However, in the early 1990s the new real-estate-agent owner submitted an application to add a second-storey "Cape Cod" extension to the house. This, of course, would have all but destroyed its heritage value, and grossly diluted its link with Lawrence.

When we became aware of this - alerted by Joe Davis - we launched a very active movement, the Save Wyewurk Committee, to prevent any such changes to what was - and still is - the most famous house in Australia. (It is the only house known by name and address outside Australia.)

Many prominent people - including a number of Lawrence scholars overseas (LD Clark actually sent a donation to the cause) - wrote to the NSW State Government protesting about the projected changes to "Wyewurk". (Our committee chairman was Professor Manning Clark, then Australia's leading historian.)

One supporter - Australia's Nobel-prize-winning-author Patrick White - was especially important, given his eminence in the Australian literary scene. (For more about Patrick White, Lawrence, and Kangaroo, see Section 3, "Claws in the Arse", below.)

Eventually, through the good offices of another (non-Bulletin) journalistic colleague, Evan Williams (who had become Secretary of the NSW Ministry for the Arts), an inquiry was set up to rule on the estate agent's application, which was amended to permit only minimal alternations that did not detract from "Wyewurk's" heritage values, which have thus been (at time of writing) successfully preserved.

(For "Wyewurk" has significant architectural heritage-value, too, as it is also the country's oldest surviving Californian bungalow - one of the major styles of domestic architecture in Australia.)

Following this success, and given the support we had enlisted, we decided to establish a local DH Lawrence Society, which we launched in 1992 at a meeting in Sydney's Botanic Gardens - the opening setting for Kangaroo.