Drowning Maze

by Jean Curlewis

A ‘fake’ adventure is cooked up by a lowly junior, an ‘extraordinary youth called Humpty-Dumpty (Humphrey) King’ who audaciously approaches two lordly sixth-former prizemen on the eve of the long summer vacation, promising that if they will accompany him for the holidays he will promise them ‘an adventure'. Humpty-Dumpty adroitly manoeuvres the august sportsman Streaker Brooke and the supercilious and literary Cynic Carthew into a camping expedition to Pittwater in a rare Crosshall wonder-car that Humpty-Dumpty's honoured scientist-explorer father has had sent out from England, and that Streaker is to drive. Soon after the real adventure begins.

272 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1922

About the author

Ethel 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.

Reviews

[Debbie Robson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a lot of fun, a rollicking school boy adventure set in an unrecognisable Frenchs Forest, Pittwater and Newport. Never taking itself too seriously Curlewis keeps the reader entertained with quick, deftly written scenes and interesting characters. I love the Cynic and Streaker, both cleverly drawn. More importantly though I am fascinated by glimpses of a much earlier Newport (where I lived for many years): A hotel, a village square, boarding houses and a grassy slope.
Here's Palm Beach in the 1920s: "It was the social hour of the little surfing colony when the whole population turned out for their mails and stores. The tiny rickety pier and the deep shady store verandah were alight with girls in Gingham frocks carrying gay Japanese umbrellas, and sunburned, bare legged boys in white shorts and shirts carrying lobsters and billies of milk, and loaves of bread and tins of kerosene. Small children rode down the steep road on ponies; everyone seemed to know everyone else; everyone was laughing..." Sounds like paradise to me and I'm grateful to Curlewis for giving me a glimpse of the northern beaches in a quieter time.