AustLit

Author's note: I saw Mr Hodgetts when I was five. I peered at his back through his lace curtain. I wrote in a Boots Diary before I knew the alphabet. I loved smooth paper, I still do.

In trying to write I start with one little picture, a few words, an idea so slender it hardly matters and then, suddenly, I am exploring human feelings and reasons. The first story I wrote in Western Australia was 'A hedge of Rosemary', about 1960. I suppose it contains things I had left behind, like the old man who carefully studied the soles of his boots whenever he took them off, and things which were w\new to me but known already by people who had always lived here, but it is more a re-enactment of the reality of transplantation and chosen exile experienced vicariously during childhood.

The stories in this collection are taken from that time to the present.

The first six stories come from a collection of twelve in which I have tried to present the human being overcoming the perplexities and difficulties of living. The collection is called 'The Discarders'. The characters appear to inhabit a crazy world. I think it is our world. Perhaps, because of too much shy hope and tenderness and expectation, people discard each other when it might be more satisfactory to discard the complacent acceptance of the values of our society and education and the repeats on television. 'You know, land isn't just for sheep,' Mother said. 'It's for people to enjoy themselves.'

I think she's say the same about reading.

Elizabeth Jolley

1976