The Writing

The "Tomorrow" series is quite densely written, while each book is generally only 250 - 300 pages long a lot happens on each page. This is an action/adventure series and suspense, violence (sometimes quite gruesome), chases and evasions make up large sections of the books. These are nicely written and work well but the real power of the books are how John Marsden brings his characters to life. These perfectly ordinary teenagers, who could be any of us, have had their entire world destroyed. They are profoundly affected but they also continue to live, grow and experience. They have to decide for themselves what is right and wrong. They react to what is happening, to what they have done. They worry about what this is doing to them but they go on. They take refuge in their memories of a world lost and in doing so they remind us of how used to our little luxuries we have become. Out on the cutting edge of resistance, with no-one to turn too for moral support, they start to be overwhelmed by what is happening, they start to be consumed by it. Yet while their world view has moved so much that they see death as better than capture and their only real choice as to how they die they still find time to play with a wombat, they are still moved by the environment they are living in, they still support and care about each other. Even when they are so far gone they kill for thrills they still reach out to each other as they walk into history in "The Other Side of Dawn".

I found these books surprisingly powerful, the characters reached out and grabbed me, their situation affected me more than I could have imagined when I started the novels. Some of this is because it is my country that is being destroyed, but it could equally be yours. The characters could be you or me, our friends, our children. They are believable; they are very human and while they are profoundly changed by what they experience, each character stays recognisable to the end.

Take a look at the above quotes (click the links to jump or just scroll further down the page), grab a copy of "Tomorrow, When the War Began" and see if Ellie speaks to you. If she does, you are in for a fascinating journey with people who will become friends.

Quotes used with permission

Suspense

There are lots of moments of suspense in these novels, this is one of the early ones:

"I wanted to open the door, but I couldn't figure out how to do it without making a sound. I tried to recall some scenes in movies where the heroes had been in this situation, but I couldn't think of any. In the movies they always seemed to kick the door down and burst through with guns drawn. There were at least two reasons we couldn't do that. One, it was noisy; two, we didn't have guns.
     I sidled closer to the door and stood in an awkward position, pressed backwards against the wall and trying to open the door with my left hand. I couldn't get enough leverage however, so instead turned and crouched, reaching up with my right hand to grip the knob. It turned silently and smoothly but my nerve failed me for a moment and I paused, holding the knob in that cocked position. Then I pulled it towards me, a little too hard, because I had half expected it to be locked. It came about thirty centimetres, with the screech of a tortured soul, Homer was behind me, so I could no longer see him, but I heard, and could feel, his breath hang in the air and his body rise a little. How I wished for an oilcan. I waited, then decided there was no point in waiting, so I pulled the door open another metre. I rasped every centimetre of the way. I was feeling sick but I stood and took three slow careful steps into the darkness. I waited there, hoping my eyes would adjust and I'd be able to make some sense of the dull shapes I could see in front of me. There was a movement of air behind me as Homer came in too: at least, I hoped it was Homer. At the thought that it might be anyone else I felt such a violent moment of panic that I had to give myself a serious talk about self-control. But my nerves sent me forward another couple of steps, till my knee bumped into some kind of soft chair. At that moment I heard a scrape from the next room, as though someone had pushed back a wooden chair on a wooden floor. I tried desperately to think of what was in the next room and what it looked like, but my mind was too tired for that kind of work. So instead I tried to tell myself that it hadn't been the scrape of a chair, that no one was there, that I was imaging things. But then came the dreadful confirmation, the sound of a creaking board and the soft treat of a foot.
     I instinctively went to the floor, quietly slipping down to the right, then wriggling around the soft chair that I'd just been touching. Behind me I felt Homer doing the same. I lay on the carpet. It smelt like straw, clean dry straw. I could hear Homer shuffling around, sounding like and old dog trying to get comfortable. I was shocked at how much noise he was making. Didn't he realise? But in front of me came another noise: the unmistakable sound of a bolt being drawn back in a breech, then slid forward to cock the rifle.
     'Robyn!' I screamed."

