Australia

Australia is presented chiefly through its ties to Rowena and Edwina: it is where Rowena builds a life after leaving Charlie in Thailand, and the destination Edwina prepares to reach after years of estrangement. The novel gives little description of the country beyond the area around St Kilda beach, but makes the distance between Australia and the family home consequential: it marks both separation and the possibility of return.

Rowena's life in Australia

After accompanying Charlie to Thailand, Rowena returned to Australia because she had a job and responsibilities there. Before leaving, she gave Charlie enough money for a return flight, on the condition that if he stayed in Thailand he would continue his recovery routine, eat healthily, and drink only occasionally. He kept to the arrangement for almost a week, then fell in with travellers and moved to a rougher part of the resort. Ten days after Rowena returned to Australia, Charlie was found dead in a backpackers' hostel. Her departure is therefore bound to a painful reversal: the effort to help her brother had offered hope, but she could not remain with him indefinitely or prevent his relapse.

Australia is also where Rowena has a partner and an established life of her own. She later explained to Lucas that she had not attended Dickie's funeral because her partner was being treated for breast cancer and she had decided not to leave her. Rowena and Edwina were still estranged at the time, though Rowena expressed hope that they might one day be reunited.

Distance and estrangement

The separation between Australia and the family in England gives Rowena's absence practical as well as emotional causes. Her work and responsibilities had taken her back from Thailand; her partner's illness later kept her from travelling to Dickie's funeral. Lucas had been surprised by her absence but, in his state at the time, scarcely registered it. Rowena's message nevertheless reached across that distance with kindness and an apology, acknowledging both the family's estrangement and the possibility of repairing it.

Her later letter to Edwina makes that possibility more concrete without establishing that mother and daughter have already met again. Rowena writes that she lives near St Kilda beach, invites Edwina to paint, and imagines them firing up the barbecue together. She also says that she wears Edwina's charm bracelet every day. The details turn Australia from a remote address into a particular imagined welcome, offered by a daughter who has not forgotten her mother.

Edwina's planned journey

For Edwina, Australia becomes the destination of a long-delayed attempt at reunion. She has tickets and checks them each night alongside her passport. After Lucas confesses that he arranged the theft of her jewellery box, she finds that its last drawer still holds the objects that matter most: a photograph, the children's baby teeth, wedding rings, and a lock of hair. With the recovered box and Rowena's invitation, these family remnants become part of what Edwina plans to carry with her.

The journey remains prospective in the evidence: Edwina is preparing to go, not yet shown arriving. Australia thus gathers together the novel's movement between estrangement and reconciliation, and between possessions kept as traces of the past and the possibility of making a life with family again. Rowena's invitation offers a future in which Edwina can paint and share an ordinary meal; the tickets and carefully assembled keepsakes show that Edwina is readying herself to accept it.