In his letter to Prichard, Lawrence - significantly - echoes his "silvery freedom...horrible paws" reference in Kangaroo:

 

...the poems are real. But they all make me feel desperately miserable. My, how hopelessly miserable one can feel in Australia: au fond. It's a dark country, a sad country, underneath - like an abyss...A great fascination, but then a dismal grey terror underneath.

However, at the time Lawrence put Fred Wilmot's name into Kangaroo (around the second week in June) his view of Australia was very benign. At this stage he was very much under the influence of Jack Scott, having only recently encountered him at Narrabeen and stayed with him at 112 Wycombe Road, Neutral Bay. (The "mates...Fred Wilmot" exchange in fact occurred during Somers's encounter with Callcott on the beach below "Wyewurk".)

The person Lawrence spend most time with while writing Kangaroo was Jack Scott (for his contact with Rosenthal was very brief, and would not have afforded him enough "inspiration" to account for the extensive exegesis that he puts into the mouth of Cooley across several chapters).

As I say above, I now believe that most, if not all, of Cooley's views are those of Taylor, possibly relayed through Scott, or recalled from his reading The Sequel.

There are a few, fleeting indications in the novel that Fred Wilmot was indeed George Augustine Taylor, and Scott's "best mate".

Note, for example, that Callcott says "Perhaps not as me and Fred Wilmot was...". Why the past tense? Why isn't he still mates with Fred Wilmot?

Whoever Jack Scott's "best mate" was, he could have since passed away. Or he could have left Australia, and was no longer around to be mates with Scott (ie, Scott was currently "mateless"). That would tend to point to Taylor.

It is also, I believe, indicative where Scott and Taylor lived. Scott's 112 Wycombe Road address was exactly one block away from Taylor's address in Florence Street, Cremorne (on the corner of which was 51 Murdoch Street). Scott would have walked past Taylor's house to go down to the wharf at Mosman Bay, and would probably have caught the same ferry with him to Circular Quay.

Although I cannot confirm this, I believe they were both Masons, and may have been members of the same Lodge. All through Callcott's description of the Diggers and Maggies arrangements, Masonic terminology is used. In the "mates" sequence cited above, Lawrence says:

"Men fight better when they've got a mate. They'll stand anything when they've got a mate," he went on again after a while. "But a mate's not all that easy to strike. We're a lot of decent chaps, stick at nothing once they wanted to put a thing through, in our lodge--and in my club."

(The club referred to was the Imperial Services Club in O'Connell Street, which Scott - and probably Taylor - belonged to, it being "the officers' club", as distinct from the Returned Servicemen's [RSL] Clubs, often called "Diggers Clubs", that were scattered all over Australia, and were mainly for the ordinary enlisted men.)

As well, both Scott and Taylor were "reserve" officers in the militia, and so would have worked closely together on "camps" (see photo above).

That they were closely associated, there can be little doubt. No doubt they were also leading lights in the King and Empire Alliance, and close colleagues of its leader, Sir Charles Rosenthal.

Were they "mates"? Perhaps - probably. Scott would certainly have been very au fait with Taylor's anti-socialist rhetoric, and would probably have had a copy of The Sequel on his bookshelf, as mentioned above.

For we must always keep in mind that Lawrence spent more time with Scott that any other person in Australia…

…up at Narrabeen and in the car back to town on that first weekend; a few days later at Mosman Bay; three days in Scott's flat in Neutral Bay; on the train down to Thirroul on the following King's Birthday weekend; the following Saturday, Sunday and Monday; and the following Thursday in Rosenthal's chambers.

That allowed time and opportunity for lots of chats about politics and society, Italian Fascism, Whitman's League of Comrades, and no doubt much else.

If Scott shared much of his political thinking with the K&E Alliance ideologue Taylor (as I now believe), then that is probably how it made its way into Kangaroo.