 It was in these years that he first became known to Douglas Stewart, with whom he formed a long-standing friendship.These early poems dealt primarily with war, but from 1946, after his move to Wells Station, "his poetry became more closely attuned to the realities of the countryside".Kramer writes that "his daily life as a grazier, his acute observations of the natural world and his deep understanding of European poetry gave him a distinctive poetic voice, learned but not didactic, harmonious but not bland, vigorous but finely tuned".