Tomorrow series

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The Tomorrow series is a series of seven books for young people by the Australian author John Marsden , in which a group of young people in Australia fights against an undefined occupation army. The main character is the first-person narrator Ellie Linton, who has been appointed by the group to be the chronicler of the events.

Tomorrow, When the War Began / Tomorrow Was War

Ellie Linton, a schoolgirl who lives on a farm near the town of Wirrawee, decides to go camping with her best friend Corrie Mckenzie. With Ellie's father's Land Rover, they want to follow Taylor's Stitch, a ridge of hills, and then continue on foot into the bush. Corrie is with Kevin Holmes, who therefore joins the group. Homer Yannos, Lee Takkam, Fiona Maxwell and Robyn Mathers are also invited, all of whom accept. The group sets out for a basin called "Hell". A way down is not known. However, the young people manage to find a way down and set up a camp. During the following night a large number of unlit aircraft fly overhead. The group notices this, but thinks nothing of it. When they go home, all members of their families are gone, and many pets have died due to water and food shortages. The group advised itself deeply insecure: They quickly realized that something extraordinary must have happened. You decide to explore the unlit Wirrawee in the dark. They split up: Robyn and Lee want to check on their families, Homer accompanies Fi to her house and Elli, Corrie and Kevin are supposed to scout out the city's illuminated exhibition center. The three discover that a large part of the population on the exhibition grounds is being held captive by unspecified troops. Eventually the three are discovered and put under fire. They can barely escape. However, they are cornered in a garden by reinforcements. Ellie blows up a lawnmower with an improvised Molotov cocktail, killing several enemies. An act that even shocked her. At the agreed meeting point, the group of three meets Homer and Fi, but Corrie and Lee stay away. Together they decide to avoid the patrols and look for them the next night. In fact, they eventually locate Lee and Corrie. Lee was shot by the soldiers and therefore cannot walk. His dentist provides him with makeshift care, but refuses to help the young people beyond that. From him they learn that the enemy troops attacked during the Australian national holiday and therefore were able to arrest a large part of the population directly on the exhibition grounds. By using a garbage truck, the group finally manages to get Lee out of town, but they are severely shot at. On the way back to "Hell" a friend Ellie joins the group. Chris managed to hide from the soldiers in a shed. In Hell, the group decides to take active action against the invaders. In Cobbler's Bay, a natural deep-water port, one as a bridgehead of the invaders is a large part of their replenishment flows through Wirrawee. To disrupt this, the young people want to blow up a bridge on the city limits of Wirrawee. After panicking a herd of cattle, the opposing guards must evacuate the bridge. Ellie and Fi park a tanker under the bridge and set it on fire. This is destroyed by the subsequent explosion.

With supplies running out, Kevin and Corrie leave to get supplies from Kevin's uncle's farm. You are discovered by a patrol. Corrie is wounded in the subsequent firefight. Kevin decides to go to the hospital with her, even at the risk of being shot as a partisan or thrown in prison.

The Dead Of The Night / Die Toten der Nacht

After the attack on the bridge, in which Corrie was seriously injured, the mood in the group is subdued. Eventually, however, they pull themselves up and set off towards Wirrawee. In Wirrawee they want to infiltrate the hospital to visit Corrie. To distract the guards, they set off a fire alarm and in the confusion they can break into the hospital. There they received information about Corrie's situation from a woman. Corrie is still in a coma after the injury. Kevin was beaten up by the soldiers, but is still alive.

