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19

achieving prosperity, my grandparents aspired toward the conservative establishment.

        My parents had broader ideas.   They had lived overseas and been to university. They had flirted with some of the progressive ideas of the time.   My father had methodically ploughed through the Bible, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx; and reained openminded.   My mother was sympathetic to the "Bohemian" ideals of the art world.

         They had not, however, formally abandoned their origins, as I had done.   But they had started me on my way, by showing that there were many worthwhile things to pursue in life, if one only looked for them.

        The Moratorium demonstrations against the war in Vietnam had caused me to make a firm decision to oppose conservative politics; and at the same time I had decided to leave my farm and resume my education.   In my thirties, I had become a postgraduate student and a radical.   Now, I had taken the public step of taking out a membership ticket in the Harbord Branch or the Australian Labor Party.   I had joined the working class.

        Many of the people in the Branch were familiar.   They were the same Irish Catholics whom I had known on the beach, at school and at the local church.   In the Party, their "Rock Chopper" origins came to the fore.

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