From Garry Shead's Kangaroo series

IN ANY PROJECT that has lasted as long as this one, you come across clues which at the time mean little, but in hindsight can take on greater significance.

One memoir captured by Lawrence's "composite biographer" Edward Nehls around 1956 was obtained (by his Sydney operative, Fred Esch) from Clarice Callcott Farraher, the daughter of Mrs AF Callcott, the sister of the owner of "Wyewurk", Mrs Beatrice Southwell.

It was Mrs Callcott who in May 1922 let the seaside bungalow to Lawrence and Frieda.

Her daughter recalled to Esch her mother's contact with the Lawrences, then added:

I understand that DH Lawrence was very reserved, the people he would have come in contact with while at Thirroul have long since moved from the district.

When I first read this - "the people he would have come in contact with" - I had assumed she was referring to the movement of people in and out of Thirroul generally.

It did not occur to me that she may have been referring to some local people in particular. That possibility only swam into my ken when knowledge of the Friend family's extensive presence in Thirroul came to light, mainly through the groundwork of Joe Davis locally.

I am not certain when the Friend family sold their large property in Thirroul, but I would hazard a guess it was well before Esch interviewed Clarice Farraher. (I have since learned it was prior to 1956, following the death of the family patriarch, WS Friend, and the winding-up of his estate.)

It is now my firm belief that "the people he would have come in contact with" were, specifically, the Friend family.

(It may well be that they were the recipients of that copy of Not I But the Wind that Frieda had sent from Taos. She would have had only the Friends' Thirroul address - even if it were only "Miss Dorothy Friend, Thirroul, NSW, Australia".)

In 1988 Joe Davis wrote an article for a local newspaper, promoting the work of the Save Wyewurk Committee, in which he speculated that Lawrence's contact with the secret army may have been via the Friend family.

However, after detailing the extensive interests the Friend family had in Thirroul, he felt he had to leave the matter in limbo, as "the jury is still out" with little chance of them "reaching a verdict in the perplexing case of 'The Secret Friends of Mr D.H. Lawrence'".

But he gave up too soon.