It is likely that Hum was waiting to meet Lawrence and Frieda when they stepped ashore from the Malwa at the P&O wharf, near where the Sydney Opera House now stands, early on Saturday morning, May 27.

It was no doubt Hum who had booked the Lawrences into Mrs Scott's guesthouse further up Macquarie Street...though he probably did not accompany them there, for in Sydney in 1922 Saturday was a working day - thus affording a rapacious Sydney taxi-driver the opportunity to "rook" the new chums (as described in chapter 1 of the novel).

And it was almost certainly Hum who invited the Lawrences to travel up to Narrabeen (via ferry to Manly) the next day, where at an afternoon tea-party Lawrence learned that "Wyewurk" in Thirroul had just been vacated - the previous day, in fact - and so was available for rent "at winter rates".

Hum's son told Ruffels that he recalled spending school holidays at Collaroy, the next suburb to Narrabeen. As the schools were still on holiday on the weekend that the Lawrences arrived in Sydney, it is likely that Hum and his family were staying at their usual holiday-house in Seaview Parade, Collaroy, on Sunday, May 28, 1922.

Fortuitously, our knowledge of Hum was considerably enhanced by another of those serendipitous events mentioned above.

My closest friend in Australia is the artist Paul Delprat, who lived with us in London, and with whom Sandra had gone to art school before we were married (and whose illustrations are herein displayed).

When I mentioned the name Hum to Paul, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

For Paul was related to Hum. The sister of Paul's great-grandfather, the artist Julian Ashton, had married a Hum.

Paul's mother actually remembered Hum coming to their house in Mosman almost every Sunday and having tea with her father Howard Ashton, Hum's cousin.

Most interesting of all, however, was that Mrs Delprat specifically remembered her father - who, as well as being an artist of some note, was also a senior member of the editorial staff of The Sun newspaper - calling Hum, more than once, "a typical Cornishman".

Although Hum is in fact a German name, Hum's father was living in Cornwall when he met and married Julian Ashton's sister, Bertha. It seems that Gerald Hum identified more with this Cornish background than he did with his German ancestry. (Trewhella, of course, is a Cornish name - see below for its probable provenance in Kangaroo.)

(There is another, and interesting, way we might confirm the identity Hum as the character Trewhella in Kangaroo. The address Lawrence noted down in his "Australian" address-book for Hum contained two errors. He wrote "Chatsford" instead of the correct "Chatswood" and "Carita" instead of the correct house-name "Casita" - see below for Hum's "Spanish persona". The probability is that these errors were caused by Lawrence misreading an address that Hum had written out and given to him just prior to the arrival in Colombo. This is perhaps confirmed by a reference in the text of Kangaroo to Cooley's "difficult scrawl". We know Cooley was primarily modelled on Rosenthal, who had perfect copperplate writing - as any decent architect would. So the likelihood is that it was someone else who had the "difficult scrawl" - probably DG Hum. This is may well be another of Lawrence's compositional-transpositions, or amalgamations.)