The Passage

The story of The Passage has been enacted a thousand times since it was published in 1930. In idyllic sub-tropical Queensland The Passage is breathtaking, unspoilt, ripe for exploitation. Only a small fishing community - including Lew Calloway and his family - finds its livelihood there, in harmony with the seasons and the nature of the place. To this tranquility the developer, Vic Osborne, brings the threat of his urban world.

The Passage tackles issues that are urgent today: cities versus regions; the rival claims of fragile environments and modern development; the lure of new horizons and the bonds of home.

But it is the local people who are the subject of this poetically written novel. People who have become as much part of the natural environment as the mangrove or the swans, but who have to encounter the human world beyond and fit their lives and aspirations to it.

Regarded as the foremost Australian 20th century novel.