The Turning: Aquifer Summary & Analysis

Late at night, the narrator of “Aquifer” is watching TVabsentmindedly when his attention is caught by a news report of human bones being found in a lake. Recognizing almost immediately the place being filmed, he turns off the TV and joins his wife in bed. Unable to sleep, he thinks of various topics, including the students he will be teaching tomorrow and an unspecified war. At dawn, without waking his wife and without leaving a note, he gets in his car and begins to drive from Angelus to the suburbs of Perth he grew up in, a five-hour journey.

In an extended flashback lasting most of the chapter, the narrator of “Aquifer” recounts the neighborhood of his childhood, a then-newly developed suburb abutting a swamp, reclaimed from bushland (wilderness). Populated by immigrants and working-class people, the houses of the neighborhood were built with foraged materials and without any broader plan, forming a jumble of architectural styles on the edge of the city. Within the neighborhood, they lived a typical mid-century suburban life, with husbands at work, wives tending gardens, and bakers and other delivery trucks bringing them food. The diverse neighborhood even included an Aboriginal family, the Joneses.

Constantly warned to stay away from the swamp, the narrator of “Aquifer” roams the rest of the neighborhood, developing a particular fixation with their then-new payphone, where he repeatedly dials 1194, the number to hear the exact time. He soon begins walking to school, too, with other neighborhood kids, including Bruno the Yugo, a Serbian boy, and Alan Mannering, a Pom who bullies him ceaselessly. He also spends time with the Box children, who come from a large, Catholic family and live across the street.

The neighborhood slowly develops, with gardens grown. Another neighbor shows the narrator of “Aquifer” how the seemingly dry land sits over a large aquifer. As the kids age, they start to ignore their parents’ warnings and play in and around the swamp; on the other side of the swamp, Italian immigrants drain the water to sustain their vegetable plots, which are their main source of income. The neighborhood diversifies, slowly, with more nonwhite families moving in or nearby. As time passes, the only family the narrator and his peers avoid are the Joneses, who he describes as “angry”; the Joneses beat his brother once, inspiring lifelong animosity and, it is implied, racism toward Aboriginal people.

In a specific memory, one day, the narrator of “Aquifer” has dozed off, and wakes up to find Alan Mannering standing over him. Alan then urinates over him—in a perfect circle around him, not on him—and leaves without saying a word. As time goes on, the children continue playing in the swamp, and eventually, as people begin to abandon old cars nearby, the bigger children, Alan and Bruno, figure out how to cut off car roofs and use them as makeshift canoes to explore the deeper regions of the swamp. The narrator and the Box children do the same; the day after the urination incident, the narrator arrives early in the morning to canoe alone but finds Alan Mannering there, too. He tries to stand up to Alan, but Alan takes his raft and goes off into the swamp. He does not get far, however, before the narrator sees him starting to sink, and watches him drown, both of them in silence.

The narrator of “Aquifer” says nothing, and Alan Mannering’s body is never found. Life goes on; the narrator’s family takes a trip across Australia, the neighborhood becomes more of a genuine suburb, and families come and go. Throughout, the narrator thinks of Alan, and of water systems, imagining that Alan’s body has gotten into the aquifer and thus could be anywhere, in their vegetables, in the mosquitos, or even in the frogs. The narrator did not want Alan to die and cannot stop contemplating both his body and the many others that must also wind up in silt and mud. When the narrator turns 13, his family moves; Bruno goes back to Serbia and fights in the Yugoslav wars; one of the Box children becomes a priest.

In the present, it is the fifth year of a historic drought, drying out the swamp and revealing its contents, including Alan Mannering’s bones. The narrator of “Aquifier” looks at the dried-out swamp, and then at his old neighborhood, which is almost unrecognizable. He is surprised that no one notices him, but then wonders why they would. As he leaves, driving back toward the highway, he at last sees people he recognizes: the Jones family, who are being evicted. Reflecting on the nature of time, the narrator concludes that the past is never over, returning to and staying with us in mysterious ways.