The image of Norm and Bala going to build their home after the flood and waiting for Will to find his way back represents the hope of healing and rebuilding the family. Nevertheless, the family tries to support each other as they face oppression and violence from the white settlers of Desperance and from the mining company. He does little to defend his family from danger, as seen from the examples of Will, Kevin, and Girlie. Norm Phantom is a passive father who seems to care more about the sea than his family. Angel Day, the Phantom family mother, often behaves selfishly, as seen in her abandonment of her home for Mozzie Fishman. The novel explores the theme of family and the meaning of home, most prominently in connection to the Phantom family. The narrator explains that “ountry people, old people, said it was the sound of the great spiritual ancestors roaring out of the dusty polluted sea all of the time nowadays….The country looked dirty from mining, shipping, barges spilling ore and waste.” In this sense, Mozzie’s and Will’s fight against the mine is also a fight against environmental destruction and climate change.
There are more frequent and unpredictable storms. Industry and shipping have polluted the land, air, and water. The mine has changed the landscape of the region and caused social and environmental damage. The environmentĭamage to the environment is an important theme in the novel, even though the author does not explicitly frame it as such. Faced with this colonial racism, some Aboriginal inhabitants make deals with the white population, some seek to avoid them, while still others actively resist their power.
The white settlers control the town’s government and police, which treat the Westside and Eastside mobs with violence, contempt, and entitlement.
They see the land as theirs and wish the Aboriginal population would just disappear. The white settler population of Desperance discriminates against the town’s original, Black Indigenous inhabitants.
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