Violence

Immediate action is required and Ellie responds:

"I'll never forget the next minute. The image I most remember is the first view I had of the soldiers and my friends. They were all gathered around the creek in a little cleared area. They looked like they were having a meeting. There were three soldiers, all men and all on my side of the creek. Two were standing to my left, the other on my right. They looked tense but excited, very happy with themselves. The two on the left held rifles, but the one on the right, who was an officer, seemed unarmed. I guess it was his (pistol) that I carried.
     I could still smell a trace of gunpowder in the air but none of my friends seemed hurt. They were standing in a line on a big flat rock, across the other side of the shallow gurgling creek. Their hands were on their heads. Fi was white and trembling uncontrollably; Robyn had her chin out, defiantly; Lee's face was totally expressionless. Homer looked desperate, thin and tired, with his dark eyes sunk deep into his face. But I was so relieved to see him at all: I'd had the worst fears about what might have happened to him.
     Kevin was standing a little apart from the others and he looked absolutely terrified.
     I didn't even think about what to do. It was a relief, not to have to think: for once the choice was made for me. I stood very still, feet well apart, lifted the (pistol), held it with both hands, aimed carefully at the chest of the first soldier, and squeezed the trigger. Gently, gently, squeeze, squeeze. I thought it would never fire, it took so long. Then the bang, the explosion, the smoke, the smell. The gun kicked up hard, like it had been given a jolt of electricity, and the empty shell shot out, to my right. I saw the soldier go staggering backwards, dropping his rifle, his hands to his chest as though trying - unsuccessfully - to hold himself together. But I had no time to think about him. I aimed and fired again: shot the second one before he had his rifle halfway to his shoulder.
     Then I turned to the officer. He was facing me now. He didn't seem to know where to go. I fired the third time. My hands were shaking badly and the bullet went a little low. The slide locked back; the gun was empty; useless scrap metal. I threw it away quickly, as if contaminated. It fell in the creek.
     It had all been very quick, kind of clinical, not at all like our other killing had been. Just popping down targets, with no emotion.
     Or maybe that was just a measure of how much I'd changed"

Evasions

Severely outnumbered and outgunned, the characters often have to run for it. Nail biting, these accounts often go on for pages, here is a snippet from one such evasion. They are hiding in the treetops (wearing full packs) as troops search for them. They have been up the trees for some time now, and a command post has been set up at the base of the tree Ellie is in. She is about 15 metres up (around 50 feet)

"    I wanted badly to move but it looked like being a long time before I could.
     I hadn't been right about many things that day but I was right about that. I'd say it was three hours before I got a chance to move. The officer walked out of my sight a few times, but I didn't dare move then because, for all I knew, he may have been standing on the other side of the tree where I couldn't see the ground at all. The helicopter swept past four more times, once very close again, the other times close enough. Each time I flattened myself and shrank, like a rabbit when a hawk goes overhead.
    The only nice thing that happened was that the horses went past. I had time to look at them properly now. There were seven of them, and they still seemed pretty relaxed about what was happening in their home paddock. They looked well cared for, too: carrying plenty of weight - too much - and with their coats well brushed. They glowed, the way horse do when they're in good nick. They stopped for a nibble occasionally but they were soon gone.

"

Struggling with Right and Wrong

Early on Ellie struggles with what is right and wrong. Eventually this gets overwhelmed by the situation, the brutal struggle to survive and the creeping insanity that overtakes them, but these questions form an important and moving part of the early novels.

