In the warm alkaline waters of the public bath a headstrong young engineer accidentally collides with a beautiful actress. From this innocent collision of flesh begins a passion that takes them from the Wiltshire Downs to the most elemental choices of life and death in the Australian desert. Their intense romance is but part of the daring story that unfolds. Mingling history, myth and technology with a modern cinematic and poetic imagination, Robert Drewe presents a fable of European ambitions in an alien landscape, and a magnificently sustained metaphor of water as the life-and-death force.
Renowned novelist and creative non-fiction writer, Robert Drewe, teams up with internationally acclaimed poet, John Kinsella, to explore a common geography in poetry and prose. Sand is quintessentially Australian. It is a property from which many of our stories, assumptions and geographical reckonings are drawn. For Drewe and Kinsella, it evokes the memories - both personal and cultural - that inspire the writing in this book.
A tale of passion and pursuit, Fortune is the story of Don Spargo, a modern explorer who finds a sunken treasure ship off the West Australian coast and becomes a folk hero, a lover, and a hunted and haunted man. Suspenseful, satirical and deeply moving, this novel challenges the nature of reality and legend in those scenes of modern conflict – from the media to art, from politics to crime – that have obsessed the Western individual since World War II.
Written with the same lyrical intensity and spellbinding prose that has won Robert Drewe's fiction international acclaim, The Shark Net is set in the 1950s in a city haunted by the menace of an elusive serial killer. Drewe's youth in the middle-class seaside suburb of Perth, Australia-often described as the most isolated city in the world-takes a sinister turn when a social outcast (who turns out to be an employee of Drewe's father) embarks on a five-year murder spree. This unusual memoir brilliantly evokes the confluence of adolescent innocence and sexual awakening while a hare-lipped killer who eventually murders eight people, including one of Drewe's friends, lurks in the shadows.
Haunted by the brutal murder of a local couple, David heads to his weekend shack with his new lover, Lydia, and his children from his recently crumbled marriage. Together they find escape, if only briefly, in the ocean and the bush. The Bodysurfers, the title story of Robert Drewe's classic first collection, is a vivid evocation of love, passion, terror and the beauty of the beach.
Robert Drewe, internationally acclaimed writer, writes here about the quintessential Australian experience. Drewe looks at the sunny, salty sexiness of the beach that first enticed the crusading Mr William Gocher into the ocean at Manly in 1903, defying authorities in his neck-to-knee bathing costume. We’ve come a long way from sunbathing in stockings and pantaloons to the unabashed display of sun-kissed bodies of all shapes and sizes at any beach in the country today. But the beach also has a dark side as a place of tragedy, violence and danger, a place where sharks attack prone surfers and prime ministers disappear. Drewe’s lyrical examination of Australian beach culture combines imagery from some of Australia’s most celebrated photographers with his personal anecdotes―a favourite boat, a capsicum-strewn beach, a summer holiday with teenagers and an unwelcome great white. This is a book for Australians dreaming of the beach―that is, those of us not there right now.
Big, bullish Dick Cullen, light sleeper, former rugby star and present expert on water buffalo, is lumbering through his tour of duty with a UN agency in Asia. Totally out of his depth among his small, deft, knowing colleagues, he lurches sweatily from bar to bar across various tropical states of emergency. Only in the Nameless Nightclub does he realise it is just a matter of time before his nightmares become reality . . .
Listen to me,' my mother says. 'They've let off an atom bomb today. Right here in W.A. Atom bombs worry the blazes out of me, and I want you at home.' In the sleepy and conservative 1950s the British began a series of nuclear tests in the Montebello archipelago off the west coast of Australia. Even today, few people know about the three huge atom bombs that were detonated there, but they lodged in the consciousness of the young Robert Drewe and would linger with him for years to come. In this moving sequel to The Shark Net, and with his characteristic frankness, humour and cinematic imagery, Drewe travels to the Montebellos to visit the territory that has held his imagination since childhood. He soon finds himself overtaken by memories and reflections on his own 'islomania'. In the aftermath of both man-made and natural events that have left a permanent mark on the Australian landscape and psyche - from nuclear tests and the mining boom to shark attacks along the coast - Drewe examines how comfortable and familiar terrain can quickly become a site of danger, and how regeneration and love can emerge from chaos and loss. '[Montebello] has this wonderfully novelistic flow that draws you back to another time. William Yeoman, West Australian 'Superb writing and skilful interweaving of the different strands in this book make it a pleasure to read.' Lisa Hill, ANZ LitLovers 'Creating ...... a complex picture out of discrete though related narrative chunks ...... Montebello is a fragmentary book but a perfectly integrated work of art. Drewe's literary instincts are as impeccable as his ear for the English language is unfaltering, and his latest memoir has all the more force for being set down with such a delicate hand.' Richard King, Weekend Australian 'This is a splendid memoir with many moods - delicate, tough, ironic, compassionate - that are beautifully controlled and paced.' Brian Matthews, ABR
Internationally acclaimed as a novelist and memoirist, Robert Drewe returns to the short-story territory he has made his own. Set against a backdrop - the Australian coast - as randomly and imminently violent as it is beautiful, The Ripreveals the fragility of relationships between husbands and wives, children and parents, friends and lovers. You will find yourself set down in a modern Garden of Eden with a disgraced Adam seeking his Eve; sharing the fears of a small boy in a coastal classroom as a tsunami approaches; in an English gaol cell with an Australian surfer on drug charges; watching an American film scout confront his masculinity on a Pacific island; and witnessing a middle-aged farmer contemplating murdering the hippie who stole his wife. Written in a variety of moods, always compassionate, wry and razor-sharp, these dazzling stories are crafted with all the weight and resonance of Drewe's longer fiction as well as the incisive wit, passion and pathos of his Australian classic, The Bodysurfers.
