Chapter 1 Quotes

There are birds in the city, but in the city you rarely notice them; there is too much urban jazz in the air: the drone of jets roaring in, the manic whine of sirens or the thumping bass line of a neighbour’s latest dance. Chapter 1

As for Luke, for the first time ever he felt his innate optimism beginning to metabolise into something jittery. Chapter 1

He thought his parents might know – older people knew things like that – but Ken and Marg proved to be as ignorant as anyone. (Luke about a bird call) Chapter 1

For days she felt weepy and vulnerable, as if she were no longer the person she thought she was, or had willed herself to be. (Anna) Chapter 1

But this was only material lack; what was worse was the corrosive effect on her goodwill towards the world. (Anna) Chapter 1

Once out on the open road they felt free again: the further away from the city they drove, the more the world expanded into a mysterious limbo, a potential space waiting to be filled. (Anna and Luke) Chapter 1

Even Nature itself disappoints him, and his description of the biblical landscape is unremittingly bleak. (Teves in The Land that is Desolate: an Account of a Tour in Palestine, the book Luke is reading) Chapter 1

And to their great delight, on each of these journeys the boy chose to accompany them. In the claustrophobic spaces of their dark little apartment his appearances were erratic and unpredictable, but once out on the freeway they would glance behind them and there he would be, lap-sashed on the back seat and with an inquiring look on his face; that dreamy, expectant expression that children get when they are travelling to an unknown destination. Chapter 1

…tourists gave it a wide berth. Perfect, they thought; just perfect. (Luke and Anna about Garra Nalla) Chapter 1

Here they could live, and simply be. (Luke and Anna about Garra Nalla) Chapter 1

Luke, the early riser, has taken his breakfast outside and as Anna opens the screen door to join him, she looks around absentmindedly for the boy. It’s almost as if she expects him to be here every morning, and she must be careful of this; if she begins to take anything for granted, anything at all, then she might break the spell. (Anna) Chapter 1

It worries her that in the country, where men are expected to do much of their own maintenance and repairs, he will not be able to keep up with the demands of their run-down property. (Anna about Luke) Chapter 1

In the city they had a small balcony off their apartment, but it wasn’t the same. You looked out to a smoggy curtain across the built-up sky or down a long drop to the bitumen road below. You were not earthed. Chapter 1

Instead he just stares into its eyes, and the weird thing is this: the bird stares back. It looks right at him, and in that moment of looking a current passes between them, a soundless exchange of energy. (Luke) Chapter 1

Seeing the bird, he tells Anna, is more important than the naming of it. It’s like the boy, he reflects; they’ve never named the boy, and it doesn’t matter, indeed it’s better that way. (Luke)

Often he reads in bed while Anna, the night-owl, trawls through the cable news networks with their blaring live footage that can sometimes get on his nerves. (Luke) Chapter 1

Now, here in Garra Nalla, she has BBC and CNN: they make her feel connected to the outside world. (Anna) Chapter 1

Even Nature itself disappoints him, and his description of the biblical landscape is unremittingly bleak. ‘The Promised Land has been for centuries ravaged by war and torn by internal dissension. It has been plundered and laid waste.’ (Sir Frederick Teves from The land that is Desolate book) Chapter 1

Gil is a mine of local folklore. Chapter 1

And Gil approves of the new settlers, the sea changers. ‘They bring a bit of life to the district,’ he says, ‘and you can’t expect things to stay the same.’ Chapter 1

He thinks of them as black birds of the surf, paddling out beyond the reef off Rittler’s Point and riding the autumn swells in lithe, crouching postures so that they resemble some weird form of sea-bird looking for a kill. (Luke about surfers) Chapter 1

Instead he just stares into its eyes, and the weird thing is this: the bird stares back. It looks right at him, and in that moment of looking a current passes between them, a soundless exchange of energy. (Luke) Chapter 1

There are days when they speak only of water. (Luke and Anna) Chapter 1

Chapter 2 Quotes

AND SO THEY SETTLE IN, and it seems they have everything they need; everything, that is, except water. Chapter 2

Alan and Bette belong to that coastal tribe who seem entirely at ease in their sun-ripened bodies and who rarely appear in anything other than shorts and thongs. Chapter 2

He perceives that he is no longer spirited, not in the juiced-up way that these guys are; that he no longer has their youthful sheen, a kind of cocky invincibility. (Luke) Chapter 2

‘He’s like a brigadier who’s lost his battalion.’ (Marg about Ken, Luke’s father) Chapter 2

‘And how is she recovering from …’ He pauses, trying to find the words, ‘… from that other business?’ (Ken, Luke’s father, to Luke about Anna) Chapter 2

My God, he can’t even name it, thinks Luke in a spasm of bitter scorn. Typical. His father never could deal with the messy human dimension of feeling. Chapter 2

But the rain doesn’t come. Nature is out of whack, thinks Anna; even the birds can’t read the signs. Chapter 2

‘And I’ll tell you another thing. It’ll suck up all the water out of the water table and eventually out of the lagoon. In five years’ time that lagoon will be a bloody mudflat. Them swans’ll have to find somewhere else …’ (Gil about the consortium building) Chapter 2

