Robbie Arnott's "Limberlost" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Limberlost is set for study in 2027-2028 in Year 12 Standard: Close study of literature.

What distinguishes Close study of literature from the other focus areas?

• Students develop knowledge, understanding and appreciation of a substantial literary text in its entirety, in this case it is the novel Limberlost by Robbie Arnott 
• Students need to read the novel closely and more than once 
• Close study of the novel should involve an extensive exploration and interpretation of the ways Arnott portrays people, ideas, settings and situations 
• Students should explore the ways this Australian novel influences and positions readers 
• Students need to understand the ways the novel’s form, language features including style, tone and point of view, and stylistic choices shape meaning 
• Students need to be encouraged to develop personal and intellectual connections with the novel 
• The HSC question on Close Study will require a clear knowledge of the text as a whole. 

Brief description of Limberlost

Limberlost is about a family, their interconnected lives and the Tasmanian landscape they live in and the non-human lives that have a gripping influence upon their own.  Limberlost is the name of the West apple orchard and 15 year old Ned lives there with his father (his mother died soon after he was born) while his two brothers are overseas fighting in World War 2. His older sister, Maggie, has returned home and together the three family members work hard on the land they love. The novel opens with a flashback memory of a fearful encounter with a ‘mad’ whale when Ned was young and closes with another memory of unexpected and profound joy. Both memories are vital parts of the structure of the novel. The narrative of Ned’s story is sometimes linear and sometimes fragmented as it weaves back and forth through many decades but most of the novel concerns one summer holiday in which Ned makes choices that shape his life. He snares a quoll in a trap and agonises over keeping it, killing it or releasing it. He dreams of owning his own boat to sail on the nearby river. He traps and shoots rabbits to sell their pelts to purchase an old boat and restores it. He worries about his father and his brothers, he works hard in the orchard and his eye relishes the landscape around him. First Nations lives are also woven into the narrative. Later in his life Ned is just about to give two of his daughters some tough news about the return of their mother’s cancer, when they ask questions about his silence regarding the people who lived there first and what happened to them.  Ned, distracted by grief, struggles to communicate his knowledge of the Letteremairrener, Pairelehoinner and Panninher people and realises he treated what happened to them as history and had done nothing about it. The insight stuns him. The concluding pages of the novel reveal much more about the whale and the brothers and their impact on Ned’s life and provide a notable ending to this tender, tough and lyrical novel, which has so much to offer to eighteen year old readers. 

Distinctive features of Limberlost

• A thrilling start with a tale and a childhood memory of a ‘mad’ whale at the mouth of a river; a motif that anchors the narrative and changes meaning as it runs through the novel   
• A third person narrative allows the reader to follow Ned West through many decades, first as a rabbit catcher and young man, then as a logger, a roustabout on stations, a husband and father and as a 90-year-old man 
• Compelling family characterisation with young Ned as a lonely, reticent teenager, his sister Maggie as a fierce and equally taciturn presence at home, his father as a returned soldier with PTSD from the First World War and his two brothers, Bill and Toby, the heroes of Ned’s childhood  
• Set in First Nations’ Country and home to the Letteremairrener, Pairelehoinner and Panninher people whose connections to Country are lyrically conveyed (see pages 32, 99 and 107 and pages 198-199 for a cross -generational response) 
• This is a novel embedded in the Tasmanian landscape and its author uses sensory imagery and vivid description to capture the landscape’s sights, sounds, smells and history
• The narrative flickers forward and back in time, the movement often occasioned by Ned’s childhood memories
• Anglo masculinity from diffident Ned to inarticulate fathers and hard drinking loggers can be explored 
• Memory and time, love, joy, fear and search for identity are key issues
• The author explores human and non-human lives (there are many important animals in this novel) and their connections and meaning 
• Reading this novel can be an immersive experience as readers are drawn into the beauty and brutality of the lives and the environment through language that is sensory and poetic
• The title Limberlost refers to the name of the West apple orchard and it was Jack’s mother who named it after one of her favourite novels, A Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton-Porter and set in a wetland forest in Indiana, USA.  

Ways to use Limberlost in the classroom

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

Through encounters with the non-human life   

Animals have a large part to play of the life of Ned and his family including:

• The whale in the opening chapter and in later revelations
• The mare that went lame  
• The rabbits that Ned trapped and shot 
• The quoll that Ned caught, kept and released 
• The straying cow when he was a cattle drover
• The ram that brother Bill fought

In pairs take responsibility for researching one of the animal stories in the novel and for contributing to the table below. Then all pairs for each animal display their tables in the classroom and report to the class about what you discovered about the characters and the animals in their story and the ways the author used their connections to tell his story.  

Ned’s dream of a boat and the family’s response in nine parts

Ned spends his summer hunting rabbits for pelts to sell so he can buy his heart’s desire- a small boat. He finds an old one, covered in flaking paint with no rudder and no sail.  He buys it and spends long hours restoring its Huon pine timbers to their green gold glory and more hours teaching himself to sail it on the river. He discovers from his sister, that the mother he never knew, loved sailing.  His family take quiet delight in his joy.

“’Would you like to come out in my boat?’ Maggie came without question.”

…

“He wanted to fly out into the river proper, but as soon as he gained enough confidence the day betrayed him, the sun losing itself in the west. The final light died over the hills. He turned to the shore and sailed for home, the oars still stowed, a feeling of ecstatic accomplishment flashing through him, a feeling beyond language. His life widened. Time wobbled. He grazed the truth of his dreams, grazed a world frozen perfect, if only for the length of the dusk.”

