Survival of the jindyworobaks

Rex Ingamells, the Jindyworobaks chief, was a teacher at Unley High School when I went there as a student in 1946. He resigned soon afterwards, leaving his legacy, a Jindyworobaks anthology of Australian verse, ~hich produced in me an aversion to my native muse which was not completely eradicated until I discovered the poetry of Les Murray. Because of it, failed to benefit from the courses in Australian literature given by Brian Elliott at Adelaide university, a loss which I now regret. The fault was all mine; through complacency and compliance with the prevailing fashions in culture, I lost an opportunity available to few people at the time, for whatever might be said for or against the original Jindyworobaks, they must be given credit for insisting on the value and relevance of Australian literature in a world still prone to the cultural cringe, and there could not have been.many schools and universities in the forties and early fifties which tried seriously to develop an appreciation of local culture.