Saying I admire your work may sound

a corny way of opening but it doesn't mean

it isn't true. In any case

I know it's something writers like to hear.

I envy your fortitude, doughtiness that comes

with the philosophy that Life's a trial,

World a testing place, taking it on the chin —

that chancy voyage for a start,

main and mizzen top masts down. Then

there's your rascally (I mean it politely)

good humour, that bit about the centipede

scuttling off with a railroad rapidity,

the common bush track which wet weather beat

to a tenacious batter-pudding consistency;

not tomention your downright curiosity,

water-colourist concern with how things look;

and wanting to be liberal, to believe

in Progress or in the thing called Good

which ignorance and idleness alone impede;

not least your (I think that I can safely say)

woman's way of dealing with the world …

Going about like Adam, though,

conferring names on flora, fauna, settlements,

I'm not so sure you understood as colonising,

locating power, legitimising sovereignty, even if

you were generous enough to think the more

euphonious native names, Wollondilly, Wollongong,

Wooloomooloo, Illawarra, Maneroo, preferable

to English ones with their unfair comparisons

between the great and old, the little and the new.

Some things you were blind to. They went

halloo-ing after Abos, those horseback gentlemen

and wielding of the cat was far more liberal,

dear Mrs M, than you could be. Just think,

those convicts’ leg-irons half your comfortable weight!

Doubtless you knew but had your loyalties to weigh?