"I had blood on my hands, like the Hermit, and just as I couldn't tell whether his actions were good or bad, so too I couldn't tell what mine were. Had I killed out of love for my friends, as part of a noble crusade to rescue friends and family and keep our land free? Or had I killed because I valued my life above that of others? Would it be OK for me to kill a dozen others to keep myself alive? A hundred? A thousand? At what point did I condemn myself to Hell, if I hadn't already done so? The Bible just said 'Thou shalt not kill', then told hundreds of stories of people killing each other and becoming heroes, like David and Goliath. That didn't help me much.
     I didn't feel like a criminal, but I didn't feel like a hero either.
     I was sitting on a rock on top of Mt Martin thinking about all this. The moon was so bright I could see forever. Trees and boulders and even the summits of other mountains cast giant black shadows across the ranges. But nothing could be seen of the tiny humans who crawled like bugs over the landscape, committing their monstrous and beautiful acts. I could only see my own shadow, thrown across the rock by the moon behind me. people, shadows, good, bad, Heaven, hell: all of these were names, labels, that was all. Humans had created these opposites: Nature recognised no opposites. Even life and death weren't opposites in Nature: one was merely an extension of the other.
     All I could think of to do was to trust to instinct. That was all I had really. Human laws, moral laws, religious laws, they seemed artificial and basic, almost childlike. I had a sense within me - often not much more than a striving - to find the right thing to do, and I had to have faith in that sense. Call it anything - instinct, conscience, imagination - but what it felt like was a constant testing of everything I did against some kind of boundaries within me; checking, checking all the time. Perhaps war criminals and mass murderers did the same checking against the same boundaries and got the encouragement they needed to keep going down the path they had taken. How then could I know that I was different?
     I got up and walked around slowly, around the top of Mt Martin. This was really hurting my head but I had to stay with it. I felt I was close to it, that if I kept my grip on it, didn't let go, I might just get it out, drag it out of my begrudging brain. And yes, I could think of one way that I was different. It was confidence. The people I knew who thought brutal thoughts and acted in brutal ways - the racists, the sexists, the bigots - never seemed to doubt themselves. They were always so sure they were right ... these were the ones I thought of as the ugly people. And they did seem to have the one thing in common - a perfect belief that they were right and the others wrong. I almost envied them the strength of their beliefs. It must have made life so much easier for them.
     Perhaps my lack of confidence, my tortuous habit of questioning and doubting everything I said or did, was a gift, a good gift, something that made life easier in the short run but in the long run might lead to ... what? The meaning of life?
     At least if gave me some chance of working out what I should or shouldn't do."

Consequences

As they start to kill, to hunt and be hunted, they are all affected. There are a lot of passages like the first set below in the early novels. One of the subtle messages of these novels is what combat does to its participants, how it eats away at them inside. Eventually, without Ellie even really noticing, she stops caring, she starts to be consumed by her environment, the killing just becomes routine and not something to try and avoid. Eventually she and her friends become so desensitised that killing becomes a thrill.

Initial reactions:
"I was feeling pretty unusual, walking back across the paddocks. I imagined a huge shadow of me was moving across the sky, attached to me, and keeping pace with my little body on the earth. It scared me, really scared me, but I couldn't escape it. It loomed over me, a silent dark creature growing out of my feet. I knew that if I reached out to feel it I would feel nothing. That's the way shadows are. But all the same the air around me seemed colder and darker, as if for every person I killed the shadow would grow larger, darker, more monstrous."

a little later

"The short walk to the mint was almost the end of me though. As I bent down to cut it I felt my great shadow return, hovering above me like an eagle, a predator. I was scared to look up. The night was dark enough anyway, but I knew that however dark the sky may have been, my tagging shadow was darker.
     The mistake I'd made was to go to the mint patch on my own. It was the first time I'd been alone since shooting the soldier in Buttercup Lane. It was as though as soon as I strayed away from my friends the sky filled with this terrible thing."

then, one hundred or more pages later

"He was still holding my arm and I turned a little more so I was pressed into his chest. I had a bit of a sniffle in there, then asked the question Fi had asked me. 'What's going to become of us, Lee?'
     'I don't know.'
     'Don't say that. That's what everyone says. I want you to be different to everyone else.'
     'Well, I am. I'm a murderer.'
     I felt a tremble pass through his body as he said it. 'No you're not, Lee.'
     'I wish I could believe you. But words don't change anything.'
     'Do you think it was wrong?'
     He waited so long I thought my voice must have been too muffled in his chest for him to have heard. I started to repeat the question, but he cut me off.
     'No. But I'm scared at what there is in me that can make me like that.'
     'So many things happened that night. They mightn't ever happen again. Anyone would have gone a bit crazy, after what you saw.'
     'But maybe when you have done it once, you do it more easily the next time.'
     'I've done it too,' I said.
     'Yes, I don't know why, but it seemed different when you did it. Chris told me how blown apart the guy was. And somehow, using a knife is different to a gun.' I didn't answer and he continued after a while. 'Do you think about it much?'
     I really cried then, sobbing like my lungs were coming out of my mouth. I couldn't stop for ages. The amazing thing was, Lee just kept holding onto me, like he could wait forever. Finally I gulped out my daytime nightmare. 'I felt like there was this big shadow up in the sky, hovering over me. It made everything dark, and it followed me everywhere.'"

