Kevin John Dillon, bibliophile and collector.(Obituary)(Obituary)

BY THE TIME Kevin Dillon died he had filled six garages and one apartment, floor to ceiling, with a vast collection of Australiana, much of it memorabilia relating to the history of the Sydney Push, as well as much of world literature and his special love, science fiction.

Speakers at his funeral paid tribute to the generosity of this extraordinary collector. Any friend had only to mention a gap in his own collection to have Dillon, a few weeks or days later, appearing on his doorstep with the desired item in hand. Kevin Dillon lived to support the interests of his friends.

Born in 1932 during the Great Depression in the working-class Sydney suburb of Campsie, and educated locally, Dillon first dropped into the crucible of Sydney's bohemia as a teenager when he took evening classes at Fort Street Girls' High School, in an attempt to win a university scholarship. There he met Alison Norbury, better known as the folk singer Kathleen McCormack; the urbane Milton Chambers; poetess Mary Harvey; and a sometime street urchin known as John Brown. These friendships in turn led to a house on lower Fort Street where lived the playwright Ray Matthew and others of the Sydney Push.

Dillon's interests were developed further by his attendance at the first Australian Science Fiction Convention in 1952 where he formed a close and pivotal friendship with Graham Stone, one of the founders, and still president, of the Australian Science Fiction Association.

At this time, Australian copyright law required that two copies of everything published in Australia should be lodged with the Public Library of New South Wales (now the State Library) and the National Library in Canberra. The State Librarian, John Metcalfe, was an enthusiastic supporter of the need to maintain collections of items of local, popular culture such as comics, science fiction, and other publications, many of them underground, which provided opportunities for young Australian writers. However, as fast as these were collected, they were dumped by some of the academics on the staff.

The Public Library was a second home for the Push, many of whom were on the staff, including the chess master Alan Wilkes, poet and future novelist of fame Christopher Koch, and Graham Stone amongst others. When Dillon heard of the junking of the collections he was incensed. It was the genesis of his lifelong obsession with collecting the ephemeral by-products of Australia's intellectual life.

"The Push" is an umbrella term with a curious history. In Melbourne, in the nineteenth century, it acquired a particularly Australian meaning when it was used to refer to a group of larrikins; and later, to nonconformists within a larger group---hence the "Uni Push" for those who were pushing against the university establishment, the "Artists' Push" for those in favour of the avant garde, and the "Sydney Push" for Sydney's bohemian groups in general.