Tara June Winch's "Swallow the Air" teachers' review for NSW HSC 2027-2028

Brief description and distinctive features

Swallow the Air is set for study in English Standard: Language, identity and culture for the new Stage 6 English syllabus for 2027 and 2028.

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

It is currently on the HSC 2019-2026 list for EAL/D Module B: Language, Identity and Culture and and this blog was written to match the new HSC syllabus for English Standard.
Complement your study of this text with our Year 12 texts and study guides, Year 11 texts and study guides, and English Years 11–12 Study Guides at Five Senses Education.

Brief description of Swallow the Air

The story opens with a poignant single sentence: “I remember the day I found out my mother was head sick.” What a confronting and tragic realisation for a child to have to make and May Gibson is only nine. May’s mother is Wiradjuri, her father English. At the novel’s opening, May is living in coastal Wollongong, which is not her mother’s country, in a single-parent household with her mother and her brother, Billy, who has a different and Indigenous father. Following the suicide of her mother May moves around friends and family firstly to survive and then in a desperate search for both her own sense of identity and her cultural connection. Her encounters see the brutal realities of individuals and communities living with alcoholism, gambling, poverty, squats, eviction, deaths of friends and family. May is determined to find answers to her questions but most of her journeys do not provide the answers or satisfaction she needs and wants especially the long drive to Darwin to find her father. May eventually returns to Country and makes important discoveries to enrich her own search and survival. May and the reader have gained important and compelling insights to First Nations culture and identity. Swallow the Air reminds us that it is easy to lose one’s way: the challenge is finding a reason to keep going and choose a path to better options. Some reviews refer to the novel as semi-autobiographical as the author took her own journey of cultural discovery at age 16 but NESA have clearly designated it as Prose Fiction. 

Swallow the Air has been previously prescribed for Area of Study; Discovery (2015-2020) and Belonging (2009-2014) so resources are available which is always very helpful.

Why would you choose Swallow the Air for the Focus Area: Language, culture and identity?

Distinctive features

• Tara June Winch is an accomplished First Nations Wiradjuri writer born in Australia in 1983 and based in France. Her novel The Yield won the prestigious Miles Franklin award. 
• Published in 2006 Swallow the Air can be seen as being at the forefront of the new wave of First Nations writers
• The story is not only searching for May’s identity as a person and also her Connection to Country and she confronts many challenges to that search
• The novel is an authentic and powerful affirmation that everyone deserves and needs to belong and be accepted.
• There is a freshness in Winch’s style and narrative which will appeal to HSC Standard students
• Winch’s language combines brutal realism with sensitive and often beautiful, lyrical imagery 
• The geographical setting is accessible and realistic
• The novel is a positive affirmation of the importance of positive connections with people in nurturing our sense of self and our identity.
• There are numerous examples of First Nations Connection to Country which are positive and significant

Swallow the Air will enable authentic and meaningful connections to the Stage 6 syllabus’s specific considerations for studying texts authored by Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Peoples:

• The artistic and Cultural value of these texts, including ideas, arguments and representations of identity, histories and Cultures
• How Country/Place, Community and lived experiences shape the perspectives of Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander Storytellers and audiences
• How Storytelling, Aboriginal Languages and Aboriginal English are expressions of Culture, identity and Customary practices
• How the modes of these texts may recognise and contribute to Cultural conventions or practices of oral Storytelling
• How Cultural symbolism, imagery, allusion and irony are used to shape meaning
• How personal values and perspectives are broadened and reconsidered through engagement with these texts

From the Stage 6 English Syllabus (2024)

Ways into teaching Swallow the Air in the HSC classroom

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

Although the new syllabus states that students study ONE prescribed text in detail it is easy to sometimes overlook the rest of that sentence which states, and a range of textual material to explore, analyse and assess the ways in which meaning about individual and community identity and cultural perspectives is shaped in and through texts.

The range of textual material is very valuable to establishing meaningful connections to the concepts of language, culture and identity. Also, if your students are limited in their understanding and knowledge of First Nations cultures and experiences, this additional textual material could be very valuable. 

A range of textual material is also a valuable opportunity to authentically consider the key verbs in this Focus Area: affirm, ignore, challenge and disrupt prevailing assumptions and beliefs about themselves, individuals and culturally connected groups.

Depending on your students’ exposure and understanding of First Nations content it will be necessary to revisit content about:

• The 1967 Referendum which gave First Nations citizenship
• Ongoing intergenerational impact of the Stolen Generations
• The destructive colonial attitudes and behaviour which led to dispossession, poverty, dislocation. 
• This SMH article is a powerful and damning insight to the imposition of names for Aboriginal children by white pastoralists

Many of these lived experiences are referenced in Swallow the Air and can be seen as the result of losing one’s identity and culture.

