithdale" had been a popular place for the elite of Perth to stay in the years after WW1.

In her autobiography, The Fifth Sparrow [Sydney University Press 1972], Mollie recounted having placed the Lawrences at table with a young couple, the Eustace Cohens.

Sandra was perhaps not surprised to learn that the young Mrs Cohen was also a Brazier. She and her architect-husband were honeymooning at "Leithdale" when Lawrence was there. (Actually she was also convalescing there, having recently fallen down a lift-well and broken her leg.)

Mollie had thought that Maudie was "intellectual", and thus might prove an interesting table companion for Lawrence.

Sandra's major discovery in Perth, however, was linking the newly-married Mrs Cohen, nee Maudie Brazier, with an important aspect of the text of Kangaroo - indeed, a very important aspect, and one that was to play a major role in the Quest for Cooley.

A primary goal of the research was to try to identify the "real people" Lawrence was portraying in the text of Kangaroo. I had a good idea who Jack Callcott and Benjamin Cooley were - Scott and Rosenthal - but on whom might the other characters have been based? It seemed highly likely that they were modelled on actual people Lawrence had encountered in Australia.

Three primary characters cried out for provenance: Victoria Callcott (Jack Callcott's young wife); Jack's close friend William James "Jaz" Trewhella; and "Willie" Struthers, the union leader and main political rival to Cooley.

The text of Kangaroo contained a great deal of biographical information about all three. But at that stage of the research there were no obvious candidates for whom the first two, in particular, could have been based on.

Victoria Callcott was an especial puzzle.

Jack Scott, whose life story I was now quite familiar with, was "a ladies' man" (attractive to women), but in 1922 he was between wives. He had separated from his first wife (a Canadian nurse) and was courting his second (the mother of the two men I had met in 1976).