Walkabout Essay -- Australia Aborigines Literature Essays

WalkaboutThis story is about two children who are stranded in the Australianoutback afterwards a plane crash. By chance they meet an Aborigine boy whois on his walkabout. From these two different groups of people meetingeach different, it shows the reader how a good deal people can learn from othersand how different we all are.bloody shames first inclination is to mother Peter. She feels responsible forhim and he depends on her. But she feels wretched in this newenvironment. Always she had protected Peter, had smoothed things outand made them easy for him molly-coddled him like an anxious hen,her father had once said. But how could she protect him straight? Then thebush boy comes across their path and things become tense between thechildren and aborigine.The very first thing Mary notices about the Aborigine is that he isvery black and naked. She finds this very disturbing, The thing thatshe couldnt accept, the thing that seemed to her shockingly andindecently wrong, was the fa ct that the boy was naked. As the twocultures confront each other they just stare at each other indisbelief and wonder, Between them the distance was less than thespread of an outstretched arm, but more than a hundred thousandyears.They had climbed a long way up the ladder of progress they hadclimbed so far, in fact, that they had forgotten how their climb hadstarted They had had everything provided for them and had never hadto fend for themselves. It was very different with the Aboriginal wayof life. He knew what reality was. Their lives were unbelievablysimple compared to the aborigine. They had no homes, no crops, noclothes, no possessions. The few things they had they shared food andwives children and l... ...least offend by it. Peter and Mary mix verynaturally with these Aborigine strangers. The women swim together andshare food and Peter as been drawn to a particular man within thetribe. The man looks at the drawings they had done earlier of a houseand realises that they nee d to find civilisation. He draws them a map,which ends in a house so they know where to go. Before they leavePeter takes in the beauty of their surroundings he knew in thatmoment that every detail of what hed seen in the last two weeks hedremember for he rest of his life. He then leads the way via the mapto civilisation and Mary follows. It makes you hope that they willtake back with them into their civilised culture all they havelearned from the Aboriginal people and their strange ways of life withtheir trick lands, spiritual gods and there true sense of belonging.