The group finally attacked an enemy truck convoy by first distributing self-made crow's feet in a curve and then attacking the crashed vehicles with Molotov cocktails . The attack is a complete success and the group can retreat to hell in an orderly fashion. After several weeks of boredom, they want to explore the other side of hell. Since they have only ever entered from one side, most of the basin is unknown to them. Chris agrees to be left alone and tend the cattle. Ellie overcomes her hesitant concerns about leaving the melancholy Chris, who also approves of alcohol, to himself. The rest of the group follows the stream to the end of the basin. Here they discover a way to get out of hell. After a short time they come across a camp of pseudo-militarily organized resistance fighters under the leadership of Major Harvey. Ellie is suspicious from the start, because the resistance fighters, who call themselves "Harvey's Heroes", lack basic safety precautions. The group of teenagers is taken to see Major Harvey. Harvey is extremely angry when he learns that the group has blown the bridge. In his opinion, such actions are an indication of the lack of discipline that brought Australia into such a position. He obliges the group to abide by the rules. The camp is run with strict discipline, with a traditional / discriminatory division of labor between the sexes, which Ellie in particular does not like. Living together in the camp is organized much more authoritarian than that of the young people. It turns out that Harvey's Heroes' much-touted "actions" against the enemy consist primarily of torching unguarded vehicles that have broken down in the bush. When the men of the Harvey's Heroes set out to destroy another broken-down tank, the youths are said to stay behind as spectators. Due to their lack of basic security, Harvey's fighters run into a trap, killing most of them. The camp is also destroyed. The young people flee into the bush in the direction of hell. At first Fi and Lee are missing, until Fi finally appears with a soldier of the invaders chasing them. However, the group can knock him down. A little later, Lee appears. When he sees the soldier, he kills the dying man with a knife. He is deeply appalled by what the soldiers have done in the Heroes camp. Another traumatic moment for Ellie.

Finally the group reached their camp site in hell without any further problems. When they get there, there is no trace of Chris. After several weeks of consulting and searching for Chris, the group set off again for Wirrawee. There they quarter themselves in a house. Lee and Ellie have sex for the first time. The invaders have installed their headquarters in the city's "posh suburb", Fis' neighborhood, and high-ranking officers are quartered in the houses. While watching the houses, the group sees Harvey again, who has since joined the invading army. After a first failed attempt, the youngsters break into several houses successfully and in a coordinated manner. There they turn on the gas heaters so that an explosive air-gas mixture forms. Manipulated toasters connected to timers finally cause this mixture to explode. The result is spectacular, the group escaped unharmed. Despite a hitherto unknown amount of aircraft involved, the invaders were unable to track down the group. Just before the group arrives in Hell, they accidentally find Chris. Apparently he drove drunk into a ditch in the Land Rover the group had left behind near Hell and died in the process. Trying to organize more alcohol.

The Third Day, The Frost / Against Every Chance

While Ellie and the group first take cover for weeks after they had blown up the residential area of ​​Wirrawee, Ellie and Lee continue to approach. Finally, on Homer's initiative, the group decides to visit Corrie and Kevin and, if possible, rescue them. On the way to Wirrawee, they notice that the land is increasingly being taken over by new settlers, who in large numbers move into the farms of the imprisoned locals. This approach of the invaders creates further dangers for the group. On the one hand, they have to be even more cautious, on the other hand, they are increasingly cut off from supplies that they otherwise obtained from abandoned farms.

The group next decides to head to Cobbler's Bay harbor to look for vulnerabilities. On the way they see a group of local forced laborers, including Kevin. They contact him and learn that the prisoners are being prevented from fleeing by kin detention . If a prisoner escapes, his family must suffer. By pretending that Kevin fell into a well and died there, the group can still free Kevin.

Kevin was briefed on the use of explosives by one of the inmates at the detention center. He suggests filling a standard container with a mixture of fertilizer and fuel. As soon as this container was brought onto one of the ships lying in Cobbler's Bay, someone would have to detonate the explosives, which would at least seriously damage the ship. The group wants to carry out this idea. After a few days of observation, the group develops a plan. By stopping a convoy of invaders by a flock of sheep, Robyn can install a delayed breaker in one of the trucks. This leads to the truck engine failing after a few hundred meters. The soldiers initially leave the truck behind. During the night, the group fills the container on the truck with fertilizer and diesel fuel. Ellie and Homer are chosen as the best swimmers to activate the bomb's timer. The two hide in the container. The next morning the truck is repaired by some mechanics. The container is then brought to the ship as planned. Ellie and Homer activate the self-made timer and want to sneak off the ship. However, they are discovered and have to flee. Both jump into the water and are separated from each other. They are now being attacked by a helicopter and several speedboats. The detonation of the fertilizer bomb in the container triggers several subsequent explosions, which seriously damage the ship as well as the pier and a neighboring ship. The blast wave also crashes the helicopter and destroys the boats.

