Ocean

by Bruce Pascoe

This vivid novel is the fifth in Bruce Pascoe's series which charts personal histories of the first Australians. Caleb Mathews is captain of a sealing ship in Bass Strait. His relationships with two women, one white, one black, are both ambiguous and brutal. The consequences still haunt the country and live on in the survivors.

201 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Bruce Pascoe was born of Bunurong and Tasmanian Aboriginal heritage in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond and graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Education. He is a member of the Wathaurong Aboriginal Co-operative of southern Victoria and has been the director of the Australian Studies Project for the Commonwealth Schools Commission.

Bruce has had a varied career as a teacher, farmer, fisherman, barman, fencing contractor, lecturer, Aboriginal language researcher, archaeological site worker and editor.

He won the Fellowship of Australian Writers´ Literature Award in 1999 and his novel Fog a Dox (published by Magabala Books in 2012), won the Young Adult category of the 2013 Prime Minister's Literary Awards.
Source: http://brucepascoe.com.au/about/

Reviews

[WildWoila · Rating 4 out of 5]

The dispossession of the Bass Strait indigenous people, from the depravity of the sealers to the vain hopes of regained ownership. Gently & sympathetically told for a heavy subject.

[Thoraiya · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bruce Pascoe's "Ocean" is grim but compelling. Each character's voice is amazingly distinct and yet the divine poetry of saltwater moving through Bass Strait is woven into everything.

"As I lifted my chin to receive the wine from the glass, my eye swept across the headlands, the horizon, the last pink edge of clouds and felt captured. I toasted the opportunities of the land and the part I might play in it, but the whoops and howls from the tents sounded as the cries from hell itself." - p12

"It seems to me that the human can't build a house without destroying his home...Can you have an orchestra without a rich man's purse, Johnny? Answer me that." - p82

"'Sleep in bloody blackfellas' house, he says. Alright fa you, ol' Possum, but I'm a lady, I don't sleep with bloody spiders an' snakes.'" - p95

"Caleb and Eugenie's cabin was still there although the door was off its hinges and penguins thought it was good-o under the floorboards, but penguins are like that." - p99

"Breath, breath, breath, said the sea to his dream, breath, sigh, breath, you will live our warrior, breath, breath, breath, we will never engulf you, we will always lift you up, you are our sailor seal, your seed will be sea beads, your babies will be anointed here, in this bay, we will send ponies to rock and buoy them, breath, breath, breath, our warrior, breath, breath, breath." - p117