Australia appears as a lived setting in brief but telling references to migration, school, language, and accent. A memory Ava Spirini shares about Kelly Waititi places an adolescent school episode in a social world shaped by a newcomer’s arrival; elsewhere, Nola’s Australian twang marks the everyday setting of support at TAPs.

Migration and School

In Ava Spirini’s recollection, Andre Daar had been in Australia for about a year after coming from Somalia. He spoke little English, but his beatboxing made him popular at school. The detail situates Australia as the place where a recent arrival is encountered by his classmates, not simply as a name on a map.

The episode turns on a love letter that Kelly Waititi wrote in Arabic using Google Translate and put in Andre’s locker. By Sunday night, Ava and Kelly had returned to retrieve it: Ava was at school in one of Lincoln Waititi’s hoodies, holding a crowbar and tin snips. Their act of breaking into the locker went undiscovered. At assembly, Mrs Bryan condemned the vandalism as an act of hatred, while the girls’ actual motive was their misguided attempt to recover a letter written out of love. The contrast gives this school setting a particular social texture: the same act could be publicly understood as prejudice while its real cause remained private.

The letter also makes language part of the story’s sense of place. Kelly used Arabic to reach Andre, and Ava learned to say I love you in Arabic because Kelly made her learn it. Andre never found out that the two Year 8 girls had learned the phrase for him.

Everyday Australia at TAPs

A separate reference locates Australia in Nola’s voice. When Ava meets her at TAPs, Nola is described as speaking with a thick Australian twang. This small observation places the counselling encounter within an ordinary Australian environment, without turning the country into an explicit topic of discussion.

Together, the references present Australia through people moving into it and people speaking within it. The recollection of Andre’s arrival carries the specific circumstances of migration, language, and school belonging; Nola’s accent supplies a quieter marker of the setting in Ava’s later life. The book offers no broad portrait of the country, but these details make it present in the relationships and institutions its characters inhabit.