Pre reading 

Read Cara Shipp’s Listening from the Heart: Rewriting the Teaching of English with First Nations Voices (2023 AATE 150pp) to explore better ways to engage with First Nations People and their stories, their history and culture and to understand the protocols and appropriate terminology to use when reading and studying texts by First Nation authors. This warm, wise and generous book will be a huge help in the classroom. 

On p.6 Cara Shipp points out that “Knowing where you are is a simple step toward understanding more about First Nations people, their histories and cultures.” Cara suggests to find out the local names for the land on which you live, work and travel. Cara recommends this site: https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/map-indigenous-australia

Map context  

Provide a map for students to add key places from the narrative e.g.Bellambi, Gundagai, The Block in Redfern, Darwin, Lake Cowlong, Euablong. 

This map could also be a wallchart for your classroom: alongside the place add who May encounters in this place and in what ways May’s experiences contribute to affirming her identity/and or cultural connection?

Features of Swallow the Air to explore in class 

When considering language and how it both shapes and reflects identity and culture, it is important for students to see language as a frame for the novel as well as specific examples of language techniques.  

The syllabus dot point is a valuable lens: The language features, text structures and stylistic choices that influence narratives p.15 NESA English Standard 11-12.

Winch’s language choices include:

1. The title: trace the references to breathing and air as a metaphor for challenge and difficulties
2. The novel’s structure: there are 20 short chapters which could be seen as a series of vignettes or short stories but the overarching narrative arc of May’s journey gives the novel a broader coherence and structural unity.
3. Flashbacks and digressions add important details to May’s search

4. The first half of the novel explores the impacts and effects of loss on one’s identity, self and survival. In the second half May’s physical journey of self-discovery is not always positive or what she had hoped but there is purpose and meaning to her journey. This journey takes on a broader meaning by the final page and Winch’s words resonate in this more contemporary world of truth-telling and First Nations Connections to Country:

     “An excavator starts its smothering engine over the torrent of each barrel. Over the sun. Over the blue. And I wonder if we stand here, if we stay, if they stop digging up Aunty’s backyard, stop digging up a mother’s memory, stop digging up our people, maybe then, we’ll all stop crying.”

   In reading this I was reminded about Midnight Oil’s Beds are Burning which is such a vibrant and relevant song and video to share and students would find it powerful and compelling.

5. Chapter headings and content: each chapter has a specific title which both captures the content and the poignancy of the experiences of those in the narrative.
6. Narrative point of view is essentially in the first person from the point of view of May Gibson. Sometimes other characters are focalised. May’s narrative adds a raw, heartfelt authenticity to the novel’s language.
7. Winch’s sensitive and beautiful lyrical language explores both the joys of Connecting with Country and Culture and the tragedy of cultural loss. This lyrical quality of her images is a compelling feature of the narrative: her images have a clarity, precision and detail which affirms the text’s quality.
8. Build textual detail through a table of significant examples. In these extracts Winch uses a range of language features to explore May’s pain, dislocation and heartfelt search to find herself and her Peoples.

Below you will find several extracts. In what ways do these examples from the first half of the novel explore the key ideas of language and identity? Allocate 1-2 per group for close analysis of the language features used by Winch.

I have provided a model for one of the extracts

Poignancy of the opening through the word choices and imagery:

• “I remember the day I found out my mother was head sick. She wore worry on her wrists as she tied the remaining piece of elastic to the base of the old ice-cream container. Placing her soft hands under my jaw so as to get a better look at me, Mum’s sad emerald eyes bled through her black canvas and tortured willow hair. She had a face that only smiled in photographs. She finished fixing my brother, Billy, also in an ice-cream tub helmet and sent us fishing. Puncturing the fear that magpies would swoop down and peck out the tops of our heads. She shuffled us out like two jokers in her cards, reminding us to go to Aunty’s house before dark, and telling us again that she loved us.” P. 3

