Making jokes is about the most wrong and stupid thing a bemused, middle-aged, white heterosexual Anglo Saxon sort of Celt Australian male can do these days.

He’s like the most dangerous species of American there is: heterosexual white male who didn’t get what he wanted.

I'm a white, middle-aged, married, middle-class male with kids. I couldn't be disenfranchised if I tried.

If you're becoming weary and disillusioned with Australian values, Judeo-Christian values or Western civilisation, I recommend strangers - they're such a glorious, redeeming wilderness to wander into.

The scariness of manhood to males may be symbolically seen in the many stories of indigenous Australian boys who ran away and hid in the bush as the time of initiation approached.

The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.