Eighteen well-known Australian authors discuss the writers or stories who inspire them. Not only do they give us an insight into their motivations and values, they also provide a map of our own rich heritage.

Gary Crew: Their ghosts may be heard : a response to Ernest Favenc's novel Marooned in Australia -- Greg Dening: Reading to write -- Libby Gleeson: A Lady Long Resident in New South Wales : an encounter -- Carmel Bird: the cyclopedia: a short strange secret misty smokey mysterious history -- Lucy Frost: Displaying Trugernanna -- Henry Reynolds: On first looking into Rusden's History -- Dorothy Porter: Calling a spade for Barbara Baynton -- Rodney Hall: Such is life : the masterpiece that might have changed our literature -- Bill Gammage: Mrs Aeneas Gunn -- Beverly Farmer: Coonardoo : the well in the shadow -- Tim Griffiths: Flying fox and drifting sand : going with the flow -- Lew Murray: The bellweather brush -- Delia Falconer: Kenneth Slessor : the intimacy of the table -- Peter Goldsworthy: Hal Porter : the watcher with a cast-iron alibi -- Cassandra Pybus: Sing memory : a reverie for Gwen Harwood -- Alexis Wright: A family document -- Elizabeth Jolley: Peter Cowan : the criterion and the principle -- Brian Matthews: Hanson