'Stumbling forwards - understanding backwards': some puzzles in the life of one working-class breakthrough

... a journalist pulled me up for using the c-word. 'Class?' she asked with a lifted eyebrow ... I found myself chewing the air a moment. Had I said something foul, something embarrassing to both of us? -Tim Winton (2013: 24) Today I am a well-paid professor in a modern university. I live in a mortgage-free, multi-storied, architect-designed house in a green and leafy suburb. My income puts me just into the top decile of Australian income earners. Half a century ago I was growing up in the working-class suburb of Footscray seven kilometres from Melbourne. Footscray then was home to mostly working-class men working in the abattoirs, or in factories making food, rope, metal goods, gas, or petrol. Footscray was treeless, bleak and in summer it smelled. The stench of vomit from the ropeworks, blood and cow shit from the meat works, or coal, gas or petroleum fumes was unavoidable.