The Dry

A lighter provides a tangible connection between Falk's past and present experiences in Kiewarra. When he visits the rock tree (a sentimental place for him and a significant setting within the story) for the first time, he discovers his old lighter there. He chooses not to light it because he is aware of how dangerous that would be in the dry conditions, but because “it felt like it belonged there, in a different time,” he puts it back in the gap (105). Throughout the story, Falk frequently lingers in his memories of Kiewarra and grapples with his sense of belonging to it. By leaving the lighter, he leaves a concrete part of his childhood at this landmark. Only at the very end, when his sense of belonging has been affirmed (and survives the fire Whitlam starts), does he retrieve it.

A lighter is also a present feature in the climax of the story, when Whitlam threatens to start a wildfire. It is characterized as “the stuff of nightmares […] a tangled parachute, failed brakes on the motorway” (303), underscoring just how dangerous this otherwise innocuous object can become in a landscape plagued by drought. It has the power to destroy an entire town, and everyone in it, “with inhuman efficiency” (304), which is infinitely more destructive than a gun.