AustLit

'Everyone in Port Lincoln thinks Snook Pascoe is a loser. People joke about his clumsiness; his teacher ridicules him and even his father, skipper of the tuna boat Blue Fin, is convinced that Snook will never amount to anything. After all, tuna fishing is a hard life for ‘real men’.

'When Snook is allowed, for once, to sail on Blue Fin he faces a terrifying disaster. A waterspout engulfs the ship, the deck is swept clean, the radio and rudder are wrecked, the engine is disabled, the crew is lost overboard and Snook’s father lies unconscious down below. Snook is on his own, far out to sea…' (Publication summary)

The greedy sknuks pollute their beautiful planet and face extinction because they are suspicious and refuse outside help. (Source: Trove)

'The Hammerhead Light was a tower of stone. Sometimes it stood gleaming in the sunlight on the high headland of Hammerhead Rock, like a great white monument, sometimes it loomed out of the black storm clouds. To Tessa Noble and the people of Snapper Bay, the Hammerhead Light was more than a lighthouse, but a symbol of safety.'

Source: Colin Thiele Classics ed.

'Bottersnikes are the laziest creatures, probably, in the whole world.

They are too lazy to dig burrows, like rabbits, or to find hollow trees to live in as the small animals do, and would be horrified at the work of building nests, like birds. Bottersnikes find their homes readymade, in rubbish heaps. When they find a pile of tins, pots, pans and junk, they think it is lovely, and crawl in. And live there, sleeping mostly. Best of all they like the rubbish heaps along dusty roadsides in the lonely Australian bush, where they can sleep for weeks, undisturbed.' (Publication Summary)