Walkabout

A plane crashes in the vast Northern Territory of Australia,

and the only survivors are two children from Charleston, South

Carolina, on their way to visit their uncle in Adelaide. Mary

and her younger brother Peter set out on foot, lost in the vast,

hot Australian outback. They are saved by a chance meeting

with an Aboriginal boy on walkabout, who teaches them to

find food and water in the wilderness, but whom Mary can’t

bring herself to trust.

Though on the surface Walkabout is an adventure story, darker

themes lie just beneath. Peter’s innocent friendship with the

Aboriginal throws into relief Mary’s no longer childish anxiety,

and together raise questions about how Aboriginal and Western

culture can meet. And in the vivid descriptions of the natural

world, we realize that this story—a deep fairy tale in the spirit

of Adalbert Stifter’s Rock Crystal —must also be a story about

the closeness of death and the power of nature.