We walked among the wattle blossom in the gully beyond the vegetable garden till we reached the top, where there were some rocks. We sat down, and he said, “My dear Sybylla, I have read your beginning. Though immature it has promise.”

I nearly stifled in agonised expectation of his condemnation. My whole feeling had come to the surface as sensitive as the nerve of a tooth. I knew he would never be mean enough to tell Ma the full depth of my foolishness.

“Why do you write about a castle in England that you have never seen?” he asked gently.

Without waiting for my reply he continued, “I’ll tell you, my dear little girl. The castle in England is a castle in Spain, and ‘tho’ ’twas never built,’ imagination makes it more enthralling than things near at hand. Why not try reality?”

I asked breathlessly what he meant.

“Well, instead of the roses on that castle wall, why not this fragrant bower of wattle? Instead of the wind moaning across the moor, why not the pitiless sun beating down on the cracked dusty earth?”

“But that couldn’t be put in a book—not in a story!”

“Why not, child?”

“Everyone knows that, and it is so tame and ugly.”

“It would be most novel and informing to those who are as familiar with the castle or a slum street as you are with the wattles and the baked paddocks. Australia is crying out to be done: England is done to death.”

This was an expanding idea, like opening a window and letting me look into a place I had not known before.

“You see, you know everyone in the Australian bush. You could picture them with a vigor and conviction that would be refreshing: and my dear, if you could project yourself upon the canvas it would be most successful.”

“Oh, I couldn’t do that!” I shrank from this. “Besides, I have never done anything like the heroines in novels. I am not sweetly good, and though Ma thinks I am possessed of a devil, I have never done anything really unrespectable. For example, I could never have been so unkind as to throw that dictionary back at the teacher like Becky Sharp did, though I wish I could do that kind of thing. It must be splendid.”

“If you could draw portraits of all the characters that furnish your life it would be a good beginning.”

“Oh, but I couldn’t put in real people. They would not like to see themselves except as white-washed saints—like the yarns on the tombstones. I’d have to imagine people to make them interesting.”

“Um!” said he, and then with a chuckle, “you go ahead. I shouldn’t be surprised if they turn out to be more real that way. But there is one thing, my dear, be Australian. It is the highest form of culture and craftmanship in art to use local materials. That way you stand a chance of adding to culture. The other way you are in danger of merely imitating it, and though imitation is a form of flattery to the imitated, it is a form of weakness or snobbery in the perpetrator. You must find your own way and your own level. The material is in you: all that is required is industry in cultivation.”