the Goanna

The Goanna is a guard in the prisoners’ camp and at the railway worksite, remembered for his unpredictable conduct and sudden violence. He is not given a personal name or a fuller history; instead, the narrative defines him through the prisoners’ uncertain explanations of his behavior and through encounters in which his authority becomes physical. His episodes link the routines of inspection and forced labor to the danger of arbitrary punishment.

Identity and Reputation

The Goanna is described as short and muscular, with a mottled complexion. Prisoners circulate different explanations for his behavior: some attribute it to vitiligo, while others simply call him mad; some imagine him as the devil. These accounts are presented as rumors rather than established facts. Their variety conveys the prisoners’ inability to predict or explain him, not a reliable diagnosis or biography.

The uncertainty is sharpened by the narrator’s account that the Goanna can be pitiless and, on odd occasions, bewilderingly kind. The prisoners have lost much of their belief in a moral order that could make such contradictions intelligible. The Goanna’s characterization therefore rests less on a stable personal motive than on the instability of what the men may expect from him: his strangeness does not make him less real or less dangerous.

Violence at the Railway Worksite

At the cutting, the Goanna approaches after Tiny Middleton, weakened by malaria, can no longer continue swinging his sledgehammer and falls. The Goanna watches the workers, turns away, then slowly turns back, movements that the scene identifies as a precursor to violence. He beats Tiny with a piece of heavy bamboo and kicks him. The episode becomes exceptional not because the camp’s violence is new, but because Tiny, who had previously endured punishment without showing visible distress, begins to sob afterward. The Goanna is stunned by this response, as is Darky Gardiner, who has witnessed the assault.

The incident places the Goanna within a labor regime in which sick and exhausted prisoners are still driven to work. Tiny’s collapse is not treated as a reason to stop the labor or protect him; it becomes the occasion for further punishment. The scene also shows how a guard’s violence can expose a change in a prisoner that familiar brutality had not previously made visible. The Goanna does not explain himself, and the narrative supplies no account of what he thinks the tears mean.

Inspection of the Hut

The Goanna also leads a surprise inspection of the prisoners’ hut. The men stand at attention beside the communal bunks while he upends one kitbag into the mud and slaps another prisoner without an apparent reason. At Darky’s place, he lifts the folded blanket with the tip of his rifle, drops it into the mud, and then strikes Darky with the rifle butt. Another guard kicks Darky as he falls. The inspection ends abruptly: the Goanna continues down the aisle, slaps Chum Fahey, and leaves with the other guards. Darky gets back to his feet, confused and muddy.

The blanket is an ordinary possession, and its prescribed place and folding are part of the prisoners’ regulated daily life. By making it the focus of the inspection, the scene shows how even compliance offers no protection from punishment. The Goanna’s violence is not presented as a measured response to a stated offense: the inspection provides the setting and his authority, but no clear explanation for the assault. His treatment of Chum as the group departs further shows that the danger is not confined to Darky or to a single confrontation.

Authority and the Prisoners’ Survival

At the worksite, the Goanna serves as Colonel Kota’s guide during an inspection of the railway. They come upon two prisoners, one sitting and one lying across the track. The Goanna rolls the latter over with his foot; when the man does not respond adequately to being yelled at, he kicks him. The prisoner is too weak to be moved by threats or blows. Colonel Kota notices Darky’s thin neck and orders the Goanna to position him for closer examination. The scene thus shows the Goanna acting not only as an individual source of danger but also as an agent through whom officers inspect and handle the prisoners.

Against this authority, Darky tries to preserve the men in his gang. Despite fever, he looks for ways to avoid guards, evade work quotas, obtain useful resources without the theft being traced, reduce beatings, and help the men last another day. His actions make clear that survival depends partly on reading and negotiating the guards’ presence. The Goanna is one of the threats within that daily calculation, while the prisoners’ mutual assistance offers a limited counterforce to the rules and punishments imposed on them.

Narrative Role

The Goanna’s appearances trace a pattern across the camp: he can punish a man who collapses at work, invade the hut during inspection, and assist an officer examining a prisoner too weak to reach the railway. The settings change, but the imbalance of power remains. The narrative gives him no redemptive arc or final explanation; instead, the rumors about his nature sit beside concrete acts of violence and the occasional report of unexpected kindness. That unresolved contrast keeps the Goanna from becoming a fully explained emblem while showing how, in the prisoners’ world, the possibility of arbitrary force is part of ordinary existence.