Aged six, Robert Drewe moved with his family from Melbourne to Perth, the world's most isolated city - and proud of it. This sun-baked coast was innocently proud, too, of its tranquility and friendliness.Then a man he knew murdered a boy he also knew. The murderer randomly killed eight strangers - variously shooting, strangling, stabbing, bludgeoning and hacking his victims and running them down with cars - and innocent Perth was changed forever.'To try to make sense of this time and place, and of my own childhood and adolescence, I had, finally, to write about it.' The result is The Shark Net, a vibrant and haunting memoir that reaches beyond the dark recesses of murder and chaos to encompass their ordinary suburban backdrop. The Shark Net shows one of Australia's most acclaimed writers charting new and exciting territory.
Welcome to the Northern Rivers, where the 'local wildlife' can refer to more than just the exotic native fauna. After a decade spent in this picturesque corner of Australia, home of chocolate-coated women, pythons in the ceiling, online Russian brides, deadly paralysis ticks, and the mysterious Mullumbimby Monster, Robert Drewe wiped the green zinc cream from his face and set down some of the unusual wildlife experiences that the far north coast of New South Wales - home of the world's greatest variety of ants - has to offer. Drewe's trademark gentle wit, acute observational powers and mastery of the English language are all on display in this collection of sketches and anecdotes based on the quirkiness of daily life. His sharp eye for human foibles - including his own - is tempered with a generosity of spirit. Tall tales from Australia's master of the short story - but this time these short, short stories are true. 'Excuse me, mate,' he asked the fluorescently green, bespectacled, half-submerged man, who was trying to put pen to paper while sitting in water, flicking ants off his work, and wincing as he shifted his buttock position. 'Is that how writers do writing?' 'Yep.' I frowned verdantly over my glasses. 'It's a very complicated job.' '...... for brilliant description, lively simile ...... and a gift for drama and narrative, Drewe is hard to match, and these small, apparently easy pieces have much in common with his more ambitious literary work.' Dennis Haskell, Review
Set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach - and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family - 'The Bodysurfers' is an Australian classic. A short-story collection which has become a bestseller and which has been adapted for film, television, radio and the theatre, 'The Bodysurfers', on its first publication, marked a major change in Australian literature.
Kungadgee, Victoria, Australia. A weekend in late November, 2014. At Hugh and Christine Cleary's new vineyard, Whipbird, six generations of the Cleary family are coming together from far and wide to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the arrival of their ancestor Conor Cleary from Ireland. Hugh has been meticulously planning the event for months - a chance to proudly showcase Whipbird to the extended clan. Some of these family members know each other; some don't. As the wine flows, it promises to be an eventful couple of days. Comic, topical, honest, sharply intelligent, and, above all, sympathetic, Robert Drewe's exhilarating new novel tells a classic Australian family saga as it has never been told before.
Set among the surf and sandhills of the Australian beach – and the tidal changes of three generations of the Lang family – The Bodysurfers is an Australian classic. A short-story collection which has become a bestseller and been adapted for film, television, radio and the theatre, The Bodysurfers on its first publication marked a major change in Australian literature.
Kungadgee, Victoria, Australia. A weekend in late November, 2014. At Hugh and Christine Cleary's new vineyard, Whipbird,six generations of the Cleary family are coming together from far and wide to celebrate the 160th anniversary of the arrival of their ancestor Conor Cleary from Ireland. Hugh has been meticulously planning the event for months - a chance to proudly showcase Whipbird to the extended clan. Some of these family members know each other; some don't. As the wine flows, it promises to be an eventful couple of days. Comic, topical, honest, sharply intelligent, and, above all, sympathetic, Robert Drewe's exhilarating new novel tells a classic Australian family saga as it has never been told before.
It occurs to me that it might be cathartic to write a dog - walker's journal: the true, unsentimental ruminations of a dog - walker with things on his mind more important than dogs. A dog - walker who, frankly, prefers humans. A dog - walker who decides to make the most of this begrudged walk to mull over writing ideas and dilemmas. A prickly, grumpy, even sometimes hungover dog - walker.
From a floury encounter on a baker's work table to the art of sitting backwards on chairs, from budgie training to spontaneous human combustion, this collection showcases the nonfiction writing of one of Australia's best-loved authors. These pieces encompass suburban portraits and coastal living, affectionate nostalgia and the absurdity of the every day. They are endearing and often hilarious snapshots of life from a master novelist who has turned the column into an artform.
An artist marooned on a remote island in the Arafura Sea contemplates his survival chances. He understands his desperate plight and the ocean’s unrelenting power. But what is its true colour? A beguiling young woman nurses a baby by a lake while hiding brutal scars. Uneasy descendants of a cannibal victim visit the Pacific island of their ancestor’s murder. A Caribbean cruise of elderly tourists faces life with wicked optimism. Witty, clever, ever touching and always inventive, the eleven stories in The True Colour of the Sea take us to many varied coasts: whether a tense Christmas holiday apartment overlooking the Indian Ocean or the shabby glamour of a Cuban resort hotel. Relationships might be frayed, savaged, regretted or celebrated, but here there is always the life-force of the ocean – seducing, threatening, inspiring. In The True Colour of the Sea, Robert Drewe – Australia’s master of the short story form – makes a gift of stories that tackle the big themes of life: love, loss, desire, family, ageing, humanity and the life of art.
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