Affair of the Art

THE characters at the heart of his latest book may be inspired by Sidney Nolan, but Alex Miller says the story reveals more about himself.

ALEX Miller never knew Sidney Nolan and yet much of his life's course has been charted by the iconic Australian artist.

It was a collection of Nolan's photographs of the Australian outback that compelled Miller to leave his British home at the age of 16 in search of the vast, mysterious lands captured in the black and white images.

"I was working on a farm in Exmoor and an Australian was there that day on a neighbouring farm. I thought it was a bit odd that he was making friends with me because I was a working man and he certainly was not," Miller says from his home in Castlemaine outside Melbourne.

"But he gave me a book of Australia with Sidney Nolan's photos of the Outback and that was a big moment of my life I will never forget."

Once settled in this wide, open land, it was Nolan's good friend, poet Barrett Reid, who became the greatest champion of Miller's literary efforts. Reid never introduced the two men, once telling Miller "you're not enough of a bastard", but he did suggest to Miller several times that he write a book based on Nolan's life.

And so, this month, Miller's Autumn Laing is published. But if it ever began as a book on Nolan, it became something altogether different in the writing.

"The characters are pretty well all based on real people (but) this book is very autobiographical," says Miller, who was introduced to Melbourne's artistic circle by Reid soon after his first novel The Tivington Nott was released in 1989.

Autumn Laing takes its title from the main character of the book who, as a prickly 85-year-old woman, is reflecting on an affair she had in her earlier years with a young artist named Pat Donlon.

Their passion for one another and for Pat to find his artistic niche pushes Autumn's enduring husband Arthur to the brink and ruins Pat's marriage to the young, beautiful Edith. But their fiery love also unlocks Pat's creativity and propels him from unlikeable and aspiring to compelling and famous.

Though Autumn Laing is a work of fiction, the similarities between the main characters and Nolan and his lover of 10 years, Sunday Reed, are unavoidable.

Like Autumn and Arthur Laing, Sunday and John Reed were patrons of the arts and opened their home to talented, young artists from the 1930s to 1970s. It was through their artistic associations that Autumn met Pat, just as Sunday met Sidney. As Autumn became mentor, patron and even painting assistant to Pat, so too was Reed more than a lover and supporter of Nolan.

After the affair ends, Autumn keeps some significant works that were created by Pat in her home at Old Farm outside Melbourne, just as Reed retained ownership of Nolan's Ned Kelly series.

But Miller says his characters are reflections of him, not Nolan. "Autumn Laing and Pat Donlon both speak for me, they don't speak for Sidney Nolan or Sunday Reed," he says.

"The place to find these characters is in me. You can't help but be autobiographical in fiction. In a biography, you are totally beholden to your public, but the novelist intrudes him or herself -- like telling a dream -- into the book and reveals rather private things about yourself."

Miller was born in London to working-class parents and lived most of his childhood years in housing commission blocks. It was his father, a Scotsman, who urged him to look beyond the horizon for his future.

"My dad would take me drawing and painting in the countryside -- they were working-class people but they had refined tastes, my parents," he says. "My dad gave me the most precious gift, which was to tell me that I could do whatever I wanted if I persisted. He was the first person in my life who had faith in me."

Miller worked on cattle stations and elsewhere throughout Queensland after arriving in the country until finally settling in Melbourne to attend university. His writing began attracting accolades almost from the start, including The Ancestor Game (1993) and Journey to the Stone Country (2003) both winning the Miles Franklin Literary Award.

Autumn Laing is Miller's 10th novel and possibly the most personally revealing. "I love Autumn Laing," he says. "Her honesty revealed things to me about myself that I was not aware of."

Autumn Laing, by Alex Miller, Allen and Unwin, $40