Understandably, it contains many faults, due partly to immaturity, but more to the fact that my technical competence was not equal to my ambition, which in retrospect makes me realise how horizons narrow in middle age. In reissuing it in this very slightly abridged version, I am conscious that it still asks for the tolerance which most reviewers were kind enough to show when it was new, on the grounds that its author (who no longer seems to be myself) was too young to know his own limitations. Nowadays I should hardly dare to tackle such a King Lear-like theme; but I do not regret having raised the large questions asked here, and so wisely left unanswered. If the novel retains any interest, other than as an historical-sociological document, it may be because this story of an old man is really about a certain stage in the life of a sort of young man who has always been with us, and always will be. In the original edition I was consciously making propaganda on behalf of Christian mission-stations for Aborigines, in particular for one Mission on which I had worked for a short time, and which seemed in danger of closing down.
