West Block

A timeless classic of gender and federal politics.

 Ministers came and went and reappeared, seeking to lay their hands on a splendid prize.  The machinery of government.

It is 1977, two years after Australia's constitutional crisis. The bureaucrats in West Block, home of the prime minister's department, are recovering from the shock of Gough Whitlam's dismissal.

George Harland schemes to preserve his departmental standing; Henry Beeker stakes his career on stalling a policy; Catherine Duffy risks her life rescuing victims of an ill-conceived one; Jonathan Roe sets off the tripwires in textbook economics.  And Cassie Armstrong, head of the department's women's unit, is driven to despair.

Life is tense in West Block. Pigeons nest in the leaking roof. A move is imminent: it's feared the government plans to tear the building down. Old time bureaucrats are adjusting to a new, feminist presence in its corridors. At one time or other housing most of the federal public service, West Block is more than just a rundown office building. Here is the nation in microcosm. 

About the Author

During the 1970s, Sara Dowse played a significant role in the feminism of the day as one of Australia’s first ‘femocrats’. West Block was her first novel, released in 1983 and drawing on her experience in government, specifically as inaugural head of the first women’s office in Australia’s department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.  

Five other novels followed. After the publication of the third, Schemetime, which is set in Hollywood, one reviewer was moved to observe, ‘Virtually alone among writers of Australian fiction, she has a fine understanding of the mechanics of power.’  

Sara Dowse was born in Chicago and lived in New York and Los Angeles before migrating to Australia in 1958. In 2020, For Pity Sake Publishing released this new edition of West Block with an extended ‘Author’s Note’.