Waterway

by Eleanor Dark

Set in Sydney, this novel originally published in 1938 traces the lives of a group of people before and after a tragic ferry accident.

From Kirkus:

An Australian novelist with her third novel again shows her faculty for presenting her characters at a point where the interest focuses on an immediate climax involving each one of them. Her setting is a harbor suburb of Sydney. She takes one day in the lives of a half dozen people whose threads are drawn together by the day's happenings. The book is distinct from Sun Across the Sky, though a few of the same characters appear. The author has a gift for slow building tension, which demands close reading. Honest in writing -- sound in ideas behind it.

Genres: Australia

383 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1938

About the author

Eleanor Dark (1901 - 1985) was an Australian author, most known for her historical novel The Timeless Land (1941), which became a bestseller in Australia and the USA.

Dark was born on 26 August 1901 at Croydon, Sydney, second of three children of Sydney-born parents Dowell O’Reilly, schoolteacher and author, and his wife Eleanor Grace, née McCulloch, who died in 1914 after an unhappy marriage and a period of ill health. Small, dark and elfin, 'Pixie', as she was known to her family, attended several private schools before boarding at Redlands, Neutral Bay, from 1916 to 1920.

Although Pixie had written verse from the age of 7, as the family’s finances grew tighter her hopes of university and a writing career faded. After attending Stott & Hoare’s Business College, she worked as a stenographer for a firm of solicitors, Makinson, Plunkett & d’Apice, for eighteen months. She married Eric Payten Dark, a medical practitioner and a widower with an infant son, John, on 1 February 1922 at St Matthias’s Church of England, Paddington. Eric and Eleanor shared many interests: literature, history, tennis, bushwalking, mountain-climbing and gardening. Next year they moved to Katoomba. In the relative isolation of the Blue Mountains she resumed writing. Eric enthusiastically encouraged her. They were absorbed in each other; John moved back and forth between them and his mother’s family and later boarded at Sydney Grammar School, visiting the Darks for occasional weekends. Their son Michael was born in 1929; Eleanor was a devoted mother to him.

Dark used the pseudonyms 'P. O’R.' and 'Patricia O’Rane' for the verse which she wrote in the 1920s and early 1930s. It was published in Australia by journals including the Triad, Bulletin and Woman’s Mirror, but was not very significant. Her short stories were also published in these journals and in Motoring News, Home and Ink.

She wrote her ten novels between the 1930s and 1950s. Seven had contemporary themes, often utilising the techniques of modernism, exploring contemporary relationships and politics. Her other three novels - beginning with The Timeless Land - formed an historical trilogy and were her most popular and best-selling works.

Both Eleanor and Eric were openly leftist in their views throughout a period when Australia was increasingly conservative. They were monitored by the government during the "Red scare" of the 1940s and 1950s, for fear they were members of the Communist Party (they weren't).

Dark largely abandoned writing after 1960. Although she worked on manuscript novels and plays, she lost interest due to a combination of low sales and the changing tastes of the public. In the late 1970s, Dark was awarded an Order of Australia medal, and her books were gradually republished in the 1980s as a new wave of artists and feminists discovered her writings. By this time, she was ill, and died in 1985 in hospital.

Reviews

[Joan Garvan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've been wanting to read twentieth century Australian women authors for yonks and finally I'm just on the final thirty pages of Waterway. The story is one day, with half a dozen main characters, and their lives set on the foreshore of Sydney harbour. I grew up in an inner west Sydney suburb and can only imagine what it must have been to actually live on the harbour, and such a magnificent harbour at that. The story makes me want to spend at least a few days in a similar area, listening to the sounds of the waves, the ferries, and the birds, while also taking the opportunity to swim at some of the little beaches. The book is highly descriptive and engaging.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was somewhat disappointed as I found the writing quite verbose at times & unnecessary.