As well, Lawrence quotes from a long article on volcanoes published in a contemporary issue of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. So he must have seen at least one copy of that publication.

He cites a report in The Sun - calling it, incorrectly, "the radical paper" (clearly an opposites-transposition, for The Sun was staunchly conservative).

He remarks about the origin of the word "pommy", which must have been derived from some sort of local research or reading.

While in Sydney, he was seen (by Frank Johnson, a friend of the local writer Jack Lindsay) in Dymock's bookshop in George Street, which had an excellent second-hand-books section and lending library.

He also went to the Sydney Trades Hall, which boasted a fine book and newspaper library (it's still there!). He may also have gone to the Mechanics' School of Arts library in Pitt Street (see the Section 4 chronology below).

In addition, there was probably a pile of old newspapers, kept for kindling purposes, in "Wyewurk" when he moved in, and which he could also have perused - see Paul Delprat's illustration above.

There was also the local lending library in the School of Arts in Thirroul, which may have had some serious volumes as well as its two shelves of Zane Greys and Nat Goulds (cf. chapter 10, "Diggers").

So he was by no means lacking in local printed source-material.

But while Lawrence might have picked up from such sources some local and even political information, he could not have found out about the secret army behind the King and Empire Alliance from such "casual" reading.

(Or maybe he could - see below re Lawrence's stay in Scott's flat.)

But what about non-printed sources? What about "casual conversations"?

When Tom Fitzgerald went down to Thirroul in 1958 to try to retrace Lawrence's footsteps, he interviewed the local barber, George Laughlin. Laughlin recalled Lawrence coming into his barber shop regularly to have his beard trimmed.

Laughlin also remembered chatting with Lawrence, as barbers have a habit of doing. But the only topic he could recall that Lawrence was interested in was the local topography.

Yet if there had been a secret army in or near Thirroul in 1922 - and there is no evidence that there was - then someone like the local barber, the traditional font of male gossip, might have known about it.

But Joe Davis, who knows Thirroul like the back of his hand, could not unearth any evidence of local politicking that Lawrence could have "tapped into".

The only person who might have talked politics with Lawrence was a local doctor, Dr Crossle, whom Lawrence consulted professionally while he and Frieda were in Thirroul. He had some interest in politics, but in those of the left rather than the right. There is no indication that Dr Crossle knew anything about secret armies.

When, many years later, Dr Crossle's widow was interviewed by local historian Edgar Beale, she told him that Lawrence had avoided discussion of any non-medical matter with her husband. It is indicative that Lawrence felt no need to garner information from the two people in Thirroul we know he came into contact with. His "sources" were, of course, up in Sydney.

(Joe, in his book about Lawrence in Thirroul, put forward the interesting idea that Dr Crossle might have discussed such and similar matters while playing tennis with Lawrence at nearby Bulli - see my DHLA Secret Army Research notes entry for 29/4/92 re this.)

Nevertheless, Tom Fitzgerald did find out something rather intriguing about the barber of Thirroul.

Laughlin told Fitzgerald that, more than a decade after the Lawrences left Thirroul, he received in the post a most unexpected package.

It was, he said, a copy of Frieda Lawrence's autobiography, Not I But the Wind, which included an account of the Lawrences' time in Thirroul.

It was personally signed by her. (Alas, it had since been lost, he told Fitzgerald.)

Now, unless there is something we don't know about the man whom Lawrence described in Kangaroo as "a young intelligent gentleman in eyeglasses", for Frieda to have sent Lawrence's Thirroul barber a precious author's copy of her autobiography, all the way from Taos, is implausible well past the point of possibility.

(It is highly unlikely that she even knew what his name was, let alone the address of his barber shop, opposite the local football field, in Thirroul.)

What is, however, by no means beyond the bounds of possibility is that Frieda sent someone else in Thirroul a copy of her recently-published book, in which she gave her account of the Lawrences' time in Thirroul…and that gossip of this had reached the ears of the now-much-older "young intelligent gentleman in eyeglasses".