And he got it - one of 42 writers (out of 347 applicants) who received grants totalling $1.53 million in the last round before the process undergoes changes expected to make it simpler and more flexible.

As a salaried academic, Brooks had never applied for a personal grant from the council's Literature Board, thinking they should go to writers in greater need. But he retired from the University of Sydney last year with some health problems.

"I needed a little bit of financial assistance in my retirement with the state of interest rates and things going wrong," he says. "I thought I would have Buckley's up against all those other people whose names print to mind."

Brooks, 61, has published 14 works of fiction, poetry and non-fiction over 30 years, and been shortlisted for most awards but is described as a "dark horse" of Australian writing. In February he will publish Open House, a poetry collection inspired by life in Katoomba with his wife and a flock of rescue sheep.

The two-year grant will enable Brooks to work on an ambitious novel, Metamorphosis, which he has thought about for years.

"What appeals to [the peer assessors] is its broad historical scope," he says. Beginning in biblical times and ending in Belanglo State Forest 30 years ago, the novel's central story moves from a Croatian concentration camp to the Snowy Mountains Scheme.

Brooks is one of 12 artists in seven art forms to receive $100,000 fellowships.

The other successful literature grant applicants, who each receive $40,000 or $10,000 for new work, are 15 established writers, including Janine Burke, James Roy, Amanda Lohrey and Sue Woolfe; 15 developing writers such as Delia Falconer, Carrie Tiffany and Mark Tredinnick; 10 emerging writers including first novelists Courtney Collins and Fiona McFarlane; and one digital/new media writer, Halcyon Macleod.

From next year, the complex grants system will be reduced to five programs across all art forms, with quarterly application rounds, and artists able to choose which peer panel assesses their project. Only the fellowship program is unaltered.

Jill Eddington, the Australia Council's director, literature, said the changes were in response to a three-year review that consulted artists and would simplify "a quagmire of grants and hundreds of different criteria built up over 40 years".

She said, "We want to fund the best applications, the best artists in Australia" but "we will be very careful to ensure the allocation of funds across all art forms and all stages. Peers have a deep knowledge of their art and there will be very consistent scoring. We will be analysing the stats."

In the restructure, author Charlotte Wood has been appointed to a new position as chairman of arts practice, literature, which she sees as an advisory and advocate role, talking to writers and "banging the drum about putting literature at the centre of any discussion of the arts".