Ellie makes it ashore. At the agreed meeting point, the rest of the group, including Homer, is held in check by a few soldiers. Ellie shoots the soldiers and the group escapes. First, the group can hide in an abandoned junkyard, where they also find a radio device with which they can contact New Zealand - one of the few countries that sided with Australia and actively fights the invading army.

However, they are denied the hoped-for evacuation. A little later they drive into a road block and are captured. The group is taken to a maximum security prison and separated there. There they are interrogated by Major Harvey, who survived the devastation of Wirrawee. Harvey suspects that the group are mere auxiliaries, he suspects a group of New Zealand special forces as the real perpetrator. Especially because of the enormous effectiveness of their attacks, Harvey does not believe the assurances of the group. Since their gas explosions in Wirrawee killed a very senior invader officer, the invaders apparently fear an information leak that was used to locate the officer and kill him. However, he is more and more convinced that the group are actually the partisans they are looking for. The group is sentenced to long prison terms in a military trial, and Homer and Ellie are sentenced to death as ringleaders .

Shortly before the execution, the group is allowed to talk to each other one last time. The group escaped from prison when New Zealand planes bombed. After a few meters, however, the group is stopped by Harvey, who was just on the way to the prison. Using a captured hand grenade, Robyn sacrifices herself to enable the group to escape. A shot down New Zealand pilot initially refuses to let the group fly in the rescue helicopter that was sent for him. It is only when Ellie tells him that they were the ones who blew up Cobblers Bay that the group is flown to New Zealand.

Darkness, Be My Friend

The group has been living in New Zealand for some time. Due to their experiences, however, they have problems to adapt. When they are offered an excursion on an airboat , they panic at the loud noise of the engine. Ellie is in psychotherapy, which at least partially helps her over her post-traumatic stress disorder. At a party, Ellie meets Adam, a New Zealand student her age. When Adam has sex with her, Ellie does not defend herself, but is later repulsed by her actions and doubts about herself.

The group is asked by a New Zealand intelligence officer to accompany a group of New Zealand commandos to Wirrawee. You should serve them as guides so that they can sabotage the now massively expanded Wirrawee airport. While Ellie panics, the rest of the group is quickly ready. Since she doesn't want to be separated from the others, Ellie comes with me.

Initially, the job is going according to plan. With a Chinook the soldiers and the group are dropped off at Ellie's family's farm. Ellie quickly finds herself in a leadership role, which she likes. The group and the supplies they brought with them will safely go to hell. After a few days, the soldiers set off towards Wirrawee with Lee and Ellie as guides. They advance quickly, but in the city they run into an enemy soldier. One of the New Zealand soldiers wants to kill the unsuspecting soldier with a knife. Ellie panics and involuntarily lets out a scream. Although the soldier can still be silenced, it is clear that Ellie can no longer participate in the operation. She is taken back to hell by a female soldier.

For the next few days the group is waiting for the soldiers and Lee. However, no one returns. The group worries, in particular Ellie fears that her scream has sentenced the group to death. The group marches to Wirrawee and finally finds Lee, who the soldiers left behind in the church. The soldiers themselves remain missing. The airport will continue flight operations. The group wants to carry out the task of the soldiers themselves and sabotage the airport. To achieve this, a two-step plan is being developed: On the one hand, Homer, Kevin and Lee are supposed to light a bushfire near the airport that would be blown into the buildings by the wind, and on the other hand, Ellie and Fi are supposed to provide fuel for the planes that is stored outside the airport is rendered unusable with sugar. Both plans ultimately fail: while the boys are immediately put under fire when they try to ignite the fire, they suspect that some kind of radar had detected them; the girls are discovered by the guards at the fuel tank and have to flee. The group barely escaped.

Burning For Revenge

The group is on their way to scout out the invaders and find an opportunity for one of their attacks. They crawl under for a short time in a junkyard. However, they are surprised by a convoy of invaders. Your only way out is to hide in one of the soldiers' trucks. They just manage to do that. After a few hours 'drive they find themselves in a large hangar, which is used as a parking space for soldiers' vehicles. To their surprise, they find themselves at Wirrawee airport. The small provincial airport has been massively expanded and now serves as the base for dozens of combat aircraft. A strong garrison is also stationed on the site. The group decides to take this unique chance and attack the airport from the inside. Kevin then collapses and is catatonic in one of the trucks. The group splits up to scout the site. Ellie slips into the barracks where the soldiers are stationed after the soldiers have left the barracks for breakfast. In the barracks she is surprised by two officers. Ellie can take a gun from a locker and kill the two men. The group armed themselves with the soldiers' weapons.

