Search - Walkabout

Reviewer: Kali "bengaligirl" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)
As dated as this book is and remember it was first published in the 1950s, there is something compelling about it that makes you want to read it from cover to cover.

The plot in itself is quite simple, two white children, a boy and a girl are lost in the Australian outback after a plane crash which kills the crew; neither child has any experience in the art of surviving in a hostile environment and it is only by luck they are found by a young Aborigine boy who is on Walkabout, a trek he must make alone before he can be called a man.

The story follows the children and their saviour through the outback until the death of the Aborigine caused either by the racial prejudice of the white girl who fears the Aborigine along possibly with her own blossoming sexuality (however I am not so sure about this because of the era the book was written in) or the fact he (the Aborigine) did not have any immunity against the diseases that while people carried such as the common cold.

Either way the children are on their own again but they now have the survival skills they need to make their way back to their own world which is filled all the trappings of supposed civilisation, such as technology and racism.

A surprisingly haunting read even now in the 21st century and it was made into a film some years ago with Jenny Agutter in the leading role.