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Beach Beyond
Merrick, a twenty-year-old lowly clerk in the firm of Massimer and Massimer is summoned to the office of his boss who makes him an intriguing offer - that of resident lifesaver at Beach Beyond where Massimer and some of his business and professional colleagues have established a summer surfing colony.
At the colony their wives and children can holiday in safety away from the masses but not so far away that their husbands can commute at weekends.
Merrick is to put his ear to the ground to try and unearth the meaning of vague feelings of disquiet at the Beach and rumours of ‘strange happenings’.
At the colony their wives and children can holiday in safety away from the masses but not so far away that their husbands can commute at weekends.
Merrick is to put his ear to the ground to try and unearth the meaning of vague feelings of disquiet at the Beach and rumours of ‘strange happenings’.
242 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1923
8 people want to read
About the author
Jean Curlewis
9 books2 followersEthel Jean Sophia Curlewis was born at Mosman and educated at Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School, Jean Curlewis grew up in a cultured and literate upper-middle class family. Her mother was Ethel Turner, the popular author of Seven Little Australians. Her father was Herbert Curlewis, a lawyer. Jean attended Killarney, the Church of England Grammar School in Mosman where the Curlewises lived, and later went to S.C.E.G.G.S. Darlinghurst.
Because Jean was genuinely concerned with issues of social welfare it is not surprising to learn that she served as a Voluntary Aid, relieving overworked nurses during the Spanish ‘flu epidemic that devastated Sydney in 1919. It is likely that this period, when she was particularly open to infection, brought on the tuberculosis that would claim her life. In 1923 Jean married Dr Leo Charlton and the couple spent two years in London while Leo was engaged in postgraduate studies. Her later years were spent in a family cottage at the Blue Mountains and in private hospitals where she succumbed to the disease she had fought for almost a decade.
Because Jean was genuinely concerned with issues of social welfare it is not surprising to learn that she served as a Voluntary Aid, relieving overworked nurses during the Spanish ‘flu epidemic that devastated Sydney in 1919. It is likely that this period, when she was particularly open to infection, brought on the tuberculosis that would claim her life. In 1923 Jean married Dr Leo Charlton and the couple spent two years in London while Leo was engaged in postgraduate studies. Her later years were spent in a family cottage at the Blue Mountains and in private hospitals where she succumbed to the disease she had fought for almost a decade.
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November 3, 2023
I’m so glad I discovered Jean Curlewis and her novels. Here is an Australian writing in the 1920s and not about the bush! This novel is set in a beach beyond everything else. Palm Beach is mentioned but this mysterious beach is further on again - a wonderful wilderness where a group of wealthy businessmen and their families have gone to relax for the summer. The wives and children stay all week and the husbands drive up for the weekend.
One of the businessman, Mr Massimer, decides to use a member of his staff - the narrator - to act as lifeguard and watchman after strange things start happening at the beach. This is the very early days of lifesaving of course and Jean’s brother Adrian became, in fact, the first president of the Surf Lifesaving Association of Australia.
Beach Beyond is both an old fashioned novel and in some ways a modern one. There is no omnipresent narrator as in some novels of the period. The story is told from the point of view of the young clerk Merrick. In the first chapter he learns about his strange new assignment. Just before the boss calls him Merrick has a vague feeling that something is about to happen:
“It was still winter, but there were occasional drifts of warmth in the air and a faint smell of - I cant analyse it, but it was a cross between the smell of something that happened a long time ago that you can’t quite remember and the smell of something that is just going to happen but you don’t know what. Mixed with just a suggestion of wood smoke, as if some one had lit a handful of gum leaves on a far-off hill as a signal to you that it was time to start.” This first chapter ends in a very modern way: “All in a second something had resolved my mind for me, leaving me not a single doubt. A little thing, a trivial thing, but it was like an omen. As he leaned back the smoke had floated up from his cigar- blue, curling, fragrant, as if on a distant hill some one had lighted a handful of gum leaves as a signal. A signal to me that it was time to start.”
