The One They Call Feral

Book excerpt: In 1975, Ricky, a fourteen-year-old Caucasian boy from suburban Melbourne, escapes years of childhood abuse and hitch-hikes over four-thousand kilometres, to the town of Marble Bar, in the far Northwest of Western Australia. With a morbid fear of aboriginal people, after being told by his abusive, racist, father that they are cannibals, he is found living in a cave, alone, by remnant members of the Nyamal tribe, a small group, still living a nomadic existence. They forcefully remove him from the cave and take him into the desert where he is raised in their ancient ways for five years. Whilst there, he undergoes many sacred trials and rituals, along with learning the Nyamal dialect and customs, to become an official, initiated, Nyamal man at nineteen-years-old. Written in flashbacks and based on fact, with some enhancements and name changes, the book contains many dangerous, exciting, frightening, romantic and sometimes comical adventures out in the harsh Australian desert. Striving to become a man, Ricky stumbles his way, spear in hand, clad in a loincloth, from one coming-of-age trial to the next under the watchful guidance of Uncle Ronny, the tribal Chief, and the other tribal elders. He learns to hunt, read signs of nature in order to find the best places to gather food and where to find and collect fresh water from beneath the scorching desert sand. The first in a trilogy, "The one they call Feral," also contains several, rarely heard, 67,000-year-old dreamtime stories and ancient tribal practices and language.