Fish, “the funniest, happiest, stupidest kid”, drowns at
the age of nine in the estuary at Margaret River.
Lester, his father, and Quick, his brother, actually
drown Fish in their attempt to save him. Oriel, his
mother, beats the water out of him, and life back into
him. (p 27 – 31)
Rose and Quick first really see one another. (p 307)
The wheatbelt scenes (p 195) include images of a sea
of wheat over which Quick, injured, sees Fish rowing
in an orange box boat. (p 200 -1, 203)
Oriel and Quick go prawning and speak together as
adults for the first time. (p 266)
Lester and Quick go out on their boat and talk of life,
what matters and what it means to love. “Easy to be
a good man out here – there’s no one else to think
of.” (p 304)
“Joel was on his knees clutching his heart.” (p 23)
“In the afternoon the old man buys a boat.” (p 109)
Quick and Fish row the boat home. “Lester found
them at dawn, asleep and aground in the shallows
along the foreshore at Nedlands.” (p 116)
“She knew this scene. Her life always came back to
the river. A long time ago she’d been baptized in a
river. She’d kissed Lester Lamb by the river the first
time … And that night, that long, horrid night by the
estuary at Margaret, when her men had walked on
water and the lamp had gone out ..” (p 176)
“With the cord of her dressing gown she ties you to the
tree, Fish, even while you sleep because she knows
what you’ll do.” (p 178)
“Remember wherever the river goes every living
creature which swarms will live, and there will be
many fish, for this water goes there, that the waters of
the sea will become fresh; so everything will live where
the river goes.” (p 178)
Quick goes out in Earl’s dory. (p 214) “Now the boat
vibrated like a cathedral with all these fish arching,
beating, sliding, bucking, hammering.” (p 216)
“He was comfortable out there on the water … The
river was a broad, muttering, living thing always
suggesting things to keep his mind busy. Every
important thing that had happened to him, it
seemed, had to do with the river. It was insistent,
quietly forceful like the force of his own blood.”(p
300) Quick becomes a fisherman for the year. (p 304)
“Late in the spring, Rose began to swim in the river at
Peppermint Grove.” After losing her baby.(p 358)
“Rose took Wax Harry down to the river and lay in
the creamy sand with his the way she’d promised
herself she would.” (p 389)
“Boots, leggings, leather and all, Quick slams into the
water with the spray glugging up in his helmet.”
Quick recovers the body of the Nedlands’ murderer’s
son. (p 397)
Celebratory picnic for Quick and Rose moving back
to Cloudstreet. (p 421)