Secret River Quotes

Thornhill’s villa

Land Q1

“fine stone house… a villa”

“a fortress” with walls “half a yard thick.”

Symbol of lions

Land Q1

“he had the lions put high on the gate post”

“rather than snarling interlopers, they lay on their haunches, paws spread like tabbies in front of the fire”

Social hierarchy symbolism

Other Q4

“He had the sudden dizzying understanding of the way men were ranged on top of each other.”

“in the world of these naked savages, it seemed that everyone was gentry”

Guns symbolism

Other Q4

“That outline, man plus gun was something they knew to fear”

“The gun went off with a puff of blue smoke and a pop that sounded puny in all this air.”

Background 1 Sentence

Kate Grenville’s 2005 Australian novel, The Secret River, tells the story of William Thornhill, a convict transported to the penal colony of New South Wales in 1806.

Thornhill’s home

Other Q1, Q3, Land Q3, 4

“A tent was all very well, but what marked a man’s claim was a rectangle of cleared and dug-over dirt and something growing that had not been there before. He had corn seeds, a pick, an axe, a spade. It was a matter of choosing a patch of ground and opening it up to the sky.”

Blackwood home

Land Q3, Q4, Other Q1 Q3

“There was no bald patch defined by heaps of dead wood that marked where civilisation began and ended. This was a place where clearing and forest lived together on the same ground”

“neat slab, bark roof, corn patch – luminous green, few fowls”

Thornhill language towards Darug

Other Q1, Q3

“they called him Scabby Bill because his face had been mauled by the smallpox”

“Thornhill caught the first sound but the rest evaporated into the air like steam out of a kettle. But a man who could write his own name, William Thornhill, along a piece of paper, could not be made to look a fool by a naked savage. Jack, he said confidently. Good-day to you, Jack.”

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Blackwood language towards Darug

Other Q1, Q3

“he was speaking in her own tongue. The words were slow and clumsy… she was listening and understanding”

Smasher’s home

Land Q3, Q4

“sun seemed to shine coldly, water a black mirror.”

“not a breath of wind stirred the surface or blew away the stain of smoke.

“wedged… cleared it… a lumpy patch of land thick with stumps of trees”

“ragged stand of corn, struggling in the sandy soil”

“Hacked down mangroves, bald scraped places showed where he had scratched shell-heaps for lime, until he got down to the original dirt. So much burning had left the place stripped of every tree or bush”

Smasher treatment of Darug people

“he could see… the sores where the chain had chafed, red jewels against her black skin.”

“a whip is a mighty handy thing to have around your average black savage”

“it’s like bleeding flies, ain’t it… Kill one, ten more come to its funeral.”

“Loaded and ready to shoot any black arse that comes near the place”

Blackwood scolding Smasher

“By Christ Jesus. One of them blacks is worth ten of a little brainless maggots like you”

Thornhill at the massacre

“There was an impulse to wrench [the spear] out, make it everything the way it had been before… he went on standing… an emptiness in his being.”