She lapsed in her writing, discouraged by earlier failures, and was only to be published again in 1983 with "Miss Peabody's Inheritance" and "Mr Scobie's Riddle". The latter won The Age Book of the Year and high acclaim, especially in Australia and the United States. A year later, "Milk and Honey" was awarded Christina Stead Prize for fiction in the New South Wales Premier's Literary Awards. In 1986, "The Well" won the top Australian literary prize – the Miles Franklin Award. "The Sugar Mother" was, as Riemer writes, "her characteristically idiosyncratic way of fulfilling a commission to write a novel commemorating the bicentenary of 1988".