a few books later
"...we crouched there in silence, looking out over the shelf and the dashboard. There were three little soft toys hanging right in front of me. I couldn't see them very well in the dim light, but the one my nose was bumping against was a blue and green bird with horrible pointy eyes. I felt that at any moment he would start flapping his wings and squawking to warn the soldiers we were there. I had an urge to grab him and wring his scrawny neck. I think it really dawned on me at that moment how much this war was brutalising me.
     I gave my head a tiny shake to clear away these stupid thoughts. 'It seems OK,' I said to Homer."

And brutalised they do indeed become. Compare these thoughts to what they do a thousand pages after the first quote, when they kill for thrills.

What is this doing to them ?

Ellie wonders at various times what will happen to them even if they survive (many other times she wonders what it feels like to die)

"On of the things I find strangest and hardest is that we were having such conversations. How could this have been happening to us? How could we be huddled in the dark bush, cold and hungry and terrified, talking about who we should kill? We had no preparation for this, no background, no knowledge. We didn't know if we were doing the right thing, ever. We didn't know anything. We were just ordinary teenagers, so ordinary we were boring. Overnight they'd pulled the roof of our lives. And after they'd pulled off the roof they'd come in and torn down the curtains, ripped up the furniture, burnt the house and thrown us into the night, where we'd been forced to run and hide and live like wild animals. We had no foundations, and we had no secure walls around our lives anymore. We were living in a strange long nightmare, where we had to make our own rules, invent new values, stumble around blindly, hoping we weren't making too many mistakes. We clung to what we knew and what we thought was right, but all the time those things too were being stripped from us. I didn't know if we'd be left with nothing, or if we'd be left with a new set of rules and attitudes and behaviours, so that we wouldn't recognise ourselves anymore. We could end up as new, distorted, deformed creatures, with only a few physical resemblances to the to the people we once were."

Memories of a World Lost

"I loved the activity of the shearing shed. The sheep milling in the pens. The dogs lying in the shadows panting, their bright eyes watching the sheep, hoping they would be called up again to run across their backs and shift them to the next yard or back to the paddock. I loved the oily feel of the classing table, the soft whiteness of the fleeces, the quiet bleating of the waiting sheep. I was proud to see our bales, with our brands on them, on the back of a truck heading for the sales. I knew they were going half way round the world to be made into wonderful warm clothes that would be worn by city people, people I'd never meet. Even the really hard-bitten farmers, the ones you'd think had as much poetry in them as a sedimentary rock, got a bit emotional about shearing."

also

"It was hot and dusty. The sun sat up there all day without moving. It saw everything and it forgave nothing. Sometimes it seemed like you were alone in the world, you and the sun, and at those times you could understand why people in the old days feared and worshipped it."
     "I hated the sun. For months on end it had no mercy. It burned everything. Everything that was covered or hidden or fed with water, it burned."

also

"From the first I loved the land. I don't know whether Dad wanted a son - most places around Wirrawee are run by men, and handed on from father to son - but he never gave me any sign of that. One time when a bloke at the Wirrawee Saleyards was talking to us he said to Dad, right in front of me, 'If I had daughters I wouldn't let them do stockwork.' Dad just looked at me for a minute while I waited to see what he would say. Finally he said, 'I don't know what I'd do without her.' I went red with pleasure. It was the best compliment he ever paid me. I was nine years old."

... then a few pages later ...

"All that seemed like a movie to me that night, though, laying under my mat of creepers, waiting for the long lonely hours to tick away. I could call up those images of life as it used to be, but they seemed to be things that happened to other people, happy looking people in an artificial world, on a big screen. It seemed unreal. I cried myself to sleep, but it wasn't much of a sleep anyway. I was just lonely and scared and lost, and the morning seemed a long way away."

Lost Luxuries

Their old world, our world, is gone. Ellie longs for it and sometimes her longing reminds us of what we take for granted.

