Helen Garner, Alex Miller, Robert Drewe, Frank Moorhouse and Alexis Wright were among the authors who spoke at a colloquium in honour of Bruce Bennett, emeritus professor at the University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

Writers and academics came from interstate, London, New Zealand, Japan, India and France for the two-day conference, Home and Away: Writing about Place. And a solid contingent of Canberra writers and poets Marion Halligan, Alan Gould, Geoff Page and Adrian Caesar and former Canberran, now Sydney resident, Sara Dowse also spoke.

Organiser Paul Eggert, professor of English at UNSW at ADFA, said only about a quarter of the 180 attending the final day on Saturday were academics and the rest were drawn from the public.

He said it was heartening to see so many people arriving at 9am on a Saturday to spend the day listening to a discussion on the places inhabited or imagined in literature and life.

Professor Bennett, who held the chair of English at UNSW at ADFA for nine years from 1993, came from Western Australia and was a Rhodes Scholar.

The co-author of The Oxford Literary History of Australia, he is the biographer of the Australian poet Peter Porter, who has lived for many years in London. Porter also spoke at the colloquium.

Professor Eggert said, ''Although the focus was very much national, his connections are international, and these people have come to Canberra for the discussion and the honouring.''

Professor Eggert noted that Professor Bennett was a frequent user of the National Library, which he calls his ''local''. For a lover of books, it was an appropriate venue to bring together scholars and writers to discuss a subject that is close to his heart: Australians and their place in the world.