Merv is an enigmatic figure. The writer of the deeply troubling Gatton Man (in which Lilley claims that his father committed the unsolved Gatton murders!) and the delightful and useful manual for a poetic life, Git Away Back!, Merv is well into his eighties. 

Merv was born in 1919 in Rockhampton, Central Queensland and reared on a dairy farm, The Springs, Upper Ulam via Bajool. He went to Ulam primary school, then did a correspondence course, worked in dairying, then cane farming; later he was a cowboy rough-rider, breaker and drover. In the Army 1941-44, Merv was released to the timber industry; he became a woolpresser, canecutter, fencer, timbercutter, miner in coal and lead mines. A political activist as a schoolboy, he became an advocate and battler for socialism, working conditions. He joined the Communist Party in 'forty-three and remained a member until the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956. A poet/songwriter/short story writer from early in the fifties, he worked at sea as a fireman on the inter-island coasts, married Dorothy Hewett in February 1960, inherited three sons and created two daughters. Merv now lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW. He has written: two books of poems, What About the People? with Dorothy Hewett, 1962, Cautious Birds, 1973; a commonplace book, Git Away Back! 1983; Gatton Man, 1994; and now the part-autobiographical book, The Channels.