Walkabout This story is about two children who are stranded in the Australian outback after a plane crash
Walkabout
This story is about two children who are stranded in the Australian outback after a plane crash. By chance they meet an Aborigine boy who is on his walkabout. From these two different groups of people meeting each other, it shows the reader how much people can learn from others and how different we all are.
Mary's first inclination is to mother Peter. She feels responsible for him and he depends on her. But she feels inadequate in this new environment. 'Always she had protected Peter, had smoothed things out and made them easy for him - molly-coddled him like an anxious hen, her father had once said. But how could she protect him now?' Then the bush boy comes across their path and things become tense between the children and aborigine.
The very first thing Mary notices about the Aborigine is that he is very black and naked. She finds this very disturbing, 'The thing that she couldn't accept, the thing that seemed to her shockingly and indecently wrong, was the fact that the boy was naked.' As the two cultures confront each other they just stare at each other in disbelief and wonder, 'Between them the distance was less than the spread of an outstretched arm, but more than a hundred thousand years.'
'They had climbed a long way up the ladder of progress; they had climbed so far, in fact, that they had forgotten how their climb had started' They had had everything provided for them and had never had to fend for themselves. 'It was very different with the Aboriginal way of life. He knew what reality was. Their lives were unbelievably simple compared to the aborigine. They had no homes, no crops, no clothes, no possessions. The few things they had they shared: food and wives; children and laughter; tears, hunger and thirst.' Their whole lives are a battle against death. Death being the spirit of death, 'Keeping him at bay was the Aboriginals' fulltime job.' This seems very strange to us and was certainly something Mary and Peter did not understand. This misunderstanding plays a significant part in the story.
So as they eye each other up, they are coming from opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. He had never seen white people before, his eyes moves slowly, methodically from one to another; examining then from head to foot'. Then tension between them is broken by Peter sneezing twice very loudly. The Aborigine boy bursts out laughing. Peter starts laughing too and they have at last established some common ground between them. 'The barrier of twenty thousand years vanished in the twinkling of an eye.' They then begin to try and communicate with each other, each trying to speak in their own language. Peter uses the word 'darkie' to describe the bush boy, which is the only way he knows to describe him, but seems very racist to us now. The bush boy touches his white face and hair thinking it might be the result of powdered clay or face paints. This is because Aborigines paint themselves white sometimes. He learns to his surprise that it isn't. He then touches Peter's clothes and examines then very closely. These things are all so new to him and they both play around with the elastic in Peter's shorts.
Touching things would be a very normal and natural way for the bush boy to learn, but in a western culture it would be considered rude without the person's consent, and certainly punishable if a black person were doing it. Mary struggles with this, 'the idea of being manhandled by a naked black boy appalled her.
She lets him touch her and she remains very still. She realises that what she learned in Charleston doesn't apply here and that she has nothing to fear.
Having made their acquaintance the bush boy is on his way. ...
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Touching things would be a very normal and natural way for the bush boy to learn, but in a western culture it would be considered rude without the person's consent, and certainly punishable if a black person were doing it. Mary struggles with this, 'the idea of being manhandled by a naked black boy appalled her.
She lets him touch her and she remains very still. She realises that what she learned in Charleston doesn't apply here and that she has nothing to fear.
Having made their acquaintance the bush boy is on his way. The children are shocked that he leaves so suddenly. Mary knows, despite her relief that he has gone, that they need his help. Peter does something about it, he sets off after him and Mary follows. She is struggling with the fact that they need help from a darkie. She resents having to go to him for help, as it is something very alien to her coming from a white western culture. 'It was wrong, cruelly wrong, that she and her brother should be forced to run for help to a Negro; a naked Negro at that.'
However, peter knows they need help and this boy can help them. Peter then starts to communicate with him by miming their needs. He is eager to learn his language and follows him into the bush. Mary is reluctant to go and follows slowly. Mary also resents the fact that Peter now looks to the darkie and not to her for help, this is an early sign of jealousy. She is very relieved when Peter can't keep up and she is able to help him. The bush boy, like Peter, communicates by gestures as well as words. He uses the word that he has taught Peter for water to keep them moving on. No one can live without water and their thirst draws them together. Mary watches the bush boy drink and how he reaches down to scoop water from the bottom of the pool. 'Quick to learn, she too reached down to the rocky bottom. At once the water surface was replaced by a current of surprising coolness. The bush boy watches them drink and he can't believe how freakish, clumsy and un-skilled they are. But he doesn't criticize them. He accepts them as people who need help. He has no bad ideas about white people, unlike Mary and her attitude towards black people.
Peter learns by watching and imitating the bush boy. Every time Mary sees Peter and the bush boy getting on and learning from each other she becomes jealous. She doesn't like the feeling of being helpless and outside their relationship. 'Peter followed the bush boy slavishly, copying his every move' Peter realises how important it is to learn from the Aborigine and he helps him make a fire. This is certainly a key skill to learn. They bake a wallaby and all share it together.
Mary realises that she owes her life to the bush boy but she still finds his nakedness disturbing. 'She rolled on her side and looked at the naked Aboriginal, then looked quickly away. If only she, too, had been a boy!' She also realises that out there in the desert all the old rules and customs are useless. She wants to be in control of the situation but knows that only if they stay with the bush boy will they stay alive so she at last lets go and decides to rely on him. All responsibility in her was drifting away.
Peter learns from the bush boy how to gather food. He appreciates the help and notices how quickly Peter picks things up. Peter wants to discard his clothes and be naked like the bush boy but Mary isn't comfortable with this. She insists Peter puts his clothes back on. He argues back saying he will only wear his shorts. He is becoming comfortable with the bush boy's way of life, but Mary wants to hang onto her white culture.
