Greenwich is the London home from which Louisa and Nathanael Clintoff leave for Australia with their son, Samuel Adrian Clintoff. The family’s final morning there gathers the novel’s contrasts into one place: an intimate domestic life shaped by Louisa’s care and Nate’s recovery, and an uncertain future prompted by economic hardship and the search for a new career. Greenwich is both a lived-in home and the threshold to the story’s Australian events.

Setting and Home

The Clintoffs live in the Royal Borough of Greenwich, near the boundary by the bend of the River Thames opposite the Isle of Dogs. Nate inherited the two-storey house after his brothers chose the countryside and his parents moved there following his retirement from the British Army. His parents remain active in military social and charitable life and sometimes stay with the family when they are in town.

The house had once been a sparse bachelor’s residence, with curtains kept closed and only half its rooms in use. During their courtship and marriage, Louisa gradually made it a shared home, adding warmth while remaining mindful that it had first belonged to Nate. The parlour still reflects his tastes, while Louisa’s more personal touch appears around the bay window overlooking the garden. The house’s transformation gives Greenwich a domestic history: it records the movement from Nate’s isolation toward family life.

Garden and Daily Life

Louisa’s small courtyard garden is her favourite part of the house. She does not consider herself a gardener, but values the beauty and scent of plants. The garden was Lisbeth’s idea; the two women, born seven days apart, joke that they are twins and balance one another in temperament, with Lisbeth more romantic and Louisa more practical. Its plants need only occasional watering and pruning, including a climbing rose trained along wire Nate placed on a wall.

The star jasmine is especially associated with the garden and with Louisa’s private routines. Lisbeth suggested planting it against the weathered sandstone wall, imagining evenings spent in its fragrance. The vine later sends its scent through the parlour and dining and sitting rooms, offering relief from London’s pollution and the river’s sewage smell. Pruning it becomes a form of meditation for Louisa, particularly when she has writer’s block or needs to think. Nate watches from the back verandah and jokes that she will one day cut through the wall; the exchange makes the garden a shared setting for their affection as well as Louisa’s solitude.

The Departure from Greenwich

On the family’s last morning in the house, Louisa wakes before dawn, excited and frightened by the move. Samuel’s cot and room have already been packed. Her father had called the plan foolish because the family was leaving during a global economic depression for Australia, where the crisis had begun and hit hard. Louisa nevertheless sees the move as an adventure; the Victorian government has guaranteed safe passage, and Nate is eager to find work beyond administration for the British Army.

Their departure is rendered through ordinary domestic details. Louisa makes tea in her favourite cup and goes out to enjoy the garden for the last time. Nate cooks breakfast, then joins Louisa and Samuel on the back steps, where she tells their son stories about the voyage and the land down under. The family’s breakfast on the steps is their final shared morning in Greenwich, turning the threshold of the house into the point from which their next life begins.

Narrative Significance

Greenwich anchors the novel’s account of migration in a specific home rather than treating departure as an abstract change of country. The garden, the jasmine, and the back steps establish what Louisa is leaving: familiar routines, a carefully made home, and a place bound to her friendship with Lisbeth and her marriage to Nate. The departure also begins the Clintoffs’ movement into the Australian world where the novel’s conflicts unfold. In this way, Greenwich functions as both a remembered domestic centre and the starting point of a journey shaped by economic uncertainty, ambition, and hope.