‘One is inclined’, Patrick White once wrote to his publisher in England, and by ‘one’ he meant himself, ‘to think of the Adelaideans as being advanced because of a handful of progressive individuals one knows.’ Among the 1960s progressives he had in mind were Harry Medlin and Max Harris, and Geoffrey Dutton who had been carving a niche for Australian literature in the University of Adelaide's English Department. These Adelaide rebels, realising early what White had to offer, faced down conservative resistance to The Ham Funeral, The Season at Sarsaparilla, and Night on Bald Mountain, and got them successively premiered there in 1961, 1962 and 1964. Thus White, who would come to represent Australian literature to the world, appropriately took centre stage at the Union Theatre in the University of Adelaide, not in one of the venues of the Adelaide Festival, which had rejected him. Later, in a more favourable climate of opinion, Jim Sharman commissioned Signal Driver for the 1982 Adelaide Festival, and included the opera Voss in the program as well. Premieres in Adelaide followed for two less well-known White plays, Netherwood in 1983 and Shepherd on the Rocks in 1987. White enjoyed Adelaide, not only the theatre but also the dry air that was good for his asthma, the Central Market where he could buy better wurst, cheeses, herbs, fresh fruit and vegetables than in Sydney, and an atmosphere that he found ‘peaceful and civilised’ (Marr 15–17).