Showing results by author "Robert Drewe" in All Categories

Our Sunshine is the tale of a man whose story outgrew his life. Robert Drewe's strikingly imaginative re-creation of the inner life of Ned Kelly, the National Hero and Devil Incarnate of the Antipodes, is written with brilliant clarity and impressionistic economy.

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.

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.

At the age of ten, and just short of four feet tall, a boy from Ballarat named Johnny Day became Australia's first international sporting hero. Against adult competition he wooed crowds across continents as the World Champion in pedestrianism, the sporting craze of the day. A few years later, in 1870, he won the Melbourne Cup on a horse aptly called Nimblefoot, this time impressing British royalty and Melbourne's high society. And then, still aged only fourteen, this already-famous athlete and jockey disappeared without a trace. Robert Drewe picks up where history leaves off.

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 jail 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.

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.

Some relevant facts about Grace: apart from being named after a 100,000-year-old skeleton, she was 29, and for much of the past three years she'd been hiding from a stalker. Physically and emotionally besieged, Grace attempts to claw back her personal territory by abandoning her inner city life as a film reviewer and fleeing to the remoteness of the Kimberley, the northwest part of Australia where existence and territory have altogether wider implications.