AustLit

'“I wrote my memoirs when I was in Grade 5.” Australian poet Alan Wearne absentmindedly ruffles a hand through tufting grey hair. “They were supposed to be memoirs of Grade 2, 3 and 4, but I never got to Grade 4. I called them The Good Old Days. Because back in those grades, we had the total run of the place. I mean, it was crazy.” Wearne chuckles, as if even now – some 60 years later – he still can’t believe he and his contemporaries’ primary school reign. My mind conjures grass-stained Lord-of-the-Flies-esque students cowboying around hapless teachers. “Then we suddenly had this teacher who ran a really tight ship. We hadn’t known anything like it. So we looked back with this kind of nostalgia on The Golden Days. I used to give recitations of these memoirs out and about the place.” ' (Introduction)