A large group of fighter planes is landing. These are immediately refueled by several tankers. The group splits up. Fi, Ellie and the catatonic Kevin get into one truck, Lee and Homer into another. Your plan is to approach the tank trucks with the vehicles and then shoot the tank trucks in the hope that they will explode. In fact, the group is exposed a little earlier. A jeep takes up chase. Ellie rams it and can fire at the tanker without being disturbed. These actually explode. However, Ellie underestimated the force of the explosion: Her vehicle overturns. She can barely get Fi and Kevin out of the vehicle. In the meantime, the entire runway has become an inferno due to the subsequent explosions. The group flees and has to deliver a wild chase with several jeeps. Eventually the group can kill their pursuers, but more soldiers are on their way. As a last resort, the group floats down the river.

However, the invaders anticipated this and placed soldiers downstream. The group can just hide. However, Ellie's position is so inconvenient that she cannot move away. To save them, Lee releases the handbrake on the soldiers' jeep. This distracts her so that Ellie can leave her hiding place and join the others. However, the group now has to convince the soldiers that it was an accident and not sabotage. Otherwise your lead would be gone. To do that, Ellie releases the handbrake a second time. The soldiers are visibly relieved that it was an accident and the group set off towards Stratton. In this medium-sized town, they hide in Ellie's grandmother's house. They can get food from a number of vegetable gardens. Kevin is gradually taking notice of his surroundings again. To their surprise, the group is attacked shortly afterwards by a group of feral street children who have apparently survived on their own since the beginning of the war. The children steal all valuables from the group. The group later sends a radio message to Major Finley, the intelligence officer who sent them back to Australia, reporting on their attack on the airport. Finley offers them an evacuation to New Zealand in recognition. The group refuses. You want to continue the fight.

The Night Is For Hunting

The group is still hiding in Stratton. Everyone still has to deal with what happened at the airport. Ellie worries about Lee, who keeps going out alone on nightly forays. Ellie fears that Lee will attack the invaders on his own. Finally she follows him. However, Lee sneaks to an invader farm where he meets with a girl. Ellie is shocked by this betrayal. The next moment, she realizes that Lee has fallen into a trap of the colonists. These are currently circling the barn in which Lee has disappeared with the girl. To distract the colonists, Ellie sets fire to several haystacks and rolls a burning wagon loaded with hay towards the barn. Protected by the car, she makes it into the barn, which quickly catches fire. Ellie and Lee just make it back to Stratton.

Ellie is deeply hurt and lets Lee feel it. Neither of them tell the rest of the group what happened. Ellie now decides to try to help the street children. The rest of the group is skeptical, after all, the children are extremely hostile. After all, only Lee goes to the children's hiding place with Ellie. Both notice that soldiers are advancing to snatch the children. The soldiers leave their truck a short distance away while they sneak up to surprise the children. Ellie and Lee want to warn the children that Lee should sneak up on them while Ellie hijacks the soldiers' truck. Ellie can actually seize the vehicle while Lee is captured along with the children. Ellie then drives slowly to the soldiers. The children and Lee are invited, whereupon Ellie accelerates and drives away from the surprised soldier. After quickly picking up the rest of the group, the group leaves Stratton and heads towards Hell. Near Hell, they drive the truck into a ravine and set off with the children. There are five children, including Gavin; a boy of no more than eleven who quickly turns out to be a problem. During a long break when the children are unsupervised, Gavin convinces the rest of the children to run away with him.

Only after several days can the group find the children again. However, one of the children died. The surviving children are dragged to hell with difficulty. Due to the increased number of people, the supplies quickly run out. Fi, Ellie and Homer set out to steal food in a farm building inhabited by colonists. However, a complication arises when Gavin illegally follows them. They are forced to take him with them. Just as they are packing the food, they are overwhelmed by the colonists in the kitchen. Homer is locked inside the house, Ellie, Fi and Gavin in the trunk of different cars in the garage. Ellie is able to free herself by means of tools left in the trunk. After freeing the rest of the group, she decides to save Homer. Gavin and Fi are supposed to wait for them with a motorcycle further down the street. Ellie herself rides inside the house on a motorcycle and is able to get through to Homer. After taking the gun from a guard who ran over, she shoots the door to Homer's cell open. Homer and Ellie are dragging a swath of devastation behind them as they flee the house with a motorcycle shooting wildly around them. At the last moment they can escape.