"How I longed for a trip to the supermarket. I tortured myself with memories of aisle after aisle crowded with canned peaches and All Bran and Snack chocolate and Jatz biscuits, and the refrigerated section, with the ham and salami and King Island Brie, and then there was the freezer: Sara Lee Chocolate Bavarian and Paul's Ice-cream and chicken nuggets. When I was tired of those sections I'd start on the deli and the meat and the fish and the bread and the fruit and the veg. The supermarkets of my mind gave me more pleasure than the real ones ever had before the war.
     But I had to push daydreams away. It was time to put our tired imaginations to work."

Consumed

"There was along silence. For the first time I felt real hatred for the soldiers. It was such a dark evil force that it frightened me. It was an though black vomit was filling me - as though a demon inside was spewing black stuff into my guts."

... then a few pages later ...

"    I grabbed Lee's head and pulled it down so I could whisper in his ear.
     'I want to find a knife'
     'Why?'
     'So I can kill the soldiers.'
     I felt his body give a little jerk, like he'd touched the terminals of a battery. But he didn't say anything for a minute, just stood up straight, while I continued to crouch beside him like the animal I'd become."

also

"As he walked back to the others he said to Robyn, 'If you'd seen what I saw last night you wouldn't be praying for any of them. And you wouldn't be wondering if we've done the wrong thing. They're filth. They're vermin.'"

also

"'Faster!' I yelled at him. I fired another shot past his head, which took out the windscreen, and blasted away into the darkness. I was so pumped up. I'd never been so close to out of control before. Normally I'd be embarrassed to be so full-on. Some of it was fear, but most of it was anger. Stronger than anger: rage.
     If anyone had asked me, I think I would have said I was angry at [the failure of our attacks] but the real anger went further than that. It was focused that night, like it had never been before. And it was at these people. Fair and square, right at them, right at their guts. The way they'd taken over our town, our district and our country, and denied me everything in life I cared about."

then a few pages later

"I looked at the man. His head was gradually tilting to one side. I saw for the first time the hole in the back of his seat. I felt sick but I admit I also felt a savage pleasure that we had won. He'd tried to beat us but he'd failed. We had survived for a few more minutes of precious life. He had not. Tought."

They'll never take me alive

."I can imaging how the car looked to the soldiers: like I'd shot the guy in cold blood and he'd crashed the vehicle. Not a good scene for me if they caught me. I was fast getting into one of those 'They'll never take me alive' states of mind they talk about in movies. Instead of being a cliche it was beginning to sound like a smart idea."

Choose the manner of your death

As the books move on the characters become more and more entrapped by their circumstances. They start to see the world in a very peculiar way. They are free while their family and friends are prisoners. Sometimes they see this as terribly unfair, as a terrible burden laid on them. But it is a burden they take up, even to the extent that they become, as a group, quite fatalistic, even courting deathl. Thus the quote below.

"[Lee]
'Sometimes there aren't any questions any more. Sometimes there's nothing to debate. If we have a choice at all, it might be as simple as this: to die fighting or to die as cowards. Not much of a choice, I agree, but if that's the way it is, I know what I prefer.'
     Lee's statement shocked us into silence. He put in words what I'd felt for some time ..."

They are 16 or 17 at the time. A few pages later they are trapped in a situation where they see the only choice as how they die.

"Funny, I'd never heard him talk like that before. It was like he was begging me for support. I wondered if he wasn't sure himself, if he didn't know whether he had the strength and courage for it. He was talking about suicide really, about our deaths. I knew that straight away. There was no way anyone was going to attack this place from the inside and survive ...
    I walked away from him then. I needed time to think. My skin was prickling again. It's not an easy thing to face your own death. Not when you're feeling young and alive and healthy. But I hardly had a moment to think before Fi came over to where I was standing. I don't know whether she noticed the way I was shaking, but she didn't comment on it. She just said, very quietly, so quietly that I could hardly hear, 'Lee wants us to attack the [...] I suppose, does he ?' I nodded, hugging myself. Fi started trembling too. In the same soft voice she said, like she was whispering to herself, 'I thought he would'. To my own surprise I said: 'I think he's right.' ... 'Who's going to tell Kevin? Fi asked."

