I have visited Melbourne four times. Once as a very young child with my family when we were returning to Wellington from London. A second time as a university student in the summer holidays of 1984 to 1985, when I attempted to sell imitation leather credit card-holders door-to-door in the suburb of Carlton, where I was staying for two months in the flat occupied by my brother and several other people, including the woman who on my fourth visit sat a little way away from us drinking her own gold-coloured Castlemaine. The third time was a stay of three days in the same flat as my second visit when I was travelling by air to London in early March 1987.

My fourth and most recent visit to Melbourne was the first one on which I had been aware of the writer who is the subject of this story and of the gold coloured books which carry his name.