From the moment Merrick arrives in Beach Beyond he is entranced with the beauty of the place. The little community is very tight and call themselves Noah’s Ark. Our narrator meets them all including a very foppish (possibly gay - it is gently hinted at) young man by the name of Egbert who informs Merrick of the strange happenings at the beach. The children talk about several men that speak to them but the adults have never seen them. There are no men during the week at Beach Beyond except Merrick and Egbert who is recovering from an illness and the fishermen further down the beach. Belongings have been rifled through and a ’32 automatic cartridge has been discovered in the grass near the huts.
Curlewis cleverly maintains the tension and keeps the reader hooked. The characterisation is excellent and the beauty of the place is evoked not so much through paragraphs of descriptions as you would expect from a novel written 90 years ago but through the reaction of the characters themselves. As Maurice Saxby writes in the La Trobe Journal: “In the guise of a mystery thriller Jean Curlewis writes a novel of ideas that is ahead of its time.”
He speculates that with the skill she has shown in just her first four novels that she may have become a very famous and much loved novelist if she hadn’t died so young. “As it is, she has left us four highly readable novels that not only document life as it was for upper middle-class, cultured Sydney families in the 1920s but also express something of the idealism and the concerns of caring young people in every age.” I am definitely looking forward to reading her other three!
One of the businessman, Mr Massimer, decides to use a member of his staff - the narrator - to act as lifeguard and watchman after strange things start happening at the beach. This is the very early days of lifesaving of course and Jean’s brother Adrian became, in fact, the first president of the Surf Lifesaving Association of Australia.
Beach Beyond is both an old fashioned novel and in some ways a modern one. There is no omnipresent narrator as in some novels of the period. The story is told from the point of view of the young clerk Merrick. In the first chapter he learns about his strange new assignment. Just before the boss calls him Merrick has a vague feeling that something is about to happen:
“It was still winter, but there were occasional drifts of warmth in the air and a faint smell of - I cant analyse it, but it was a cross between the smell of something that happened a long time ago that you can’t quite remember and the smell of something that is just going to happen but you don’t know what. Mixed with just a suggestion of wood smoke, as if some one had lit a handful of gum leaves on a far-off hill as a signal to you that it was time to start.” This first chapter ends in a very modern way: “All in a second something had resolved my mind for me, leaving me not a single doubt. A little thing, a trivial thing, but it was like an omen. As he leaned back the smoke had floated up from his cigar- blue, curling, fragrant, as if on a distant hill some one had lighted a handful of gum leaves as a signal. A signal to me that it was time to start.”
From the moment Merrick arrives in Beach Beyond he is entranced with the beauty of the place. The little community is very tight and call themselves Noah’s Ark. Our narrator meets them all including a very foppish (possibly gay - it is gently hinted at) young man by the name of Egbert who informs Merrick of the strange happenings at the beach. The children talk about several men that speak to them but the adults have never seen them. There are no men during the week at Beach Beyond except Merrick and Egbert who is recovering from an illness and the fishermen further down the beach. Belongings have been rifled through and a ’32 automatic cartridge has been discovered in the grass near the huts.
Curlewis cleverly maintains the tension and keeps the reader hooked. The characterisation is excellent and the beauty of the place is evoked not so much through paragraphs of descriptions as you would expect from a novel written 90 years ago but through the reaction of the characters themselves. As Maurice Saxby writes in the La Trobe Journal: “In the guise of a mystery thriller Jean Curlewis writes a novel of ideas that is ahead of its time.”
He speculates that with the skill she has shown in just her first four novels that she may have become a very famous and much loved novelist if she hadn’t died so young. “As it is, she has left us four highly readable novels that not only document life as it was for upper middle-class, cultured Sydney families in the 1920s but also express something of the idealism and the concerns of caring young people in every age.” I am definitely looking forward to reading her other three!
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