Playing with a Wombat

A few pages before this scene Ellie was feeling totally isolated and alone, a few pages later she will be in the worst situation of her life, knowing with complete certainty that she and her friends are about to die and simply having to decide the means. Lets say its rather tense. In between those two sections John Marsden inserts a breaker that changes the mood for a while. Such scenes occur throughout the series, this one is my favourite.

"The track wasn't just made by humans. I was leading, followed by [the others]. But I had to slow down when I found myself behind the fat backside of a wombat, waddling along at his own pace. Wombats are a law unto themselves. When I was little, I had a friend out from town for the weekend: Annie Abrahams. She'd never been on a farm before, and the first night, just after dark, we were coming back from putting the chooks away - a little later than we should have - and she saw a wombat. Before I could say anything Annie ran up and gave it a hug. I guess she thought it was some sort of cute cuddly bear. Well, the wombat didn't hesitate. He turned around and buried his teeth in Annie's leg. She screeched like a cockatoo at twilight. I tried to pull the wombat off, but it was impossible. They're so strong. I was screaming for Dad, and Annie was screaming non-stop and the wombat was grunting louder than a bulldozer on a slope. It was scary. I didn't know how much damage it might do to Annie. I thought her leg might be mangled to pieces. Eventually Dad came running out. He tried to pull the wombat off too and failed, and finally he gave it a hell of a kick in the guts. The wombat let go and staggered away in the darkness. Then I didn't know whether to be more upset about the health of the wombat or the state of Annie's leg. But her leg wasn't too bad. Although it was bruised, the skin wasn't broken - I think it was more the shock and fear that had her screaming her head off.
     I never found out what happened to the wombat.

...

    So when I realised we were following a wombat's big bum I slowed down. There wasn't much room on the track, and I wasn't looking for a fight just yet.
     'Oh look,' said Fi, from behind me, 'a wombat. Isn't it cute.'
     I had an immediate fear that this would be a repeat of the Annie Abrahams story.
    'Yeah, real cute,' I said. 'Just keep a safe distance.'
     Fi paused and we watched the wombat as it waddled on ahead. We were getting close to the turn-off where the four-wheel-drive track went down the mountain to the farm, and the wombat started to veer to the left. I thought I'd grab the chance to show Fi a party trick that I had never tried myself but I had heard Dad talk about. With no knowledge of whether it would work, and not much confidence, I said to Fi: 'Did you know that they'll follow a torchlight?'
     Fi had been teased by us so often, been the victim of so many practical jokes, that she wouldn't believe me this time. 'Oh sure,' she said doubtfully.
    'No, really, I promise.'
     I swung my pack down and opened the side pocket, pulling out my torch. Leaving my pack, I went forward ten metres and flicked on the torch. We were well below the tree line, so there was no danger from enemy soldiers. I focused the beam of light on the ground in front of the wombat and then moved it away to his side. To my surprise he turned as soon as I did it, and followed the light obediently. Of course I didn't let the others know I was surprised. I just acted cool, like this was exactly what I'd expected.
     I took the wombat for a little walk by moving the light around. I felt like a choreographer. The others we all cracking up. 'Oh my God,' Fi kept saying, in her light little voice that sounded sometimes as if it'd float away, 'that's amazing.'
     There still wasn't much room around me, because Tailor's Stitch was just behind and we were surrounded by thick bush. So I swung the light one more time and made the wombat come towards me. I felt totally confident, totally in control. I planned to walk backwards slowly as the wombat came in my direction. The wombat hadn't read my script though. For no apparent reason he started charging, overrunning the spot of light on the ground. Maybe he saw me, but I really don't think so. Wombats give you the feeling they're just about blind. But they could be tricking of course.
     At first I thought it was a joke, and I started going backwards a bit, getting faster as the wombat accelerated. Then suddenly I decided I was in trouble. It didn't matter any more what I did with the torch. The wombat had torn up the rule-book. He'd stopped following the rules and he'd definitely stopped following the light. The whole situation was out of control. I forgot about my dignity and began to panic. a wombat at full gallop is surprisingly scary. Considering they look like stuffed cushions on four little legs they actually get up to quite a speed. So I accelerated a bit myself. Ignoring the wild laughter of the other four, I swung around to so I could make a high-speed getaway up the wall to Tailor's Stitch.
     And I fell over my pack.
     I fell quite hard. The others were pissing themselves. I have to admit I was genuinely scared. I thought I was about to be torn apart by a wild wombat. The way he was grunting sounded seriously unfriendly. And I'd landed on my bad knee, which hurt. For a moment I expected the wombat to leap on top of me and tear my head off.
     But he didn't. He swerved off his line and disappeared deep into the bush, having had enough of humans for one night. I struggled up again, with no help from anyone. They were still all falling around laughing. They can be pretty stupid and juvenile sometimes. I brushed myself down, put my pack back on, and started walking. I left it to them to decide whether to follow or not."

