The Ocean Road.

Abstract

It is the week after the failed Australian Republic referendum, 1999 in Port Noarlunga, a working class neighbourhood south of Adelaide. Libby is on the verge of becoming a woman and her mother, writer Genevieve Smart, has just been reported a missing person. There are no clues to her mother’s disappearance; all that is left behind is a completed, but unpublished, manuscript which appears to be a family history. The Ocean Road is a contemporary literary novel which tells the story of the Smart family, a ragtag bunch of smokers and drinkers who fight too much and spend too much time together. Their story runs alongside a parallel story, the unpublished manuscript, which is set in Adelaide and Melbourne in 1938, 1972 and 1986 and which outlines the struggles and stories of people who, it might be said, are aspiring to the level of working class enjoyed by the Smart family. The story set in 1938 describes an Aboriginal couple, Jack and Margery, and what they do to try to survive. “On Writing The Ocean Road” describes the way I tried to ensure the authenticity of these two characters and their story. The exegesis focuses on Aboriginal Literature, a subjective reading of several works by Aboriginal writers and a literary analysis from various perspectives such as Modernism, the Flaneur tradition and through Language. In each chapter, I describe what I learnt and how it was expressed in the novel and provide examples. The novel and the exegesis are my attempt to examine and represent an Australian perspective.