On the mat and up the wall.

I ARRIVED IN AUSTRALIA on July 19, 1970, knowing exactly no one, but with a premonition (amply justified) that it would have to be preferable to postindustrial Scotland, whence I had fled. Between that date and November 2002, I had participated more than fully in Australian life at large: education, sport (as player and administrator), government policy (at both federal and state level) and much else. The only major experiential gap in that time was that I had never spent any length of time, as a patient at any rate, in an Australian hospital. Indeed, in the politically turbulent 1970s, I was much nearer to spending time in prison than in hospital, though that, too, was ...