“You mustn't judge Australia by the Australians.”

“(backpacker having conversation with Lizzie the Australian main character)Backpacker: 'What's the drinking age in Australia?''eighteen''is that enforced'Lizzie thought for a second before answering seriously, 'yes, they make us drink”

“Australia! Australians! Surely it's still full of Magwitch-types, lumbering oafs with shaven pates and broken noses on the run from whatever law there is, chucking kangaroo heads on the barbie as they read their awful bush poetry.”

“My dear friend, we mustn't give them even the slightest excuse to judge us! Otherwise, we end up in pieces.”

“Nearly 30 years since his only tour of Australia, mention of Tavaré still occasions winces and groans. Despite its continental lilt, his name translates into Australian as a very British brand of obduracy, that Trevor Baileyesque quality of making every ditch a last one.”

“Families are like countries. They have their own language and jokes and secrets and assumptions about the right and wrong ways of doing things, and some of that always shows in the children, the way something of Germany or Australia always shows in a German or an Australian, no matter where they go. Outsiders like it or they don't, they feel at home there or they don't. It's like the taste of cilantro.”