Hal Porter's The Watcher on the Cast-Iron Balcony: An Australian Autobiography (1963) is a key work in Australian autobiography and an undisputed masterpiece of Australian literature. Porter wrote in all genres and, after a slow start, published many books. But his autobiography and short stories are his major works. Porter was a prose stylist of a kind rarely seen in Australia. His writings are both highly mannered and documentary- like in their ability to represent Australia.

Harold Edward Porter, the eldest of six children, was born in Albert Park, Melbourne. His parents were Harold Owen Porter and Ida Violet Ruff Porter. From 1917 to 1949 his father drove the Melbourne-Bairnsdale train, though Porter described his father as an engineer. The family lived at 36 (now 86) Bellair Street, Kensington, a working-class suburb of Melbourne, until 1917, when they moved to Bairnsdale, the principal town of East Gippsland. There Porter attended State School 754.

In 1921 he...