Maybe Scott was part of a "disguise" for someone that Lawrence had encountered whom he wanted to portray without revealing his real identity.

Maybe Lawrence, in creating the character Jack Callcott, was not so much thinking about Scott - so he went in almost "as is" - but was using him partially as a "cover" for someone else.

My analysis of the text of Kangaroo seemed to indicate that there was, indeed, someone "missing" from the novel's dramatis personae - someone who played a significant role in the Lawrences' stay in Sydney and Thirroul, but whose "true" identity was not readily identifiable from the text of the novel.

At the afternoon tea-party described in chapter 2, Somers encounters a number of people who are to play a part later in the novel. At the conclusion of the tea-party, one of them - Jack Callcott in fact - offers to drive Somers and his wife back to town.

Jack Scott, despite being portrayed in the novel as a "garage proprietor", did not drive a car. So he could not have driven the Lawrences back to town.

Hum did own a car, a Nash, but he is unlikely to have taken the Lawrences to back to town, because he and his family were almost certainly staying in the neighbouring suburb of Collaroy (see below) during the then current school holidays.

So Hum was not the driver of the car. Then who did drive them back from Narrabeen, at dusk, that first Sunday afternoon? It must have been someone else.

A clue was buried deep in the text.

The man who built "Wyewurk" was a prominent Sydney businessman, Thomas Irons, general manager of Clyde Engineering, a major Sydney-based company specialising in heavy engineering projects (they built trains).

"Wyewurk" had been his holiday cottage, a Californian bungalow built in 1911 from a design drawn up by his son Roy Irons, who had studied architecture in America before WW1.

Irons senior, who had died while on holiday at "Wyewurk", was also half-owner of a motor garage in the city, Taylor's Garage.

Irons' Will revealed that a number of other prominent business-people in the city garaged their cars at Taylor's Garage (the Horderns, the Nocks, etc).

The document also showed that the Friend family's two Austin cars were garaged there.