Before this, Jim "had been merely drifting.".
Within the quiet swamplands, Jim takes on the persona of Adam, in his own private Garden of Eden. Here, he is the namer of animals. "It was giving the creature, through its name, a permanent place in the world." Jim's innocence is highlighted in that he believes everything has a place in the world, and that "making a place for them was giving them existence in another form, recognizing their place in the landscape, or his stretch of it." Because of his naivety, he does not realize that not everything in the world is idyllic; he does not realise that not everything has a place. He learns all of this, and more, when he leaves his comfort zone and witnesses first hand the atrocities of war. .
Jim happens to be in Brisbane when the first news of the war reaches Australia. " It was already several days old, over there, in countries to which they were not linked, and now it had come here." For Jim, the trip to Brisbane is a catalyst for his loss of innocence. Two people enquire as to whether or not he will be signing up to fight. "Why? He asked in a last moment of innocence. It hadn't even occurred to him." Here in Brisbane, Jim first encounters the truth about the callous nature of human beings, and the hypocritical nature of war. Escorting Connie to her "rooming house," the "stillness was broken by a vicious burst of sound," and "there was an explosion. Breaking glass a white shirted man with his hands over his face and blood between them" staggers onto the pavement. Connie greets Jim's first encounter with violence indifferently. "Abos," the girls said with cool disgust, as if the rituals being enacted, however violent were ordinary and not to be taken note of." The hypocrisy of human nature is displayed, using Connie as a representative, whereby she discourages the fighting between the people in her own town, yet encourages Jim to enlist, in order to fight in a war of which he is completely ignorant.