TOMORROW WHEN THE WAR BEGAN
USEFUL QUOTES
THEME:
“Writing it down is important to us…recording what we’ve done, in words, on paper, it’s got to be our way of telling ourselves that we mean something, that we matter. That the things we’ve done have made a difference.”
“We’d thought that we were among the first humans to invade this basin, but humans had invaded everything, everywhere. They didn’t have to walk into a place to invade it. Even Hell was not immune.”
“Hell wasn’t anything to do with places, Hell was all to do with people. Maybe Hell was people.”
“I still couldn’t comprehend that this might be a matter of life and death, that this was the most serious thing I’d ever been involved in.”
“That was the first moment at which I started to realise what true courage was. Up until then, everything had been unreal, like a night-stalking game at a school camp. To come out of the darkness now would be to show courage of a type that ‘’d never had to show before, never even known about. I had to search my own mind and body to find if there was a new part of me somewhere.”
“At that moment I stopped being an innocent rural teenager and started becoming someone else, a more complicated capable person, a force to be reckoned with even, not just a polite obedient kid.”
“This was the new reality of our lives. I got the shakes a bit, but there was no time for that.”
“This is war now and normal rules don’t apply. These people have invaded our land, locked up our families…The moment they left their country to come here they knew what they were doing. They’re the ones who tore up the rule book, not us.”
“We believed we were safe. That was the big fantasy. Now we know we’re not, and like you said, we’ll never feel safe again, and so it’s bye-bye innocence. It’s been nice knowing you but you’re gone now.”
JUSTIFICATION
“We’ve got all this land and all these resources, and yet there’s countries a crow’s spit away that have people packed in like battery hens. You can’t blame them for resenting it, and we haven’t done much to reduce any imbalances.” (Robyn) “It’s just not right.” (Kevin)
CHARACTER:
Lee: “He seemed a very serious guy, very into his music, but I just thought he was interesting.”
Robyn: “I always thought of Robyn as fairly quiet and serious…but I knew there was more to her than that. She liked to win.”
Fi: “She looked like she’d never done any hard work in her life, never been in the sun, never got her hands dirty, and that was all true.”
Kevin: “He was known for having a big ego and he like to take the credit for everything…but I still thought that he was the best thing that ever happened in Corrie’s life”
Homer: “Homer was wild, outrageous. He didn’t care what he did or what anyone thought.” “Homer always seemed to be in trouble.” “He was like a brother. Being neighbours we’d grown up together.” “He’d always encouraged people to believe he had no feelings.”
“Homer was becoming more surprising with every passing hour. It was getting hard to remember that this fast-thinking guy, who’d just spent fifteen minutes getting us laughing and talking and feeling good again, wasn’t even trusted to hand out the books at school.”
“We were starting to recognise Homer’s leadership. He didn’t seem to notice, just began talking naturally, as though he had it all worked out.”
“That was Homer’s genius. He combined action with thought, and he planned ahead. He sensed, I think, that inaction was our enemy.”
“Homer had an ability to put himself into the minds of the soldiers, to think their thoughts and to see through their eyes.”
“’Aren’t you meant to be just a wild and crazy guy?’ (Robyn, to Homer) He laughed but then went straight back to being serious.”
Ellie: “It was hard for me to believe that I, plain old Ellie, nothing special about me, middle of the road in every way, had probably just killed three people. It was too big a thing for me to get my mind around.”
“Truth to tell I was feeling more confident and relaxed. I always prefer action; I’m happier when I’m doing things.”
“My fear came from love. Love for my friends. I didn’t want to let them down. If I did, they would die.”
“God, I can’t believe the things we’ve done.”
Chris: “Ninety percent of the school thought he was weird, ten per cent thought he was a legend, everybody thought he was a genius.”
FORESHADOWING:
“We’ve got a wimp for a foreign minister…He doesn’t understand the people he’s dealing with. They respect strength, not weakness!” (face on television News)
“What’s the worst thing that could happen?” (Ellie)
“Oh Ellie, I hope there’s no disasters,” (Robyn)
“‘It’s probably the start of World War Three,’ said Lee. ‘We’ve probably been invaded and don’t even know.’”
“I realised I was quite anxious to get home, to see how things were, to make sure it was all ok. I did feel some kind of strange anxiety.”
“I don’t know if I was happy that day – those tense and edgy feelings were getting stronger and stronger – but I do know I’ve never been happy since.”
SETTING:
“Commemoration Day, when the whole country stops…traditionally the day of the Wirrawee Show. It’s quite an occasion.”
“Cobbler’s Bay…one of the world’s great natural harbours, used only by the occasional fishing boat or cruising yacht. It was too far from the city for anything else.” (quote continues, foreshadowing) “We could see a couple of ships there this time though.”
“Hell is a cauldron of boulders and trees…It’s a wild place…The cliffs all around it are spectacular, hundreds of metres high in places. There’s a series of small cliffs called Satan’s Steps that drop into it.”
“‘It’s impressive’, said Lee. ‘I’m impressed.’”
“This is pretty nice for Hell” (Fi)
“Maybe the hermit and us are the only people to have seen it. Ever” (Robyn)
“We were excited to be there, in that strange and beautiful place, where so few humans had ever been.”
“There aren’t many wild places left on earth, yet we’d fluked it into the middle of this little wild kingdom.”
“I realised to my disbelief that it had been only about twenty four hours since we’d emerged from the bush into this new world. Lives can be changed that quickly.”
“My theory is that they’re using this valley as a corridor to the big towns and the cities. I reckon they’ve landed at Cobbler’s Bay, and their main interest in Wirrawee is to keep it quiet so they can get free access to the rest of the country.”
“It suddenly seemed so obvious that if we had a future, it would be in Hell.”
“We all wanted so desperately to get back to…the sanctuary of Hell.”
ACTION:
“like black bats screaming out of the sky, blotting out the stars, a V-shaped line of jets raced overhead, very low overhead. Then another, then another…their noise, their speed, their darkness frightened me.”
“There was a new atmosphere. The sweetness had gone.”
“I knew that nothing so awful could have happened to the dogs unless something more awful had happened to my parents.”
“I felt a new kind of fear now; a kind of fear I hadn’t even known about before.”
“This is ridiculous…These things just don’t happen, not here, not in this country.”
“I had to admit all the possibilities now. I remembered how tense things had been before we left, all those politicians shouting and carrying on.”
“There could be a lot at stake here. Lives even. We’ve got to assume that something really bad is happening, something quite evil.”
“For the first time we acted like people in a war, like soldiers, like guerrillas.” (after finding the fax and having their worst fears realised.)
“Our fear was making us think.”
“Our lives had always been so unaffected by the outside world…the only real impact the outside world had on us was in wool and cattle prices.”
“At that stage I still hadn’t come to terms with what had happened…all we had were clues, guesses, surmises…Even through my shock and horror I still wanted to understand; I still wanted answers.”
“I was so filled with horror. I felt that my life was permanently damaged, that I could never be normal again, that the rest of my life would just be a shell.”
“We’re not going to be safe anytime, anywhere, until this thing is over. All we can do is to keep calculating the odds. And if it goes on long enough we’ll be caught. But if we do nothing we’ll get caught even sooner. The biggest risk is to take no risk.” (Homer)
SUB PLOT: “IN THE MIDST OF DEATH WE ARE IN LIFE”
“I wanted to spend more time with this new Homer, this interesting and clever boy whom I’d known but not known for so many years.”
“We were in the middle of a desperate struggle to stay alive, but here was I, still thinking about boys and love.”