All the time Mary admires the bush boy for his behaviour and cleanliness she still can't live with his nakedness. She wants him to conform to her ways so she can feel more comfortable. She gives him her panties to wear and he puts then on reluctantly. 'Mary sighed with relief.
Decency had been restored.' But Peter can't go along with this. He laughs out-loud at the ridiculous sight of the Aborigine in lacy panties! Peter's reaction made the bush boy start a ritual dance; a war dance. At the end of it the elastic of the panties snaps and the panties, a symbol of civilisation, are trampled under his feet. As he finishes the dance he suddenly becomes aware of Mary as a female. He moves towards her but becomes aware of the terror in her eyes, ' For, to him, the girl's terror could only mean one thing: that she had seen in his eyes an image of the spirit of death.' Mary is afraid because she thinks he is interested in her in a sexual way and so she is terrified. She doesn't understand the Aborigine culture and the fact that he wouldn't be interested in her at this stage of his life.
For the bush boy it was like looking at the enemy face to face. He wasn't interested in her sexually, it wasn't his time yet. He was on his walkabout, which explained why he was on his own in this vast desert. He was testing himself alone but it seemed to him he wouldn't finish this test because he had looked at the spirit of death. Death was the Aborigines' only enemy and so he feared it with a real terror. Peter can't understand what is happening. He is suddenly afraid and starts to cry. His tears are confirmation to the bush boy that he has seen the spirit of death and he walks away into the desert.
They are both at a loss to understand his behaviour. All they understand is that he is leaving them again. Peter hangs onto him for dear life, he doesn't want him to go. He couldn't see death in the little one's eyes' only in Mary's. But as soon as he saw Mary again he drew back as he saw the terror in her eyes. He knew he was going to die and he feared that they would die without him. He knew he must lead them towards civilisation and to safety. He relies a lot on his instinct even though it was years ago he had passed this way he knows where to go. He also knows the presence of the pardalote bird means water is near. He mimes this to Peter so he understands. The bush boy tries to quicken the pace but Peter tires easily. He is now walking without his shoes so his feet are blistering. When they bed down for the night Mary is restless. She wants Peter to lie close to her and refuses to go to sleep before the Aborigine.
Aborigines are tough people but they can die at the mere suggestion of death. They believe that if a Spirit comes to take you, you must go. So the bush boy accepts he will die without any fight, 'And so he now stood; without hope; waiting; wondering, as he stared across the moonlit valley, how and when the Spirit of Death would come to claim him.'
The bush boy catches Peter's cold and can't stop shivering. Neither Peter nor Mary comforts him. The next morning he won't eat and in the evening he is too exhausted to make a fire. But Mary and Peter have learned how to collect wood and they persuade him to light it. Peter is very concerned that the bush boy seems very weak. He takes off his shorts to help cover him and asks Mary to take off her dress so he can use it too, but she won't.
Peter notices that his skin is getting much darker in the sun, that he isn't white any more. He is gradually beginning to stand out less in his surroundings and become darker like the Aborigine. The bush boy is compelled to seek them out, as he wants to make sure that they understand what they must do with his body when he dies. He catches Mary alone in the billabong and is mesmerised by her beautiful golden hair. She sees him looking and backs away. She takes a piece of rock to defend herself. He sees it and stops.
He doesn't understand hate and he doesn't understand the look in her frightened eyes. He is appalled and looses the will to live. Before he dies the bush boy makes sure he has explained to Peter where to find food and water so they can survive. Mary realises as soon as she sees him that he is going to die. She cradles his head on her lap and strokes his forehead. The bush boy opens his eyes and looks at her questioning and then smiles. 'It was the smile that broke Mary's heart. Before, she had seen through a glass darkly, but now she saw face to face. And in that moment of truth all her fears and inhibitions were sponged away, and she saw that the world which she had thought was split in two was one.' This is the moment that Mary understands that the bush boy is a human being before he is anything else, that he has forgiven her for all her strange behaviour and that she never needed to be afraid of him.
Peter and Mary bury the bush boy and move on, but they move on in his ways as they are on his territory. And the ghost of the bush boy was with them in every passing plant and stone. For both children had fallen into his ways. They walked now with the bush boy's easy movement in the terrain, picking out all the necessary fruit and signs of water, just as the bush boy had once shown them. They remember all he has taught them so they are able to drink from stagnant water through a reed and catch yabbies in a pool by stunning them as they had done with the fish.
Their past life fades rapidly and they are both naked. Mary's dress is torn by the claws of a koala bears so she discards it completely. She is more concerned about the baby koala than her dress. They eventually meet some other people and are very relieved they are darkies! Mary had expected to be terrified by the thought of being naked in front of strangers, however, now that the fact of their blackness had to be faced up to, she realized unexpectedly that she wasn't nearly as frightened as if they were still white.' She has at last learned that nakedness is totally natural to these people and that they aren't in the least offended by it. Peter and Mary mix very naturally with these Aborigine strangers. The women swim together and share food and Peter as been drawn to a particular man within the tribe. The man looks at the drawings they had done earlier of a house and realises that they need to find civilisation. He draws them a map, which ends in a house so they know where to go. Before they leave Peter takes in the beauty of their surroundings he 'knew in that moment that every detail of what he'd seen in the last two weeks he'd remember for he rest of his life.' He then leads the way via the map to civilisation and Mary follows. It makes you hope that they will take back with them into their 'civilised' culture all they have learned from the Aboriginal people and their strange ways of life with their fantasy lands, spiritual gods and there true sense of belonging.
Zac Ship 11 Sebastian
