the continent, arriving in the UK some four months later. Stratford-upon-Avon By chance, Ross returned from the continent to England in October 1963, and had reached Stratford-upon-Avon on his UK travels just in time to see the Royal Shakespeare Company's first performances of John Barton's three-part adaptation of Shakespeare's historical plays, now generally known as The Wars of the Roses, featuring, amongst others, Peggy Ashcroft, Roy Dotrice, Ian Holm, Brewster Mason, Donald Sinden, and David Warner. Although he had studied Shakespeare at school, it was not until he saw Barton's trilogy that he apprehended just how brilliant Shakespeare was; and the overall experience of Barton's writing and the performances of the RSC had such an impact upon him, that he decided there and then to become a playwright. He returned to London and immediately began writing short stories. In order, he thought, to gain inspiration for his writing career, he went again to Europe followed the pathway of Ernest Hemingway through France, and Spain, spending time in Paris, partaking in the Pamplona bull run (on 7 July 1964), etc.; and, whilst he gained a new understanding of Hemingway's literary accounts of his European experiences, he found himself wanting to go back to the UK, finish his business there, and return to Australia as soon as possible, work for a short while in his family's hotel in Portland, and then, having sufficient funds to do so, move to Melbourne, and earn his living as a journalist. Adelaide Having returned to Portland in 1964, he met a local girl, his first wife, Dawn Halliday (1943-), the daughter of Portland's Lord Mayor, local butcher, and greyhound trainer Reuben Herbert Halliday (1908-1989), and Bessie Albena Halliday (1909-1987), née Dean. They were soon married and he remained in Portland, working hard in his family's hotel, until 1972, when, he began to understand that he was not as ideally suited to the hotel business as he had once thought, and that he really wanted to become a writer, and that writing was far more important to him than operating the ever more lucrative family business. Despite the family's strong desire for him to stay in Portland and continue to operate the family's hotel business, Ross, along with Dawn, Kendal, and Kimberly, left for Adelaide and settled there. He was convinced that the isolation of knowing no-one in Adelaide, and the overall creative atmosphere that generally surrounded