The Dry author Jane Harper lists St Kilda apartment for sale

It’s a long way from the drought-pummelled farming town of Kiewarra to the St Kilda waterfront, but fans of Jane Harper’s The Dry may want to see if their imaginations can make the leap with the sale of the apartment in which she wrote the international bestseller.

Just listed by Belle Property, the two-bedroom apartment at 2/43-44 Marine Parade is where Harper, then a full-time journalist, devised and wrote her debut 2016 thriller that has since been credited for pioneering the hugely popular genre of “outback noir”. 

“I wrote the whole book there, so it has really lovely memories for me,” Harper says. “It’s so closely linked to the book and a very happy time in my life.” It was the British expat’s first foray into home ownership when she bought the apartment in 2013. “I was working full time, so I’d come home and write in the evenings and on weekends.”

While Kiewarra is purely fictional (although the Mallee township of Beulah stood in as its proxy for the 2019 feature film starring Eric Bana), the first-floor St Kilda apartment on Marine Parade is being marketed as a place where first home-buyers’ dreams – or those of people with a literary bent – can come true. 

With a price guide of $640,000 to $680,000, it boasts a living and dining room with views across to Port Phillip Bay and the St Kilda Marina. There’s also a covered balcony angled towards the water, where Harper spent many weekends writing her manuscript. “That was my favourite place to write. I also used the second bedroom in the evenings or when the weather wasn’t so good.”

She and her husband, who have since moved to Elwood with their two young children, enjoyed being in walking distance to the Esplanade Hotel and cafes Replublica and Beachcombers. “Eventually we just needed more space, as you do with small children, but I am sorry to see it go.”

As well as selling more than a million copies internationally, The Dry won critical plaudits and a swag of prizes, including being named book of the year at the 2017 Australian Book Industry Awards. 

The successful bidder at the July 17 auction will have the added bonus of Harper throwing a copy of her novels – her latest, The Survivors, marks number four – into the deal.

As befitting the second city in the world to be designated a UNESCO City of Literature, Melbourne has had other properties excite the interest of keen readers. In 2011, the rambling Fitzroy North house in which Helen Garner lived when she wrote Monkey Grip received plenty of attention from literature lovers, including queues of curious people at open for inspections. 

“I do expect the connection to Jane to drum up plenty of interest,” sales agent William Johnson says. “Who knows, maybe she can hand it over to some other budding artist.”