There is no Australian city other than Melbourne which could have produced Keith Dunstan,’ writes Barry Humphries in his foreword to this collection. Indeed, Dunstan, journalist and writer, has long been a Melbourne institution, particularly remembered for his daily column in the Sun News-Pictorial, ‘A Place in the Sun’. While working as a journalist, he was also busy as a writer of popular history: among his many works is that splendid trilogy, Wowsers (1968), Knockers (1972) and Ratbags (1979), the juxtaposition of those titles telling us so much about the character of Australian culture.