The author reflects on the impact of an address by the noted Australian educator Garth Boomer to the 1989 joint national conference of the Australian Reading Association (now the Australian Literacy Educators' Association) and the Australian Association for the Teaching of English. It was challenging, explains the author, to be prompted to think of oneself, along with the whole audience, as 'advanced practitioners'. Garth acknowledged the conference participants as 'practicing or potential boundary riders, who have chosen to teach at the edges of your understandings rather than to operate from safe and stable ground'.