Back in Hell, Ellie and Fi begin organizing a Christmas party that turns out to be a huge success. The next night, however, Ellie and Homer discover a patrol on the Tailors Stitch. Both get involved in a firefight and manage to kill most of the soldiers. Just as they are being nailed down by the soldiers, the rest of the group comes in and attacks the soldiers from behind. All soldiers are killed. The group reports the battle to New Zealand. Major Finley promises a "visitor" for the next night.

The Other Side Of Dawn

The visitor turns out to be the captain of a New Zealand special unit. On the one hand, he supplies the group with food and luxury items, such as chocolate, on the other hand, with firearms and explosives. As the group is about to return to Hell, they discover a group of soldiers rappelling down into the basin. Although the soldier has no orders to take part in the fighting, the group attacks without him in order to save Fi and the children. The soldier who oversees the abseiling is silently overwhelmed. The group storms downstairs, Kevin stays upstairs and after a few minutes cuts the rope on which an enemy soldier is still hanging. Due to this distraction and the element of surprise, the group can kill the enemy soldiers with one exception. The only survivor, however, breaks his leg in a pitfall dug by Gavin and Jack. The group takes their prisoners to hell, ties them up and leaves the two soldiers to their fate. You yourself get to safety in a small swamp area. There the captain informed them of an imminent major attack by the New Zealanders. To support this, all partisan groups are to be re-equipped and to carry out attacks behind the front line. For this purpose, the captain is supposed to teach the group how to handle plastic explosives. This shows how much the war has already changed the group. When the captain pretends to drop the explosives and then "accidentally" drops the explosives, Ellie and her friends quickly throw themselves to the ground and within a few seconds lay several meters behind them to avoid the " Explosion ”escape. In fact, the captain was just kidding himself: plastic explosives can only be detonated with a detonator.

The group finally manages to persuade the captain to take the children with them. The next night it was only with great reluctance that the children let themselves be maneuvered into the helicopter that would bring the captain to the next partisan group. However, Gavin has deliberately dropped back to stay with the group. The group of necessity takes him with them. They decide to attack a gas station where large convoys of trucks are regularly handled. By removing their uniforms from guards, they can approach the huge underground tanks of the gas station. There they place a load of plastic explosives. The following explosion is gigantic and not only extinguishes the gas station, the convoy and several soldiers, but also large parts of the bush. Ellie is separated from the others and, being chased by soldiers, is forced to jump on a train that is traveling on a nearby platform. After killing some soldiers who also jumped on the train, she jumps off and places an explosive charge on the rails. You can even blow up a train with it. On the run, however, she is shot and discovered. The enraged soldiers beat them until an officer stops them.

Ellie is transferred to a hospital for treatment. As it turns out, the officer wants to protect himself in the event of a court martial. Ellie should be his clean bill of health . He explains to her that her friends are dead, which causes Ellie to become deeply depressed. When Ellie is declared sane, she is transferred to a prison camp. Here tight rations, sadistic guards and murder and rape by them are the order of the day. To protect themselves from rape, the women in the camp no longer wash and do everything they can to stay under the radar of the enormously violent guards. Ellie, however, is in constant danger: She is a wanted and sentenced partisan. It was only because the officer had stood up for Ellie, and because the court was reluctant to issue a death sentence in view of the end of the war and possible war crimes tribunals, that she escaped death because the railway was blown up - but only because Ellie gave a false name. However, she is still wanted because of her previous acts of sabotage and her prison break. When a former acquaintance of Ellie calls her extremely loudly and happily by name, she realizes that she has to flee. There is a kind of underground council in the camp that helps her with this. Recently, a prisoner suffering from AIDS died. Since the guards are terrified of the virus, they can be convinced that the body must absolutely be cremated outside the camp. Together with the prison doctor and the body, Ellie is smuggled out of the camp, sewn into a mattress. However, Ellie is discovered and has to flee on foot. The fate of the doctor who helped her remains unclear. Ellie finally manages to make her way to another camp. In the camp she learns that her mother is being held here. In this camp, which consists of a group of apartment buildings, a crowd is pushing outside. The inmates learned from a hidden radio that the war had just ended. They are demanding their release. The camp's intelligent commander assures them that they will be released as soon as the details are cleared up. However, everyone should now return to their homes. Ellie takes the chance, poses as a fugitive from this camp and gets inside. Even if the guards notice a few seconds later that they have never seen Ellie, she is initially tolerated in the camp so as not to create problems. Ellie finds her mother, who, however, is catatonic and has to be looked after by Ellie.

