Robert Drewe

Robert Duncan Drewe (born 9 January 1943) is an Australian journalist, novelist and short story writer.

Life

Drewe was born in Melbourne, Victoria, but moved with his family to Perth, Western Australia at the age of 6. He was educated at Hale School, and in his final year was appointed School Captain. He stayed in Perth and had a job as a junior reporter with The West Australian from his late teens until his early twenties, when he got a job with The Age and moved back to Melbourne. He went on to be literary editor at The Australian before he turned to writing fiction.

He has twice been a winner of Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism.

In around 2001, Drewe moved to the far north New South Wales coast with his wife, writer/equestrian, Candida Baker, and their two children, partly to get "more writing done".^[1]

Works

The Shark Net

The Shark Net is a semi autobiographical/semi fictional account of Drewe's Childhood and adolescence and is best described as a memoir structured as a novel. It was reproduced as an ABC television miniseries. The name, shark net is a metaphor for the modus operandi of a character in the story, the serial killer Eric Edgar Cooke, whom Drewe met in his childhood and can also be interpreted to symbolize a false sense of security.

The book charts Drewe's life from his earliest memories of Melbourne to his childhood in Perth, education at Hale School and his relationship with his father who was a senior manager in the Dunlop rubber company. It includes growing up and coming-of-age themes and also themes to do with Eric Cooke, who was a Dunlop employee. Drewe fictionalises chapters of The Shark Net to do with Cooke, based upon his interviews with Cooke's family and his own experiences while reporting at his trial for The West Australian.

The book is currently used as a Study text for the subject of English in high schools across the states of Victoria and Western Australia, including Strathmore Secondary College, Xavier College, Vermont Secondary College and Mount Waverley Secondary College in Melbourne Victoria, Canberra Grammar School and Guilford Young College in Hobart, Canterbury Girls' Secondary College in Melbourne Victoria, Mazenod College, Corpus Christi College and Helena College in Western Australia, Eynesbury Senior College, Xavier College and University Senior College in Adelaide, South Australia. The book is used as a reflection of the changes in lifestyle of the city of Perth. It is also on the booklist of the secondary education boards in other states. In the State of Victoria the book is studied as a context to meet the criteria for the VCE english Outcome 2 where text where the book is looked at to draw ideas for the theme of Whose reality.

Grace

Grace is Drewe's novel about the start of the 21st century and the things that he is "passionately interested in ... relationships, politics, the environment, human rights ... and things that I believe are wrong and are changing the face of the Australia we used to respect".^[1] It was inspired, he said, by his anger at "our appalling treatment of asylum seekers, and those hapless illegal fishermen in flimsy boats".^[1] It has been described as part action thriller, part road movie.

Bibliography

Novels

The Savage Crows (1976)
A Cry in the Jungle Bar (1979)
Fortune (1986)
Our Sunshine (1991)
The Drowner (1997)
Grace (2005)

Short story collections

The Bodysurfers (1983)
The Bay of Contented Men (1989)
Radiant Heat (1989)

As editor

The Picador (later the Penguin) Book of the Beach (1993)
The Penguin Book of the City (1997)
Best Australian Stories 2006

Drama

South American Barbecue (1991) [1]
The Bodysurfers: The Play]

Non-fiction

The Shark Net (2000)
Walking Ella (1999)

Notes

^ ^a ^b ^c Hawley (2005) p. 38

References

Hawley, Janet "On fertile ground" in Good Weekend, July 23, 2005, pp. 38-

External links

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[Hawley38-1] Hawley (2005) p. 38

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