Books I have known

Two years later I made a small contribution at the primary level, with a group of volunteers who tutored Aboriginal students. Each week I spent an hour at a mission hostel doing English and Arithmetic with a little girl called Gloria Summer.

In Adelaide at the Waite Agricultural Research Institute Keith Barley supervising my fundamental research on the penetration of clay by root hairs. I first sighted Quadrant and The Australian Humanist in his office, not that he pushed them, they were just his lunchtime reading. One day I told him I had enjoyed de Chardin's The Phenomenon of Man and the next day he lent me Medawar's The Art of the Soluble with a scintillating review of de Chardin. Often on Fridays we would have a few beers after work and then proceed to his place for dinner with his wife Anne Levy, later President of the Upper House of the SA Parliament. No amount of money can buy the value of friends and mentors like Keith and Anne. They took me on my first visit to an art gallery, possibly a significant event because I later married an artist.

At some stage I found Colin Wilson's Outsider series and ventured to the Mary Martin Bookshop in search of more. Max Harris said derisively "He's a bit of a whack isn't he?". He was impatient to assist some other customer and he missed the chance to suggest something more helpful like Bertrand Russell's popular essays.

The research went well and resulted in a publication in the prestigious refereed journal Soil Science (Champion and Barley, 1969). However it dawned that the attack on World Hunger would be more effectively launched from the social sciences than from root hair research. So I regretfully announced a change of academic direction. Before I left town Keith did me one more good turn. He lent me The Poverty of Historicism and The Open Society and its Enemies.