He hasn’t thought about the boy for quite some time. (Luke) Chapter 2

In the city the weather is just a backdrop to your day, a painted canvas against which you enact the plot of your life. In the country the weather is the plot. Chapter 2

At last that honest surgeon has arrived in Jerusalem itself: the goal of his pilgrimage, the very heart of his faith. But even here, as elsewhere, he experiences profound disappointment. (Luke reading about the author Sir Frederick Treves) Chapter 2

‘Bette thinks he’s superstitious. You know, if he doesn’t dwell on it, then nothing will happen to the boy.’ (Alan to Luke about Gil and his son in Afghanistan) Chapter 2

Now she belongs in neither place, like some migratory bird that has lost its bearings. (Anna) Chapter 2

In the weeks that follow they ease into a friendship with the Watts, one that might always have been there in their lives. (Anna and Luke) Chapter 2

‘Some Australian species respond to fire as others do to rain,’ she reads, and the casuarina is one of them. ‘There are instances of species, thought extinct, that fire freed from a near-fatal dormancy.’ (Anna reading about she-oaks) Chapter 2

He is thinking of that awful false mateyness his father deems it necessary to assume. (Luke about his father) Chapter 2

In the weeks that follow Anna begins to resent her husband. Chapter 2

The world is spinning away from her. Something is dying, something is leaching away from them; some once vivid hue in the inner landscape of her consciousness is beginning to fade. (Anna) Chapter 2

At any moment they could disappear from this place and nothing would change, nothing of consequence, so vast is the land and so small are they. And the thought of this brings on a rush of vertigo, a dizzying sense of disorientation, as if she is about to fall, but that when she falls she will be weightless. She has lost her roots, her anchorage to the earth; she might float away into the blue of the sky and never be heard from again. (Anna) Chapter 2

Chapter 3 Quotes

And they stand at the window for a long time, because of the queer beauty of it, and because of how enthralling it is to watch a whole mountain range burn. (Luke and Anna) Chapter 3

Will Sir Frederick find the meaningful consolation for his daughter’s death that has so far eluded him, some revelation at the heart of the Holy Land. Chapter 3

‘I’ve told her it’s always risky to drive in a fire and they’re better off here with their backs to the sea. I think she needs something to take her mind off it so I suggested a game of tennis.’ (Alan about Bette) Chapter 3 

So intent have they been on the fire on the southern beach that in the near darkness they have paid no heed to their rear. Chapter 3

‘Hurry up, he says, we have to get out of here, we have to get out of here now. But what about the boy, she groans, we can’t go without him, we can’t leave him behind.’ (Luke and Anna) Chapter 3

Luke takes out his heaviest sweater, an old favourite in thick navy-blue rib, but after contemplating it for a few seconds tosses it onto the bed. Chapter 3

Around her neck is a plastic bag with her back-up CDs that she had fastened to her wool sweater before she ran from the house. (Anna) Chapter 3

Near the door is a dead bird, singed along both wings; it must have plummeted down the chimney and flapped its way across the floor. Luke is startled. With an expression of horror he kneels to examine the carcass, lifting the beak and turning the head toward him. ‘Oh no,’ he sighs, ‘that’s the bird. That’s the one I told you about, the bird in the banksia tree.’ (Luke to Anna) Chapter 3

The wool had smouldered, and smouldered, but had not blazed, and the ember had burnt itself out. Anna stares at it, at the sweater that almost caught alight but didn’t, at the house around her that might have burned down and is still standing. Chapter 3

This child of their loins, only seven and a half months old, dead in the womb; their dearest boy whose heartbeat had one day stopped, lapsed into silence, with his parents unawares, thinking that all was well, that nature was taking its course and that their lives were going along just fine. (about Luke and Anna) Chapter 3

But in the numbness of their grief, no name presented itself and thereafter they had come to think of him as ‘the boy’. It seemed so much more intimate than any given name. Chapter 3

…. Anna collapsing onto the deck and he, alone, stepping to the edge of the boat and sprinkling the ashes over the white-tipped waves. It was a cold day, and he had worn the navy ribbed sweater, the one that at the height of the fire he had discarded on the bed, because he could not bear the thought that it might come to any harm, and because it reminded him too much of other damage. Chapter 3

He feared then that his children might slip from his grasp and be swept away, and at that moment his dread of the water had been greater than his fear of the fire. (Alan about his children) Chapter 3

She smiles woozily, and looks over to where the men are clustered, like a flock of birds, at the edge of Alan’s unlit barbecue stand, their elbows resting on the warm brick. She sees how intimately they lean in toward each other … (Anna) chapter 3

Luke is standing there, just inside the back door, and she sees that he has been crying. ‘Is it that bad?’ she asks. She has never seen Luke cry, not even once.
He shakes his head. ‘Not the fire,’ he murmurs. ‘Not the fire.’
‘The boy?’ He nods, unable to speak, and stands on the spot, as if to take another step is entirely beyond him. (Anna and Luke) Chapter 3

Then she sees a figure on the lagoon, sitting upright in a small skiff and paddling out to sea. And the shape of this slight figure is familiar. She jerks her head upright, squinting into the sun, for it’s hard to see clearly and the glare off the water is blinding. And yes, it is him, it’s the boy, and she sees now that the sloop is for him, is waiting to carry him to his next destination. Chapter 3