Group task: In small groups you will be given a part of the boat story to investigate. You will need to go back into the text and find quotations and events that illuminate the part for which your group is responsible.  Present your ideas about the ways the author shared Ned’s experience with you to the class. 

1. The obsession and the plan 
2. The rabbit pelts  
3. The purchase 
4. The restoration and the response of family and friends
5. The joy of Huon pine and sailing 
6. The sale of the boat 
7. The destruction 
8. The aftermath for Ned and the family
9. The memory of it for Ned 

For example, the following quotation links to both part 3 and part 4 and could support other sections.  When Ned tells the vet, Telle, about his boat, this conveys a great deal about Ned’s motivation and what the boat meant to him and how it linked to other important moments in his life.

“He told her [the vet Telle] the story of it, his words coming faster than with the others, without artifice or caution. Told her how he'd known there was something wonderful under the old paint from the moment he saw it lying on Falmouth's dirt. How the boat had spoken to him, guided him. How when he sailed it, he felt like a fuller version of himself. How he and Callie had used it to take the quoll to the forest on the eastern shore.” (p.176)

Through the landscape and environment 

Seen through Ned’s eyes, Abbott writes vivid and sensory descriptions of the Tasmanian landscape. One example is his description of the Liffey falls:  

Three days after their wedding they were standing at the base of Liffey Falls, at the brisk death of winter, watching an airborne river thrash its way earthward.  The water tumbled through high ridges, crowded with the princes of the island’s wetter wildernesses: blackheart sassafras, dappled leatherwoods, contortions of mossy myrtles.  Giant stringybarks rose above them all, their gum-topped crowns fighting for space in the clouds.  The forest loomed, wet-dark and thickly green in the morning dew, and through the ancient roots of its trees the Liffey ran and broke and fell to splash the boots of the gazing newlyweds. (p.68)

In groups read the description above and share other extracts to discuss the word choice, imagery and style of the author. Create a table that draws on information from all groups to create a Class Report on The language of Limberlost. 

Individual written response 
Select a natural setting, place or area that has special place in your heart.  Describe that place and write about your experiences in nature. Try to emulate some of Robbie’s evocative landscapes. Write at least 400 words. 

Beginnings and endings 

Beginnings and endings are so important in a novel. Good beginnings can hook the reader; good endings can provide fulfillment for a tale well told. On the other hand, poor openings can turn readers aside and unsatisfactory endings can cause annoyance and frustration.  

Task: Re-read the beginning and ending of Limberlost (see below) and in groups decide how effective both were. Be prepared to share your opinion with the class. 

Beginning 

“It was believed a whale had gone mad at the mouth of the river. Several boats had been destroyed in acts of violence so extraordinary they were deemed inhuman. Each attack had come at dusk, while the boats were passing the head on their way back to port- the same area where plumes of spray were supposedly erupting from the water.” 

Ending

“In that moment Ned felt a swelling, a ripping expansion, a hugeness that rang through him for the length of his life, a feeling that was sometimes rivalled but never quite matched. Not at weddings, not at births, not at funerals. Not when he worked his way north to Longreach, where he finally saw Toby again, finding him cocky, funny and largely unchanged. Not during good seasons or bad. Not when he was alone on cold waterways, not when he was in the grip of people he loved. Not as he poured dirt into graves, not as he watched his children, then his grandchildren, play. Not on the white sands of hidden beaches. Not in the shade of ancient trees, in whose canopies he imagined he could see the darting of cream-brown quolls. Not on rocky mountain roofs. Not in the presence of whales, not while viewing fine ships. Not at the scent of Huon pine. Not as Callie's last breath eased out of her, in their house overlooking kanamaluka, the eastern sun warming her face right up to the final moments of her life. Not at his ninetieth birthday, surrounded by his family and what was left of his friends, as he felt both powerfully loved and profoundly alone. 
Not even then, at the very end of his life, did he feel it again, although he always remembered it: this hugeness of feeling. This undamming of a whole summer's fear, this half-sickening lurch to joy. (pp.225-6)”

Feature article by Robbie Arnott

Students could explore a shorter discursive piece of writing by Robbie in the Good Weekend's Summer Reading, in which he recounts two sides to his spider web photographs. 

HSC style-like questions for a Close study of literature 

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

1. Effective fiction uses the narrative voice to engage the reader’s emotions and intellect. To what extent is this true of Limberlost?
   
   
2. 'If you're going to fear something, boys, it's best to understand it.' He laid a hand on Ned's scalp, his rough skin stilling Ned's shivers.' To come right up against it.' (p219). In what ways does the author Robbie Arnott explore the idea of fear in his novel Limberlost?

Relevant details in relation to the new NSW English Stage 6 HSC syllabus

Teaching this text cannot commence until Term 4 2026 and will be first examined in 2027.

There are requirements for particular types of texts to be selected from the prescribed texts list for different courses. Great care must be taken in selecting a pathway of texts that meets all the requirements.

In the Standard English course students are required to closely study 3 prescribed texts, with ONE drawn from each of the following categories:

• prose fiction
• poetry
• drama OR film OR media OR nonfiction.

Limberlost is a novel by an Australian author and includes a range of cultural, social and gender perspectives.

Possible pathways for HSC Standard English course