Ellie and her mother are among the first to be released from the camp, especially to get Ellie off her neck when the guards put them on the first bus. Ellie's father, who was imprisoned in another camp, is also coming home soon. Ellie, who had been looking forward to handing over responsibility to her parents, must now be aware that her parents are severely traumatized and have been able to cope with this much worse than they were. Instead of being able to be a child again, Ellie now has to do most of the work and take responsibility on the family farm. The peace agreement is quite controversial. In order to create peace, almost half of the country was ceded to the invaders. Ellie's farm is now on the border with the invader land. It turns out that her friends survived the war very well. By hiding their weapons and posing as innocent refugees, they ended up in a relatively good prison where they waited for the war to end.

After the war, the group's friendships more or less break down. Ellie has more or less regular contact with Fi and Homer, but hardly any with Kevin. Lee calls regularly, but mostly because he's lonely. Ellie has hardly any feelings for him anymore, but she feels sorry for Lee, who has to take care of his younger siblings and had to bury his dreams. The children the group took in will be taken back by their families. Gavin, however, lives on Ellie's farm because his family could not be found. However, due to his experience, he is extremely difficult and fights with his classmates almost every day. Ellie herself has sustained deep psychological and physical wounds and tried to cope with one day at a time.

The group

Ellie Linton

Ellie is the group's chronicler and writes down her experiences. She comes from a farm where she worked from an early age. That gave her some very useful skills later on. She is a strong and independent young woman who very often questions herself. She often takes on a leadership role in the group. It changed a lot during the war. On the one hand there are the physical injuries, on the other hand and much more serious are the psychological ones. Ellie suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder with flashbacks and nightmares. Your best friend is Corrie. She has an on-off relationship with Lee, but it breaks up after the war.

Corrie Mackenzie

Corrie is Ellie's best friend, who shows an undreamt-of strength in stressful situations. In the first book, she is shot and falls into a coma from which she never wakes up. She is with Kevin Holmes.

Homer Yannos

Homer is a very wild young man who always has bullshit on his mind. He grew up on the neighboring farm not far from Ellie's home and the two are good friends. Practically from the beginning he takes on a leadership role, which often puts him on a course of confrontation with Ellie. As the first in the group, he calls for the fight against the invaders. Many of the precautions and actions taken by the group are the result of his initiative.

Fiona Maxwell

Fiona, or Fi, is a city child, which is why she is often raised by the others, who all come from the country. At first she is a true barbie who can't even pack properly for a camping trip. However, their strengths are shown again and again later. There is an on-off relationship between her and Homer.

Lee Takkam

Lee is a very serious, calm young man of Asian origin. His parents came from Vietnam as boat people . From an early age he helped out in his parents' restaurant. He can play the violin very well and is very musical. He is also otherwise artistically gifted and paints, for example. Probably the war changes him the most. He shows the strongest hatred of the invaders of all and becomes increasingly unscrupulous. Especially after learning that he has lost his parents, he loses most inhibitions. Lee has a relationship with Ellie, but she keeps pulling out of it. In between he has a relationship with the daughter of a colonist, but it ends after she betrays him and he can only escape the trap thanks to Ellie's help. After the war, he has to take care of his little siblings, which leads to the fact that he has to bury most of his dreams.

Robyn Mathers

Robyn is the daughter of a pastor and very devout. She is sporty and very strong-willed. In the third book she saves the lives of others by blowing herself up next to an enemy with a hand grenade.

