My life began on January 10 1945, in a rural town on the New England tablelands in New South Wales. Tamworth was a place of summer heat, of floods and of droughts, and of ice-cold winters, which were experienced intensely. In those days, houses in Australia tended not to be heated. My schooling was at a small Church of England Girls school.

My two older siblings were Sue and Tony. My younger brother, John (there are two of us, from our original family who remain), lives in the US, and is a practicing Muslim. I have three sons, Paul, Jake and Dan, and seven grandchildren, Oscar, Eric, Rhino (Ely), Edie, Fred, Sam and Gracie. Stories of them appear in various of my books and articles.

Increasingly, with new materialism, I ponder what it is to be human, to be an individual/collective being, integral to the earth, and later, when life is done, to return to that earth. To be of the world rather than in it.

I began my academic life at the University of New England (NSW), then moved to James Cook University in Townsville (Qld) a Professor and Head of School. After ten years I moved back to NSW to a position as Professor at Western Sydney University where I am now an Emeritus Professor.

I gave up institutional life when the pressures of neoliberal managerialism prevented me from getting on with my work, recreating myself as an independent scholar—a life of freedom and creativity I have loved and in which, ironically, I have been more “productive” than when I worked at a university.