Gary Black Quotes

“You’ve got to look like you’re trying to stop him, though. If you don’t then you’re a gutless wonder. A gutless wonder is about the worst thing you can be in our town. If you’re a boy that is.”

“‘I don’t know what Arks, I mean Mr Robertson, expects of me.’ ‘That you do your best. That’s all anybody expects of you. Do your best and he’ll be happy as Larry.’”

“I’d never been to the Point […] Once Dazza and I decided we were going to do it. […] But then we started thinking about those stories they told in the front bar – wild Nungas with spears, boomerangs that come from nowhere and knock you senseless. We got scared and ran all the way back to the Port.”

“That word again – responsibility. I’d been hearing it so much lately. From my teachers, from my parents, from everybody. Because I was tall (was that my fault?) and I played footy […] I ended up with all this responsibility. It didn’t seem fair.”

“Next Saturday we play Wangaroo for the Peninsula Junior Colts Premiership. The whole town is talking about it, it’s the biggest thing to happen here since the second prize in the S.A. Tidy Towns Competition (Section B). Just shows what sort of town I live in. Hopeless.”

“Even though the Point was only half an hour’s drive from the Port, the two towns didn’t have much to do with one another. The footy was really the only place where Nungas and Goonyas got to hand around together.”

“‘Nukkin ya?’ said Pickles. ‘Geez, you’re talking like one of them now.’ ‘So what,’ I said. ‘Well I s’pose he is a mate of yours and all,’ said Pickles. ‘Matter of fact, he is,’ I said.”

“The whole tribe was there, sitting around the kitchen table, waiting for dinner to be served. Except for the old man, of course. As usual, he was down the pub.”

“I reckon a family is a lot like a team. Perhaps it’s the original team. You’d think, wouldn’t you, that given his lemming-like qualities, Team-man would be just about the best sibling you could have? Do anything for you, for the family. Good theory, but wrong.”

“My poor Mum didn’t have any teeth. She’d gone into hospital and they’d taken them all out, every last one. It was because of us kids.”