I don't know about you, but I love that passage and no, I have never tried that with a wombat myself.

Ellie and the Bush

As Ellie points out below, Australian's often idealise the bush (those chunks of the country which is still largely in its original state - such places exist throughout Australia - even in the cities). Still, it is a powerful and very Australian place - Australia's unique flora and fauna makes sure of that - and the bush is part of our national psychology, a bit like the "old west" is for Americans - except that the bush is still there if you want to go and access it. Ellie is a creature of the bush, she grew up surrounded by it and part of it - it helps her cope with what is happening, it comforts her, it keeps her safe and secure.

"    I kind of blanked out for while - in fact for most of the morning - and rode in a coma. Fi kept prodding me to keep me awake. But there is something about the bush that calms you. I try not to get sentimental about it, because I know how cruel it can be, and I saw what it did to Darina, but all the same, sometimes it does make you feel better. We'd have visitors from the city and they'd get all gooey and sentimental. I remember two friends of Mum's looking out across the creek at a flock of ducks on the other bank, and saying, 'Aren't they beautiful? What a peaceful scene.' I just stared at the ladies in total disbelief. At the time the ducks were engaged in a screaming brawl, as full-on civil war, racing around with wings flapping, feathers flying, voices squawking, like they wanted to kill each other.
     So its no good kidding yourself about the bush, or about nature for that matter.
     I knew all that, but I still couldn't resist the power of the place. At one stage we were riding through a eucalypt forest, trees quite widely spaced, no undergrowth. It was so easy, so relaxing. Tall white trunks, fawn bark peeling off them, little brown birds darting from one to the next. There were no bright colours to hurt they eye. Quiet, fresh, self-contained. It wasn't paradise - far from it - but it would do me."

also

"    The moon was well up by the time I left. The rocks stood out quite brightly along the thin ridge of Tailor's Stitch. A small bird suddenly flew out of a low tree ahead of me, with a yowling cry and a clatter of wings. Bushes formed shapes like goblins and demons waiting to pounce. The path straggled between them: if a tailor had stitched it he must have been mad or possessed or both. White dead wood gleamed like bones ahead of me, and my feet scrunched the little stones and the gravel. Perhaps I should have been frightened, walking there alone in the dark. But I wasn't, I couldn't be. The cool night breeze kissed my face all over, all the time, and the smell of the wattle gave a faint sweetness to the air. This was my country; I felt like I had grown from its soil like the silent trees around me, like the springy, tiny-leafed plants that lined the track. I wanted to get back to Lee, to see his serious face again, and those brown eyes that charmed me when they were laughing and held me by the heart when they were grave. But I also wanted to stay here forever. If I stayed much longer I felt I would become part of the landscape myself, a dark, twisted, fragrant tree."

also

"    You can never stay angry for too long in the bush though. At least, that's what I think. It's not that it soothing or restful, because its not. What it does for me is get inside my body, inside my blood, and take me over. I don't know if I can describe it any better than that. It takes me over and I become part of it and it becomes part of me and I'm not very important, or at least no more important than a tree or a rock or a spider abseiling down a long thread of cobweb. As I wandered around, on that hot afternoon, I didn't notice anything too amazing or beautiful or mindbogglingly spectacular. I can't actually say I noticed anything out of the ordinary: just the grey-green rocks and the olive-green leaves and the reddish soil with the teeming ants. The tattered ribbons or paperbark, the crackly dry cicada shell, the smooth furrow left in the dust by a passing snake. That's all there ever is really, most of the time. No rainforest with tropical butterflies, no palm trees or Californian redwoods, no leopards or iguanas or panda bears.
     Just the bush."

