• Home
  • Map
  • Showcase
  • FAQ
  • About
  • Contact
  • App

Travelling North

Playwright: Williamson, David
Year: 1979
Type: Play
Edition: Nimrod Theatre Company, 1979
Currency Press, 1980

Synopsis

Frank and Frances find new life in a twilight love affair, to the consternation of their conventional children. Their dream takes them north to the sun; but no sooner do they find their idyll than signs of mortality betray Frank's lion spirit. Travelling North is David Williamson's tribute to the generation that fought for change in Australia from the 30s to the 70s; and reaches the rueful conclusion that the legacy of such self-determination is narrow-mindedness and the need for love. – publisher's blurb

Narrative Locations

Melbourne, Melbourne region, Victoria  

Temporal setting: 1969-1972

Location notes:

Phillip Parsons writes in the introductory essay to Currency Press' Travelling North that 'Williamson's Melbourne is very noticeably full of babies and clucky mothers, while death haunts the paradisal imagery of the tropic north. If Melbourne is associated with the diminished life of winter, it is because the world it represents – the world of business, of buying and selling, of marrying and giving in marriage, of babies and the daily domestic round – is to be seen as less than fully vital. In the midst of life we are in Melbourne. And if the paradisal north is associated with renewed and heightened life, it also means dying. To move from Melbourne to the tropics means to pass from one dimension to another' (xii-xiii).


North Queensland, Bundaberg region, Queensland  

Temporal setting: 1969

Location notes:

The play begins with Frank and Frances at a seaside camping site in North Queensland. Dialogue indicates that they are south of Townsville. Bundaberg is an approximation. 


Sydney, Sydney region, New South Wales  

Temporal setting: 1972

Location notes:

Frank and Frances get married in Sydney towards the end of the play, and go to the gallery preview of artist Brett Whitely.


Tweed Heads, Northern Rivers Tropical NSW, New South Wales  

Temporal setting: 1969-1972

Quotes

“The new cottage. We know immediately we are near the tropics by the changes in lighting and scenery. Our first glimpse of the place shows it to be a wreck.”

(p. Act One, Sc. 7)


“Saul: Mr Frank Brown?

Frank: That's right.

Saul: My name is Saul Morgenstein. You're new to the district.

Frank: Comparatively. I've been here two months.

Saul: I've been here eight years and I'm still regraded as a newcomer [...].”

(p. Act One, Sc. 9)





Content


Synopsis
Narrative Locations
Map

Related Texts



Print Page
Expand and Print All
Print Map

Contribute information to this Narrative
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact
  • Copyright Policy
  • Privacy Policy
     
Copyright © 2012 Cultural Atlas Australia. University of Queensland. All rights reserved.