AustLit

'I was listening to the jazz on the radio one morning, when some tracks from Bernie McGann’s album Bundeena were played. And the presenter remarked how Bernie McGann used to live at Bundeena in the 1960s and practised the saxophone out in the bush there. And I suddenly remembered, yes, I had written a story about Bundeena in the 1960s. Frank Moorhouse was living there, and I had arranged to go and visit him. Except that when I arrived it turned out he had stayed in town. His girlfriend was there, and I remember her telling me about swimming and sunbathing on the beach and hearing this amazing jazz saxophone playing in the bush. It was an image that struck me, and I incorporated it in a story I wrote about the occasion, ‘Joe’s Absence’. It was an image that stayed with me, and I was amazed to have its reality confirmed. Much of the story I wrote is fictionalized. But it was good to have the veracity of this one detail confirmed, decades after the event.' (Introduction)