They unbagged the groceries, working side by side, mostly silently. Each item removed from its bag was like a brick removed from the wall between them.

fly across the Tasman

This scene appears to be the genesis for the ordeal of Alex in Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange where a frontal labotomy actually succeeds ...

`Was it a housekeeper?' He was the rouseabout, wearing his best clothes with awful unusualness.