There is good reason for believing that the Australian coastline region north from Newcastle to Brisbane is one of the choicest parts of the earth, indeed in a good season a Garden of Eden…. David Malouf in Fly Away Peter [published in the United States as The Bread of Time to Come] has … made one part of it his own. The South Coast of Queensland (or, as it is now known, the Gold Coast) is created in his novel of pre-World War I days as if it is a Paradise before the Fall, a world of harmony between nature and human nature. There is even an Adam and Eve. (p. 113)

The moment when [Jim Saddler and Imogen Harcourt] meet is a fine one. It is by accident. Separately, they each are observing a sandpiper, and when the photo is developed their pleasure is caught by the novel as...