'"Cyclone," his first novel for some years, is a story of conflict and emotional tension that reaches its climax and solution in a cyclonic storm.
'Brian Donnelly's friendship for Ross Halliday brings him from his farm to a seaside Queensland town and to the profitless venture of ferrying cargo on the coast. His wife, Fay, hates the shiftlessness and stagnation of the life they lead, fears Halliday's influence, and comes to believe that their happiness and their children's future are at stake. In this conflict of loyal ties and fears, the trip to Carney's River in the old unseaworthy "Gannet" becomes the crucial point; and the threat of the hurricane crystallizes Fay's anxieties and Brian's problem.'
Source:
'Cyclone', The South-Western News, 7 August 1947, p.6.
'Prior to writing his 1947 novel, Cyclone, Queensland author Vance Palmer drafted out many of his ideas for the story in three earlier short stories: ‘Cyclone’(1932), ‘Big Wind,’ and ‘Tempest,’ both published in 1936. In these stories and the later novel, Palmer develops the cyclone as trope of apocalypse, an unveiling and realization of the new inherent within the destruction of the old. As a result of experiencing both the terror and the mystery of the apocalyptic cyclonic event, Palmer’s characters realize they have transcended fears and inadequacies within themselves, enabling them to re-create new lives and new worlds.
'Prior to writing his 1947 novel, Cyclone, Queensland author Vance Palmer drafted out many of his ideas for the story in three earlier short stories: ‘Cyclone’(1932), ‘Big Wind,’ and ‘Tempest,’ both published in 1936. In these stories and the later novel, Palmer develops the cyclone as trope of apocalypse, an unveiling and realization of the new inherent within the destruction of the old. As a result of experiencing both the terror and the mystery of the apocalyptic cyclonic event, Palmer’s characters realize they have transcended fears and inadequacies within themselves, enabling them to re-create new lives and new worlds.
