Western Australia is unique in having, well, a unique tree Xanthorrhoea, the Black Boy. It is a grass tree with a thin black trunk and a spiky headpiece. It puts up a long shoot or shoots which flower and then die leaving shells like the barbs of spears. From a distance these grass trees look like a group of warriors laden with spears on the warpath. Indeed legend has it that they were a marauding tribe transformed into trees by a maban or shaman. These trees were found all over the bottom part of Western Australia until the white settlers grubbed them out to cultivate wheat. They also grubbed out most of the native people, except for a few who were left to work the land for their new masters; but that is another story. This is only about one of them, a boy born long ago in 1938 who was named Balga or Black Boy. He had an Aboriginal mother and an African-American father who bequeathed to him the spiky mop of hair which gave him his name. So it is said. Now read on.