AustLit

The story of 'James Muldoon, a scholarship boy, who was sent as a teacher to the bush in Victoria where he played up with one of his senior female pupils and was hounded out of the school and into a correspondence-teaching establishment. There he met a closet painter who introduced him to the art world and a gallery owner called Sibella. He decided to masquerade as artist and was hailed by the art critics. (Tony Hancock made a film more than 20 years ago on similar lines). He discovered that his university sweetheart had died in a car crash, and then "dropped out" and became a "wild ass of a man" — a tramp preaching redemption.'

Source:

Gosman, Keith. '"Australia Day Live" Painful', Canberra Times, 29 January 1981, p.14.