AustLit

'As the bus hurtled down the hill towards us at the stop he said, stepping from beneath the shelter to the edge of the pavement, waiting momentarily in the drizzle before climbing the steps of the as yet unstationary vehicle, ‘I’ve decided I’m not going to teach.’ It was – after seventeen years of being taught and the last few of intending teaching, to depart from the covering cap and furling gown and leap, as it were, onto the stream of, so to speak – a decision. A shuddering of the clutch and a chugging away, past the detacheds with their long drives and hedged fronts and gables and a sevenpenny bus ride; the privilege of suburbia has it tax.'  (Introduction)