Wearne is Australia's poet-moralist, a master of its idioms, the recorder of its pretensions, and the scourge of its big-noters, con-artists and crooks. In 'The Vanity of Australian Wishes' he pays tribute to Samuel Johnson and Juvenal, 'who knew that combination of bemusement, annoyance, anger and despair to which your country can drive you, though always aware of its entertainment value and dramatic potential'. The collection includes an affectionate portrait of three Melbourne high school teachers in the early I 960s, and a saga which records the destinies of their pupils, satires on the world of finance and drug-dealing, literary academics and the libertinlsm of baby-boomers, and seven new poems based on Australian pop songs.