Born in the first half of the last century and soon afterwards, as you can see in this tragic photo, held in protective custody, it's no surprise I became a writer. It was where I found freedom. Crazy, of course, but the world needs its crazies, its dancers, musicians, artists, composers, writers. Useless we may be, but the world needs distraction from time to time and a place, at best, to nourish the heart and soul.

I've had separate spells as a writer. In the very early years I can't believe I got away with it, can't believe I survived. By the great kindness of God, I think would really be the truth of it. Four times something I wrote has saved my life. The second time, working as a concrete labourer in the northwest of Australia, literally.

The foreman had told me, from the corner of his mouth, that someone was going to die on the site. It was the broadest of hints and he told me twice. We were hundreds of miles from anything like civilisation and I was thousands of miles from anyone I knew. I'd already had a warning: a scorpion put in my boot. It hurt but I needed the money, worked on.

Then an article I wrote was printed in a magazine. The road gang, all ten of them, read it, loved it. It was about them, about the work. Overnight I shifted from anathema to accepted. A fuck-up as a concrete labourer but, hello, a writer. The foreman no longer hinted my life was in danger. In fact, in touching, suitably offhand ways, it was cherished.

That was the first time I got into print. Since then I've had six books published by Heinemann, the Viking Press, Gallimard and others, a few short stories, six children, two marriages, too many addresses, one great love, and ticked most of the boxes in the enemies of promise catalogue including, of course, alcohol. I also managed to extinguish myself for many years in a cult, and survived, with no regrets at all, some lucrative limbo years of scriptwriting.

Since writing novels again, and with a few years to look back on, I've tried to answer the question Dylan Thomas asked: 'What's a bloody poem worth anyway?' or a novel, for that matter. I've felt the need, with some humility, to look at my life and what it is that still keeps me wandering in the wilderness when anyone sane would by now have known far better. And all I can say is that it seems to be the place where I belong, and that though we may all wander there, us crazies, it doesn't mean we're lost.