"In the Wet", 1953 novel by Nevil Shute (high school reading in 1960

I rather like to remember some of the books of my youth, at least high school days. The future in this book is already forty years past tense.

Nevil Shute, In the Wet (1953, repub 1986 by Ameron, ISBN 0884113183) was a favorite of mine during the fall of my senior year in Washington-Lee (Arlington, VA) in high school, and I read it (already in a 1960 paperback) as the first book report for English. I think Australian and Canadian literature was counted as "English" as allowed by the teacher. Like the more famous "On the Beach," this book was, for its time, a futuristic look at the British empire by 1983, already well on its way to gradual dissolution (like the film "Wah Wah" later), well, with Brexit in 2016.

The senior English teacher inisted that he thought English literature was "superior" to American. I guess that included the entire Commonwealth.

There is an old clergyman, and a homeless man who foretells the future through the "medium" of a aborigine quadroon Australian bush pilot.