A problem not so well understood is the growing presence of plastics in the marine food chain. If we don't make big changes fast, the fish we do save may no longer be safe to eat.

If we love the sea as much as we claim to we'll do everything we possibly can to keep it healthy. Otherwise we might as well take up golf.

Who wants to be reputable? That's for golfers and tycoons with a sleazy past.

The blank page doesn't bother me. It's the voice in my head (not always my own) that gives me the yips. It's worse when I'm not making stuff up.

I can't make something 'useful' to me in a writing sense for a very long time. I don't have any journalistic instinct. And I do keep a journal, but it's neither very revealing nor fruitful for work. Stuff just bubbles up from the swamp later.

For a while Australians were desperately trying to be cosmopolitan. I think it is a pointless exercise. Australian novels are those rooted in Australia, with Australian landscapes and colours. My work has always had bits of Western Australia in it. It is always here. The world comes to us.

I never start with what lots of people think of as a subject or a theme. They're school words, not art words. So, writing essays busts my arse because the art is in addressing the subject. I find it really difficult and monstrously time-consuming. In an essay I need to employ my imagination but it's indentured in a way it's not when I'm free to make everything up.