The Castlereagh Line

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The Castlereagh Line is an Australian radio serial and series of 7 Novels,^[1] written by the late Ross Napier.

Initially contracted for 65 episodes in 1982, the radio serial ran for 910 episodes and was aired on over 100 stations nationally and internationally, more than any Australian radio serial ever. At a time when radio drama had long been put out to pasture, 2WS saw its potential and the rest was history. The program was so popular that factories downed tools to enable the staff to listen to it. According to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1984 “Devotees are continually ringing the station to find out what will happen in the next three weeks as they have to know, or they can’t go on holiday”. The radio serial has been re-run nationally several times over and continues to run to this day.

During the course of The Line’s initial broadcast from 1982–1986, Ross wrote the first three Castlereagh novels: The Castlereagh Line, The Castlereagh Way and The Colours of Castlereagh. The books were sold in all major and most independent bookstores nationally, including Angus & Robertson, Dymocks and Collins, with Line and Way going into reprint due to popular demand, selling just shy of 20,000 copies each.

Over the next few years came four more Castlereagh novels: The Castlereagh Heritage, The Castlereagh Rose, The Castlereagh Crown, and The Castlereagh Cross.

The never-before-published grand finale, The Castlereagh Requiem, was drafted before Ross passed in 2004. The manuscript is currently being edited by his daughter Linzi Napier who has formed Castlereagh Productions with Jacqui Law-Smith. The company plans to re-release the novels, record an updated version of the audio series for radio and podcast, as well as turning the phenomenally successful Australian Saga into a television series.