Etching by Garry Shead for his Kangaroo Suite (detail)

ONE REASON - perhaps the main reason - why critics were so sure Kangaroo was "pure fiction" was that they relied on what Lawrence himself said about his time in Sydney and Thirroul.

Time and again, in his letters to family, friends and other correspondents, he went out of his way to say that he met no one, and that no one knew "I am here".

The day after he moved into "Wyewurk" he wrote to Mrs Jenkins in Perth: "...I feel I simply can't face knowing anybody".

A week or so later his "Australian novel" was progressing well, and he wrote to Mabel Dodge Luhan: "Here I have not let anyone know I am come - I don't present any letters of introduction - there isn't a soul on this side of Australia knows I am here, or knows who I am."

A few days later he wrote to Frieda's sister in Germany: "...we don't know a soul on this side of the continent".

On the same day he wrote to his erstwhile "Ardnaree" host, Earl Brewster: "...within 1000 miles there isn't a soul that knows us...I never knew before how wonderful it was to know absolutely nobody, for a vast distance around one."

Frieda in her (unreliable) memoir, Not I But the Wind, faithfully echoed this:

We arrived in Sydney Harbour - nice it was not knowing a soul.

and:

We had no human contacts all these months, nobody bothered about us...

If that were true, then how could Lawrence have found out about the secret army?

The only sensible conclusion critics and others could have come to was that he must have invented it all...the secret-army plot must have been a figment of his imagination and creative genius (or else transposed from Italy or borrowed from Walt Whitman).

He had, seemingly, neither occasion nor inclination (nor time) for anything else.

Yet, on the contrary, we have every reason to believe that he did "know someone" in New South Wales. In fact, he knew a lot of people. He had met and talked to dozens of people, not only in Sydney, but in Thirroul too.

He almost certainly met and was helped by Hum, whose name was recorded in his "Australian" address-book.

The people he met that first Sunday at the tea-party on the northern beaches had not only made contact with him, but taken him down to Thirroul and installed him in "Wyewurk".

Within a week of arriving, he had probably met Scott and a short time later Rosenthal and Garden.

Not to mention "casual" acquaintances like the barber of Thirroul; the local literary doctor, Dr Crossle; plus various members of the Friend tribe.

For Lawrence to say to his correspondents that he had met nobody is plainly wrong.

But that is not what he meant by "knowing nobody".

What he meant by such wording was that nobody knew him. As he told Mabel Dodge: "…there isn't a soul on this side of Australia [who] knows…who I am."

He was deliberately keeping his literary persona a secret.