Kevin Holmes

Kevin sees himself as a tough guy and a whole man, but has trouble pulling himself together under stress. When the airport is attacked, it even falls into a catatonic state. Kevin is in a relationship with Corrie. When he was captured by the invaders for some time, he was taken to an internment camp. In this camp he is being trained in the use of explosives by another prisoner. When he is able to fake his death with the help of the group and thus escape from captivity, the group uses these skills to carry out a bomb attack on the harbor in Cobblers Bay.

Chris Lang

Chris is a very quiet, introverted young man. He joined the group shortly after the outbreak of war and withdrew further and further during the course of the war. He writes poetry and is generally very intelligent. In the course of the war he tends more and more to abuse alcohol. He dies after having an accident while drunk.

More characters

Major Harvey

Harvey was assistant principal until the invasion and is a former reservist . As such, he leads a group of "resistance fighters", the "Harveys Heroes". Although Harvey sees himself as the new Napoleon , his "soldiers" are not particularly successful. Most of them are killed when they run into a simple ambush by the invaders. Harvey switches sides and begins working as a collaborator to spread fear and terror in the prison camps. Under his leadership, all police officers, reservists and leaders are taken out of the camps and tortured, some disappear forever. He later also leads Ellie's interrogation. When he tries to stop the group in their escape, he is killed by Robyn with a hand grenade.

Gavin

Gavin is a war orphan, perhaps ten years old, who has survived with a group of children in war-torn Stratton since the invasion began. Gavin is deaf, but that does not prevent him from taking a leadership position among the children rescued by the group. He is stubborn and extremely daring. The war severely traumatized him, which manifests itself in him on the one hand in rebellion against any kind of authority and on the other hand in a lust for violence. After the war, his parents are not found again, so he lives with Ellie's family on their farm. At school he has problems because of his aggressive behavior and is generally difficult to deal with.

The invaders

The nationality of the invaders is never clarified or discussed further. It is implied that their land is overpopulated and poor. The wealth of Australia and especially the large area was the reason for the invasion. It is clear that the invaders by no means maintain a large, modern army. Instead, in addition to a few well-trained and equipped units, there are a large number of drafted soldiers. These include both older and very young age groups. Women and men appear to be represented equally in the armed forces, even if the men appear to be in the majority. These second-rate soldiers are generally much worse equipped and in fear of possible partisans. The invaders have interned the civilian population in camps where the conditions are very bad. These conditions get worse and worse over time, exacerbated by mass arrests and torture. After the invaders dominated the land, the land was taken over by colonists relatively quickly. The country is very densely populated, houses that used to house a family are now inhabited by three to four. In the cities, the richer districts in particular are used as accommodation for the officers.

The invaders are under military attack mainly from New Zealand, but other countries support New Zealand diplomatically and with material. Later, Papua New Guinea also intervened on the Australian side in the conflict. After the initial success of the invaders against the New Zealanders, the New Zealanders can gain ground at least in this province after the destruction of Cobblers Bay and the airport in Wirrawee.

filming

In 2010, the first novel in the series was filmed as Tomorrow, When the War Began . The film adaptation sticks very closely to the novel. Differences from the book are, for example, the way Corrie is hurt. In the (first) book she is shot by enemy soldiers on the farm of Kevin's uncle while searching for ferrets together with Kelvin; in the film, however, she suffers a gunshot wound after the group blows up the bridge. Two planned successors were not implemented (as of May 2014), particularly due to the low level of success (in Australia less than half of the 27 million budget was raised, abroad less than 3 million).

title

  • Tomorrow, When the War Began. 1994.
  • The Dead Of The Night. 1994.
  • The Third Day, The Frost. 1995.
  • Darkness, Be My Friend. 1996.
  • Burning For Revenge. 1997.
  • The Night Is For Hunting. 1998.
  • The Other Side Of Dawn. 1999.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://if.com.au/2010/09/06/article/Tomorrow-takes-top-spot-at-box-office-with-3-8m-opening-weekend/JUSCIXUPBZ.html , accessed on 20 May 2014
  2. ↑ http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/entertainment/sydney-confidential/tomorrow-the-war-was-cancelled-no-sequel-to-aussie-film-tomorrow-when-the-war-began/story -e6frewz0-1226199424967 , accessed May 20, 2014