Um, what I found though about the Christian Brothers is this: that they were certainly muscular.

You know, so I was a weird eccentric kid but I did believe in the power of the word and of the word being made flesh I suppose, which again I suppose came from my temperament as well as my upbringing.

And I found both literature and the church very dramatic presences in the world of the 1950s.

So I was very close to ordination. I was delighted to be ordained a deacon, which is the last step between, before becoming a priest. But then it all fell apart.

I must apologise because I know all writers have memories of being on the outer because it's the children on the side of the playground who become the dangerous writers.

And I think my sexuality was heavily repressed by the church, by the, you know, the design of the mortal sins.

In a way Australia is like Catholicism. The company is sometimes questionable and the landscape is grotesque. But you always come back.