Limberlost Quotes

“In that moment Ned felt a swelling, a ripping expansion, a hugeness that rang through him for the length of his life, a feeling that was sometimes rivalled but never quite matched. Not at weddings, not at births, not at funerals. Not when he worked his way north to Longreach, where he finally saw Toby again, finding him cocky, funny and largely unchanged. Not during good seasons or bad. Not when he was alone on cold waterways, not when he was in the grip of people he loved. Not as he poured dirt into graves, not as he watched his children, then his grandchildren, play. Not on the white sands of hidden beaches. Not in the shade of ancient trees, in whose canopies he imagined he could see the darting of cream-brown quolls. Not on rocky mountain roofs. Not in the presence of whales, not while viewing fine ships. Not at the scent of Huon pine. Not as Callie's last breath eased out of her, in their house overlooking kanamaluka, the eastern sun warming her face right up to the final moments of her life. Not at his ninetieth birthday, surrounded by his family and what was left of his friends, as he felt both powerfully loved and profoundly alone.
Not even then, at the very end of his life, did he feel it again, although he always remembered it: this hugeness of feeling. This undamming of a whole summer's fear, this half-sickening lurch to joy. (pp.225-6)”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“They watched the whales float in the murk, blowing spray into the air. After a minute, the mother showed them her eye again, unblinking and huge. Then she and her calf dipped back under the surface. It was an impossible thing: so many tons of flesh, disappearing in an instant. Their tails emerged fifty yards away, saluting the stars. Hanging high and wide. Ned's father started the motor.
'She's as interested in us as we are in dragonflies'. The engine smoked to life. He let it idle. Turned to his sons. 'If you're going to fear something, boys, it's best to understand it.' He laid a hand on Ned's scalp, his rough skin stilling Ned's shivers. 'To come right up against it.' (p.219)”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“It was a horrible sensation, feeling that the facts of his life had blurred.”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“He wanted to fly out into the river proper, but as soon as he gained enough confidence the day betrayed him, the sun losing itself in the west. The final light died over the hills. He turned to the shore and sailed for home, the oars still stowed, a feeling of ecstatic accomplishment flashing through him, a feeling beyond language. His life widened. Time wobbled. He grazed the truth of his dreams, grazed a world frozen perfect, if only for the length of the dusk.”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“A hollowness echoed through him when he made these comparisons; he became aware of his lack of skill, his dearth of lessons, of old knowledge. He felt the looseness of his connection to the place. How tenuous his grip on the world was.”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“I was there long before you were born, he wanted to say. I've known this kanamaluka [River Tamar] longer than I've known your mother. And as he cast around for what that meant, how important his connection to the river was, his mind snagged on the little boat he'd once owned. How he'd freed it from a prison of thick lead paint. He wanted to tell is daughters about the glory he'd restored it to. How intoxicating the sight of it had been. How the scent of its timber had put him under a spell he had never truly recovered from. What discovering Huon pine does to a person. How it had rode the river so cleanly, so joyously, like a wish come true. How short his time with it was, how hard the summer had been, how he'd sold the boat to a rich little man, a stranger whose name he soon forgot. How it never carried him to the river mouth. I didn't get to go back, he wanted to tell his daughters. I didn't get to return to the place my father took us, your uncles and me, where the mad whale - do you remember the mad whale, do you remember the stories, did anyone ever tell you? - raised its twelve-foot tail above our borrowed boat, hiding the moon's light, poised to smash us into red flotsam. Only it didn't, he wanted to say. It could've, but it didn't. With colossal gentleness it lowered its flukes into the water beside us. Loosed a spray of vapour from its blowhole. Rolled onto its back and exposed to us the creamy striations of its belly. Twisted through the water so that the hugeness of its eye was close to us, a couple of yards from the boat. An eye shockingly familiar in its mammalian warmth. An eye filled with starlight: an eye lit by a half-dark heaven. (p.199)”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“After an hour of sodden stomping they saw ghostly figures beckoning them through the dense cloud. Highland snow gums, colour-swirled and hardy, and alpine yellow gums, splashed with shades of lemon and olive. Skeletal in the mist. When they reached them, they saw fluorescent pink tags hanging from the twisted artwork of their branches. Orange bike lights hammered into dolerite boulders, beneath flakes of minty lichen. (p.193)”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“He'd stare at that field of water until all the things he could not handle were rinsed out of him, and all that remained within him was the memory of that night: the whale, the warmth of the coat, his brothers, his father, the starlight. Afterwards, he'd turn around and sail for home, which would take the rest of the day, probably some of the evening. With luck, he'd make it back to Limberlost before it was completely dark. (p.177)”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“He told her the story of it, his words coming faster than with the others, without artifice or caution. Told her how he'd known there was something wonderful under the old paint from the moment he saw it lying on Falmouth's dirt. How the boat had spoken to him, guided him. How when he sailed it, he felt like a fuller version of himself. How he and Callie had used it to take the quoll to the forest on the eastern shore. (p.176)”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost

“Three days after their wedding they were standing at the base of Liffey Falls, at the brisk death of winter, watching an airborne river thrash its way earthward. The water tumbled through high ridges, crowded with the princes of the island's wetter wildernesses: blackheart sassafras, dappled leatherwoods, contortions of mossy myrtles. Giant stringybarks rose above them all, their gum-topped crowns fighting for space in the clouds. The forest loomed, wet-dark and thickly green in the morning dew, and through the ancient roots of its trees the Liffey ran and broke and fell to splash the boots of the gazing newlyweds. p.68”
― Robbie Arnott, Limberlost