Catching the Fire

For one of Australia's pre-eminent men of letters, Rodney Hall travels lightly. Look into his black shoulder bag and you'll simply find a 3B pencil fixed to an octavo notebook with an elastic band. These days it's all the writer needs for his mobile office, as his best tool is a superbly exercised imagination. Ever since the then aspiring young poet left Brisbane for a 10,000-km walking trek around the Mediterranean almost 50 years ago, Hall has worked best off the leash. Much of his creatively vast colonial trilogy, which began with 1988's Captivity Captive and ended with the 1993 Miles...