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AbstractHistoryArchive Description
The play concerns Granite Peak, a family run cattle station in the Northern Territory not far from the town of Katherine. A complex family history is at the centre of the story. John and Ellen Carmichael have reared their grandchildren, Kate and Roger, after their son was killed in the same stampede that severely injured John. Roger's and Kate's mother, who lives in London, has been absent from their lives since not long after their father's death. Roger is less embittered by her abandonment than Kate. The play opens with a letter arriving from London inviting Roger to visit his mother and acknowledging that Kate is unlikely to ever forgive her. To complicate matters for him, Roger has fallen in love with Rosie Fegan, a young woman thrust by circumstance upon the mercy of her grasping Uncle and Aunt, publicans in Katherine. A central figure in the running of the station is Charlie, the mixed race Aboriginal man, also bought up by John and Ellen Carmichael, who has graduated as a doctor and is about to leave for London to become a specialist physician. He and Kate are in love but navigating the social realities of the Northern Territory dooms the relationship as he plans to return to the Territory to practice and she would prefer to live elsewhere and avoid the opprobrium their marriage would rouse in the racist society in which they live. The dynamics of race, identity, family and land ownership, and, ultimately, the place of honesty, love and kindness run through the play.
Adaptations
- form y Granite Peak ( dir. Cyril Butcher ) United Kingdom (UK) : ITV , 1957 8103629 1957 single work film/TV
Notes
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Roland began work on the play in the 1930s and it was originally set in the Goulburn Valley. The play was completed in 1951.
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Included in the Playwrights' Advisory Board Library in 1953. The Playwright's Advisory Board was a Sydney organisation that encouraged the perfomance of and sponsored the publication of Australian plays.
Source: https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-526714238, Page 19
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The play received praise from judges, though no award, in the 1951 Commonwealth Jubilee stage play competition.
Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/205663334
Production Details
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Despite being written as a play, the first performance was the television adaptation by Robert Irvine, which was part of ITV Play of the Week.
In 1953 there was a reading of the play staged in Clarence St, Sydney, produced by John Appleton for the Fellowship of Australian Writers members and friends.
Source: https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/18356382
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Works about this Work
-
An Interview with Betty Roland
Nicole Moore
(interviewer),
2007
single work
interview
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 67 no. 1-2 2007; (p. 362-376) -
Purse Strings and Apron Strings : Women's Economic Agency
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Playing with Ideas : Australian Women Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the Sixties 1999; (p. 95-127) -
Introduction
1988
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Touch of Silk [and] Granite Peak 1988; (p. vii-xxiii) -
Betty Roland's 'The Touch of Silk' and 'Granite Peak'
1986
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 8 1986; (p. 81-94)
-
An Interview with Betty Roland
Nicole Moore
(interviewer),
2007
single work
interview
— Appears in: Southerly , vol. 67 no. 1-2 2007; (p. 362-376) -
Betty Roland's 'The Touch of Silk' and 'Granite Peak'
1986
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Australasian Drama Studies , April no. 8 1986; (p. 81-94) -
Introduction
1988
single work
criticism
— Appears in: The Touch of Silk [and] Granite Peak 1988; (p. vii-xxiii) -
Purse Strings and Apron Strings : Women's Economic Agency
1999
single work
criticism
— Appears in: Playing with Ideas : Australian Women Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the Sixties 1999; (p. 95-127)
- Bush,
- Katherine, Batchelor - Katherine area, Top End, Northern Territory,
- Australian Outback, Central Australia,
- Northern Territory,
- 1950s