Connections to Country: poignant and powerful imagery

• Last summer I’d seen a turtle from the same spot; he immersed half his body–just to spit. Only a few moments he’d stayed, but it was long enough to remember his beauty. Mungi was his name, the first turtle ever. They said he was a tribesman who was speared in the neck while protecting himself under a hollowed-out tree. But the ancestor spirit was watching and decided to let him live by reincarnation or something. ‘Anyway, using the empty tree trunk as his shell, he was allowed to live peacefully forever as a turtle.’ Or so Mum would say. She had some pretty crazy ideas and some pretty strange stories about other worlds” p.4
• “We go cloud busting, Billy and me, down at the beach, belly up to the big sky. We make rainbows that pour out from our heads, squinting our eyes into the gathering. Fairy flossed pincushion clouds explode. We hold each other’s hand; squeeze really hard to build up the biggest brightest rainbow and Bang! Shoot it up to the sky, bursting cloud suds that scatter, escaping into the air alive. We toss our bodies off the eelgrass-covered dunes and race down to the shore where seaweed beads trace the waterline. Little bronze teardrops–we bust them too. Bubble-wrapped pennies. We collect pipis, squirming our heels into the shallow water, digging deeper under the sandy foam.” p.21 
  
  In what ways does the extract above explore the key ideas of language and identity? 
  
  Model response: 
  Tara June Winch’s deliberate language choice of the first-person point of view focuses the important elements of identity as it is May Gibson’s own story to affirm her identity and connection to culture. The opening sentence not only captures the close relationship of May and her brother Billy but the informal mood adds immediacy and a heartfelt joy: We go cloud busting, Billy and me, down at the beach, belly up to the big sky. Winch’s delicate imagery is joyous as she connects May and Billy to their favourite location- the beach. This is their Country and they are at home in the “cloud-busting” game amidst the dunes and waterline. Winch’s simple but effective images adds to their natural connection with this place: fairy flossed pincushion clouds and Seaweed beads trace the waterline. The short, evocative sentence adds an innocent, childlike wonder to their actions and builds their connection: Bubble-wrapped pennies. This place gives them joy and affirms their identity as they connect with the natural world before further tragedy strikes. 

• “She said that the people from this part are called the Dtharawahl people, and dtharawahl means valley, a perfect wet breeding ground for leeches. It is their land, Mum would say, so we have to help look after it for them in exchange for our staying here. Be respectful she’d say.” P.44

Forcible removal of children and Missions

•  “All my brothers and sisters had been put into missions by then, except Fred who went and lived with my mother’s sister. And me, I was with my mother, probably cos my skin’s real dark, see–but that’s another story, you don’t need to know that. So old Mum and me were sent to Goulburn from the river, to live in these little flats. Tiny things, flatettes or something. Mum was working for a real nice family, at the house cooking and cleaning; they were so nice to Mum. I would go to work with her, used to sit outside and play and wait for her to finish."p.23
• “It wasn’t a good time for the women, losing their children.” P.24

Dislocation and dispossession:

• “Paradise Parade, built over the old Paradise Abattoir, bore two long rows of housing commission flats, unregistered cars, busted prams and echoes of broken dreams, all crammed into our own special section of Woonona Beach. Paradise, ha! Way down, past the flags and half a million dollar beachfronts, there hid a little slice of scum. From the wrong side of the creek, we’d had the privilege of savouring the last crumbs of beachfront property. Soon they’s demolish all the fibro and move us mob out to the western suburbs.” p.33

Searching and finding

• “The day that I found my father. There he was, watching the men bleed faces. There he was, Dad. The day I truly faced him, at his side, not the stranger I’d wished for, or made myself imagine. He was the monster I’d tried to hide. He had a hand like a claw, so full of engorged veins and leather red welted skin…” p. 86

Who am I? Identity and culture. 

• “I looked into the mirror. You got family in the city too girl, gunna show ya where ya don’t belong dumb black bitch, you don’t look like an Abo. The words swam in my ears. When I looked into the mirror I saw a girl, lost and hollow–the same as every other fifteen-year-old, I guessed. I didn’t see the colour that everyone else saw, some saw different shades–black, and brown, white. I saw me, May Gibson with one eye a little bigger than the other. I felt Aboriginal because Mum had made me proud to be, told me I got magic and courage from Gundyarri, the spirit man. It was then I felt Aboriginal. I felt like I belonged, but when mum left, I stopped being Aboriginal. I stopped feeling I belonged. Anywhere. “ p.97
• “We’re all family here, all blacks, here, from different places, but we’re all one mob, this place here…” p. 99
• “May, you got people you gotta find, things you gotta learn…you gotta go May…” p.104

In the second half of the novel, May finds more hope and certainty in her search for family and culture. 
This section comprises eleven chapters: allocate 1-2 chapter per group to locate significant extracts which affirm May’s growing sense of identity and connection to country and culture. 

In small groups or individually, choose 2-3 extracts from each half of the novel to demonstrate how May Gibson searches and finds not only her identity but an affirmation of her Country and Culture.

HSC style question for Swallow the Air

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

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.

Possible pathways for HSC Standard English course