Supporting one another

The group, their friendship and support for one another are major parts of this series. They have their falling out, they get on each other's nerves. But when push comes to shove they are there for each other. They become incredibly close as people who daily hold each others lives in their hands normally do. How much they come to care for each other, how much they are willing to sacrifice for each other make up some of the most moving sections of this series. Many of these scenes blow the plot but here is one I can include.

Fi takes care of Ellie after a particularly devastating encounter.
"    When we got to the house Kevin was on sentry. He started to say: 'Where the hell have you been?' but one look at me and the words died in his throat. He jumped down and ran into the house. I stopped and leaned against a wall, thinking 'It's all right now, I don't have to do anything. Fi will be here in a moment.' Then she was there and she took me inside, and in one way everything was OK: I was lying on a sofa and getting wiped down and they were trickling water in my mouth and tucking rugs around my feet. Homer was there too, but I didn't want him; it was only Fi I wanted. And she was fantastic. She sent Homer away quick smart and she found some burns cream and some stuff for my bruised ribs from deep inside one of Grandma's cupboards. She supported my head with a pillow and she stayed there holding my hand until I fell asleep."

Thrills

The characters move a very long way in the space of the seven novels. A very long way. By the end most are showing signs of significant mental illness. They are now even killing as a means of stress relief, for the thrill of it. This very late quote describes their return from an attack on a patrol

"    Homer grabbed my shoulder, giving me a hell of a shock. I hadn't realised he'd moved so close to me. He looked demented with joy. 'Time to go' he hissed in my ear: I backed away. ... We turned and ran.
     We ran nearly the whole distance [to their base]. It was funny really, that we did that. It was like a cross-country race. At first it was natural enough, rushing to get clear before the reinforcements arrived. But even when we were far enough away to be safe, we kept running. After a couple of k's I stopped thinking about patrols and concentrated on getting my breathing right. Glancing across at [the others], on the other side of the street, I saw the same expression on their faces that I'm sure was on mine. Kind of concentrated. Panting away, skin getting paler as the streets rolled by, keeping the legs going, keeping the arms going.
     But it was fun to in a way. It was the kind of dumb thing we did before the war, running for the hell of it: because we were young and we didn't need an excuse to be stupid. In the old days you'd see little kids in the main street of Wirrawee holding their mum or dad's hand, and because their mum or dad was walking to boringly the kids would skip and hop and dance. It was like they had so much energy they had to work it off somehow.
     We were a bit old for that but we still has some energy and there were still times when we felt like skipping or dancing. Not so many of those times lately, but once in a while ...
     Back in the house we waited while [they] did the next radio check. They came back with the same message. Pineapples. Nothing doing till tomorrow. at the earliest. Twelve hours more waiting.
     We were revved up, like city kids going out to start nightclubbing at one o'clock in the morning"

Of course, they are not going out nightclubbing, they are kids going out to kill and they go out again that night to kill once more, for the thrill of it. Quite a contrast to the first quote from a thousand pages before, a difference Ellie is entirely unconcious of.

Reaching out

Many of the characters are terrified much of the time. They can't bring themselves to admit it, (and this refusal to look scared in front of their friends drives them on time after time) but scared they are. In little ways they just help each other all through the series. Even to the bitter end.

This quote is from the bitter end.

"    At least we didn't have heavy loads; we'd hidden our main packs, to collect after the attack.
     I found myself side by side with Lee and suddenly felt an urgent desire to connect with him, to weld myself to him. It was the complete opposite of the way I'd been a couple of hours before. I grabbed his hand and squeezed it tight. And when I say tight, I mean I drew blood. Well, nearly.
     I was surprised at my feeling but I don't think Lee was. He just made a face at me. He didn't actually say, 'Are you in a state of total Terror?' but he knew what was going on. My insides were liquid from the neck down. I could almost hear them sloshing around.
     I kept my grip on Lee's hand until we were fifty metres from the road. The I let go, wondering when I would get to hold it again. And if I ever did, would it be warm and comforting, like now? Or would it be cold and clammy, lying lifeless in mine?"