From the outside, Josh's life looks pretty much perfect. He's in a band, he has a gorgeous girlfriend and he does well at school. But Josh's family has been slowly falling apart since his older brother disappeared two years before.
Then Josh comes across a clue to Michael's whereabouts in the Lost Property Office where he's working for the holidays. Determined to put his family back together, and without a word to anyone, Josh too leaves Sydney to bring his brother home. He travels up the coast of New South Wales and Queensland, when his bus stops halfway into his physical journey he has his wallet stolen and beaten up badly by thieves. Leaving him bruised and battered he decides to continue on his way to find Michael.
Once he got to Mackay he was trying to find his way around the town famous for harvesting large amounts of sugar cane. He finds himself not knowing where to look and running out of leads to find Michaels whereabouts, he sleeps in a small hidden place in the town. Walking about one day he bumps into a man at a boating dock and Josh isn’t aware that the man he just bumped into is actually Michael’s boss. I guess it look Josh so long to actually find Michael because he misjudged him thinking he would be living low and drinking himself away, I guess that was the Michael Josh came to know all his life.
Josh’s emotional journey was a hard and long one, one that stretched out from start to finish in the novel. Started once he starting speaking about pressure from family, friends and other’s want him to follow in his father’s footsteps, all wanting him to play Rugby League. But he doesn’t want to play because footy isn’t for him, Josh stats in the novel that his father’s sporting gene somehow skips him from Michael and Hayley inherits it but I don’t think he is really bothered by that because his love for music and his band.
Josh is the type of person who lets everyone walk all over him, he acknowledges it but never says anything because that’s the way he has been raised and he also saw what happened when Michael did. I guess from what he saw and what happened from Michael’s experiences he is scared and frightened to defend himself.
He and Alicia don’t have the best relationship compared to other characters in the novel, Alicia initiates the relationship, like I said before Josh lets everyone walk all over him so he just went with the flow with her. It was probably his first real relationship so he might not have wanted to screw it up even though he didn’t really love her but he ended up doing that anyways near the end of the novel after his journey to and from Mackay.
His relationship with his mates Dave and Tom is okay, although yet again he just goes with the flow and lets his mates decide what and how he sings in the band. But the band and Neven is how he met Gemma, the one he really loves because she is actually interested in Josh and have many things in common. Which they share that night when they are talking under the stars about faith and god.
Another journey is working a part time job at the lost property office at central station with Clive, he finds himself thinking about other instead of himself for once. He isn’t feeling sorry for himself instead other’s for example the old lady who lost her blue cardigan on the train and came searching for her brooch which was on it. Her emotion really got to Josh, it was something he thought about throughout the whole novel, and he always