Country Life

I grew up in Sydney. After leaving school, I won a scholarship and spent three years full-time at the National Art School. Leaving there, I went out into the world to earn a living.

In the early 1950s you could count the number of artists actually earning a living from painting on your fingers. Even such masters as Eliot Gruner had worked in a Sydney department store. Others were teaching, which I was disinclined to do; or else they were involved in commercial art.

I travelled, and worked on a Moree sheep station as a jackeroo. I loved the life. Riding, mustering and droving, and all that went with a country existence. However, if you were not likely to become a land owner (which I was not), there was little future in it.

Returning to the big smoke I looked around for some occupation connected with art in which (with my strictly limited capital) I could set up business. Screen printing appeared an attractive possibility. To learn more about it I worked for a textile printer, after which I set up with an older partner – and we worked through thick and thin together (too thin