A contemporary Bulletin cartoon lampooning the King and Empire Alliance (an ex-Digger asks a patriot for a spare coin)

IF I AM RIGHT that Lawrence was driven back to town, and next day accompanied down to Thirroul, by Robert Moreton Friend, then that would also explain something else that my Melbourne contact, Ernest Whiting, told me in 1977.

In a later letter he had said that my description of Jack Scott (in several articles in the 1970s and 1980s) matched the description he had been given "of the man who met Lawrence at the wharf and took him to stay on the north side for three days".

This information did not come from Whiting's original "source" in the 1930s. I now believe it may have come from Colonel Charles Spry, the former head of Australia's internal security organisation, ASIO.

Whiting told me that he played golf with Spry in the 1970s. He also said that he had someone he could speak to regarding the matters I was interested in.

Spry certainly would have known about the Australian Protective League, and Jack Scott, too.

When Whiting first mentioned the wharf meeting, I had assumed that he was referring to the P&O wharf at Circular Quay. But it now seems it may have been the Mosman wharf, on the other side of the Harbour.

Lawrence came up to Sydney (as Somers does) early on the morning of Thursday, June 1. He had to arrange - ostensibly - for his trunks, which by then had been unloaded from the Malwa, to be sent down to Thirroul.

We know it was the Thursday because in Kangaroo Lawrence says that Somers witnessed a ferry collision in the Harbour, and such a collision did occur around 10am that day.