Once upon a time there was a captain on a wide sea, a rough and windswept sea, and his good barque was pitched and tossed something cruel.
It is somewhat fitting that the novel starts out with language usually reserved for fairy tales. Just as fairy tales relate stories of strange people in faraway lands living who resemble mainstream culture and society, but do not really reflect it, so is this story something a fairy tale. The history of Australian’s indigenous Aboriginal tribes often seems as far away from the history of western civilization as a land where houses are made of candy and a party snub can lead to a vengeful sleeping spell.
These people chase us from our own country. They kill our animals and if we eat one of their sheep … they shoot us.
Relations between the newly arrived white men and the Aborigines is constantly at a point of varying tension. Much of the tension arises as a result of the disrespectful ways of the new visitors. The attention to the divergence in the ways each side views animal life is particular contestable and becomes the prime driving force sticking a wedge between the two cultures.
“We learned your words and songs and stories, and never knew you didn’t want to hear ours.”
The issue of the white man’s disrespect is potent and expansive. In fact, to a certain degree, it is the fundamental foundation of tension between the two cultures which inexorably moves toward a rift rather than an attempt to fill the chasm with understanding. As this quote reveals, however, that chasm is not the result of equivalence; from the perspective of the novel, at least, the tribes make attempts which are routinely not reciprocated by the supposedly more advance and sophisticated culture.
“You in the wrong port now, Doctor.”
This gentle admonition arrives with a comforting—but telling—pat on the shoulder. The Doctor is really more preacher than physician and he has just tried delivering a sermon to an audience of one in which he tries to explain the concept of his god who sends bad people to burning hell. The admonition that this message won’t fly with his people is yet another example of the culture clash that the white settlers seem incapable of fully comprehending.
