Changing the tide and the tidings of change: Robert Drewe's The Drowner

The Drowner is a liquid text. Whilst it ebbs and flows from the outset, however, at no point is it clear whether it is ebbing or flowing; instead, it both ebbs and flows simultaneously, its narrative locus twirling on the eddies of this perpetual paradox. It assumes its position as a text of change, of movement within stillness and of constant self-contradiction. As a result, The Drowner breaks with the modern Australian myth of the beach, both chronologically, be it historical or narrarive time, and spatially, be it geographical or textual space. And this is a myth of which Drewe, himself, was amongst the pioneers.