"She shifts the binoculars upwards and catches sight of Reever's straining face as he peers back down the track through leaves. There's a gummy smile on his mouth, the set look of martyrdom frozen into a kind of dubious bliss. His greying hair is blowing in jagged slices all over his lined and kindly mug and his hoicked-up skirt and the vulnerability of his middle-aged shanks make Connie want to weep."
The book opens with Connie observing her son, Reever, still tied to a celerywood tree in protest of the deforestation of the Outback. Although she cannot persuade him to change his mind, Connie can empathize with his situation. She both admires and detests his headstrong decisions. Nevertheless Connie is in a position now where she cannot effect his decisions and must simply observe.
"'I am Jessica Olive,' he heard her say absent-mindedly over breakfast. 'I am Cornelius and Nadine and George.'"
Connie has come to identify with her family so closely, as the only tangible motivation for her life, that she sometimes whispers these phrases out loud. She uses her family to motivate herself to continue. Never mind that these people are long dead; Connie calls upon ghosts to guide her. Observing this phenomenon, her son, Reever, soon adopts the practice as well, intentionally identifying himself as the continuation of his ancestors.
"She goes back to the start of things."
This is Connie's mantra. She finds consolation for her strenuous life in her family's origin. To Connie, her life is but a continuation of the lives of her predecessors and in this way of thinking she cultivates a ready acceptance of challenge.
"Along the new road being hacked through the rain forest, bulldozers grumble and snort and shove brutally at the matted green, blades skimming challengingly toward the heads of protesters buried up to the neck or nudging back a still chanting mob of greenies."
Connie and Reever's world is rapidly changing. Deforestation is a pressing dilemma for most of the inhabitants of Australia, many of whom have arrived here to protest this new road. The heavy machinery in this quotation is described as autonomous, devoid of human involvement. This poses a sharp contrast to the extremely vulnerable state of the protestors, painting a scene of oppression and rather obvious sentiment.
