Confessions of a Homegrown Alien

Jan Smith&apos;s Confessions… is finally out! Self-acknowledged victim of too many books and too much liveliness, this is an almost intergalactic memoir where small town life at Eumundi, Queensland meets the political changes of war-time Australia, Catholics and Protestants hold an uneasy truce, and Irish black humour abounds: By English standards there wasn&apos;t a Right in Australia, just men who&apos;d stopped being Left. We visit Brisbane and Longreach in less-than-fashionable 50s, then the urban thrall of Sydney and Woman magazine. Marriage, motherhood and the enigmas of the Bulletin. Separation, independence, even editor of Forum magazine, topped off with a home birth at 40…<br /> <br /><i>But with city nights there was no question of mysterious and marvellous changes, boiled tongue in the press becoming jelled by morning, sick animals healing or dying, a hundred chickens doubled in size under their aluminium tent. The Pleiades and Orion&apos;s Belt struggled for attention in a petulant sky which ached to be properly black, even the moon you had to be quick about before it disappeared too, like the Russian Sputnik with the whimpering dog inside.</i><br /> <br />Jan Smith is the author of two novels, An Ornament of Grace (Sun Books, 1966) and The Worshipful Company (Cassell, 1969), and co-author, with Dr William Vayda, of Health for Life: Are You Allergic to the Twentieth Century? (Sphere Books 1981)<br /> <br />After dropping out of the University of Queensland and working as a cadet journalist on The Courier Mail Jan went to Sydney and joined Woman&apos;s Day magazine. After three years on Woman&apos;s Day, she was forced to resign because she had married a staff member, and for the next fifty years survived by freelancing, notably for The Bulletin and Pol magazine, apart from a year on Forum UK, the sex magazine, and Australian Business.<br /> <br />She now lives happily in King&apos;s Cross, Sydney, with her cat, doing what she&apos;d have rather done all along.