17 OCTOBER 1970, Page 19

Pommy bastards

Sir: It is reassuring to know that your reviewer of Andrew Garve's novel Boomerang finds the Aus- tralian outback tempting. As an Anglophile (which is Australian terminology for 'liker of pommy bastards and the SPECTATOR'), I am sure that your reviewer had his tongue where mine is when he described this fair country as peopled by 'genial if slow-witted inhabitants'. I suppose that by 'genial' he must mean the 'genius' of our slang (one 'shouts' some- one a beer, incidentally, one does not shout it for him). Similarly, it is doubtless the characters in the novel who are slow-witted, rather than my countrymen.

I hasten to explain also that my SPECTATOR comes by sea-mail, and that a certain dock-strike further delayed its arrival on antipodean shores—but patience and tolerance are yet other excellent qualities that we cultivate and cherish down under.

Andrew Hunwick Kingswood College. Hampden Road, Nedlands, Western Aus- tralia 6009