Past the Headlands

By Garry Disher, Allen and Unwin: 2001, , 330 pages, paperback, $24.95. Reviewed by Ioana Petrescu in the Aug/Sep 2003 issue.

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Entertaining, informative and well-written, Garry Disher's new novel Past the Headlands has something for everyone: history for those interested in a fresh perspective on the Fall of Singapore and the bombing of Darwin; romance for those interested in the intricacies of the hero's tribulations between friendship, sex, love and commitment; relationships between people of different backgrounds presented by the author from a perspective based on post-colonial attitudes and insights; heroism, courage and fate in times of war, and many other ingredients which would make the book a mixed bag of genres but for the writer's assured craftsmanship in designing and sustaining plots and characters.

Disher built his novel on historical ground, gradually introducing other perspectives. The protagonist, Neil Quiller, is the result of a World War I romance. His mother, an Australian nurse who lives in England, dies and he is sent to live with his Australian relatives on a cattle station. He learns to fly planes and in 1942 he becomes a reconnaissance pilot for the RAF in Malaya.

The novel begins before the Japanese invasion and, after a few flashbacks, it picks up momentum and evolves along two complementary lines which become united in the end through the book's main character. In fact, the fate of the novel is tightly knotted to that of Quiller. The best outlined character in the book, he pushes forward the action and other (numerous) characters up to a rather predictable end. Secondary characters are perhaps too conscientiously designed to fit a particular typology Cameron, his cousin, is a deceitful villain; Jeannie, his wife, is a romantic woman waiting for the right man in her life; Lee Lin is a nice girl who disappears conveniently after fulfilling her initiatory role etc.

Quiller's profoundly humane attitude in the face of decay and disaster is one of the main strengths of the novel. His decency saves many threads of this war melodrama from a certain note of sentimentality, which always lurks in the background. For instance, the episode of saving an English orphan could easily slide towards the 'tearjerker' side of writing, but instead it claims a pivotal role in the narrative. The incongruous pair, the RAF pilot and the young orphan Maisie, manage to break through all evil around them and are later reunited at the cattle station where Quiller grew up.

A character in itself, the cattle station is sometimes overused by the author in an attempt to make it the centre of all events. While some plots do find a legitimate resolution here, Cameron's adventure, the relation to the Dutch diamonds and the number of planes and refugees who populate this place towards the end reduce the verisimilitude of this too obvious literary construct.

Disher does not make any engaging statements regarding the specific historical time he is writing about. If there are certain opinions in the background they are carefully expressed according to another rule of good writing 'show, don't tell'. Quiller and Jeannie carry the weight of most implied beliefs without being judgmental. In the end they are reunited, the love of two scarred people being probably one of the best and most common solutions to a war melodrama of saga proportions.

A tale of war spiced up with just the right ingredients such as love, treachery, overcoming of adverse events, and topped with a happy ending is the formula on which Disher built his new novel. Add to this a compelling hero driven by decency and endurance and you might even wish to know what happened after the Epilogue, in which case a sequel to this novel or a TV series/movie based on the idea of Past the Headlands might be just the right answer.

Citation

• Ioana Petrescu. 'Review: Past the Headlands by Garry Disher' [online]. Network Review of Books (Perth, Australian Public Intellectual Network), Aug/Sep 2003. Availability: <please cite the web address here> ISSN 1833-0932. [accessed 20 June 2013].

Back Cover Blurb

• The woolshed at Mistake Springs has an east-west alignment . . . There is tricky magnetic country near Mount Behn . . . The Wyndham airstrip is sticky when wet . . .
  
  There was a time when Neil Quiller's logbooks had kept him safe in the air. But it's 1941 now, he's a photo-reconnaissance pilot in Malaya, and Kimberley landmarks are no good to him at all.
  
  Betrayed by a spy and shot down over the jungle, Quiller escapes to Singapore ahead of the advancing Japanese. Here he finds love and friendship but is also unsettled to encounter his cousin, Cameron Dunn, who demands from him an impossible promise.
  
  Meanwhile, as Japanese fighter-planes and cyclonic winds lurk along the north-west coast of Australia, Jeannie Verco runs Haarlem Downs, the Kimberley cattle station where Cameron was born and Neil grew up, and waits for war news that never comes.
  
  When Singapore falls, Quiller, armed with hand-drawn maps, a school atlas and an increasing longing for home, begins a treacherous journey across land and sea.
  
  Tense, moving, evocative and beautifully written, Past the Headlands is a novel about loyalty and treachery, settlement and exile, by a writer at the height of his powers.

Have You Also Read?

• Genius of Place: the Life and Art of Kathleen Petyarre
  
  Christine Nicholls and Ian North, Wakefield Press: 2001, , 96 Pages, Hardback, $45.00
  Reviewed by Dean Chan in the June 2002 issue.
  
  Genius of Place is an important publication that deserves careful study. It is generously illustrated with over sixty colour and black and white plates, and features two essays written by Christine Nicholls and Ian North. The essays function (inadvertently or otherwise) as case studies in cross-cultural engagement and commentary. Both essays are self-consciously framed by the subject positions of the non-indigenous essayists, who attempt to negotiate the ethics of cultural engagement -- and who, in my view, succeed in engaging with the attendant issues to varying degrees. Christine Nicholls begins with an assertion about the 'inseparability of Kathleen's art from her life' (6), but her ... read more.