Herbie was the only boong to go our school. Perhaps this is why we taunted and tease him.
“Boong” is a highly offensive, racially-charged term used against Australia’s Aboriginal population pretty the way that the N-word is used by American racists to demean blacks. So, right off the bat the reader can identify the narrative of this very short story for the kind of boy he is. Or was, at any rate, until racist taunting and teasing turns serious and the title character, Herbie, dies as a result. The story is highly suggestive that Davie is not really the embodiment of vile racism that lives out there among polite society but is actually part of that polite society who gets drawn into mob mentality more quickly and more deeply than the really bad guys might. And yet, the story’s true villain is precisely this tribalism which need not penetrate down into a black heart, but can become expressive evil by barely pricking the skin.
All the white boys saw was a thin, weedy half-caste. Then he sprang like a dingo, brown and sleek, into a mob of white sheep, all the more menacing in his silence.
Not to give the wrong idea of the range of dramatic conflict found in these stories, but the title character of this story is another victim of bullying by whites. Unlike Herbie, however, Cooley has occasion to fight back and inspire a bit of terror in his tormentors. The symbolic meaning of dingo is the important term here. It is a comparison that is much like “boong” has a very low reputation in the animal world among Australians.
The animal is most famous for being accused of stealing a baby in what would inexplicably lead to a murder trial that in turn became international sensation. That is its reputation: a low-down, cowardly scavenger that preys upon the most defenseless of small animals. Ironically, that traditional symbolic description applies here not to Cooley, but to the white who threatening him. The author reverses expectations not merely with the metaphorical implication of the dingo, but also with the conventional use of “white sheep.”
That was a year to remember.
He never went out to park at Guildford, so he never saw his people: his dark, silent staring people, his rowdy, brawling, drunk people.
He was white now.
The stories in this collection all deal with the various mechanics of surviving as an oppressed Aboriginal native in the white dominated society of Australia. Throughout are various shadings and degrees of assimilation. While absolute rejection of entry into white society lies at one extreme, Billy Woodward occupies the other extreme as the protagonist of the collection’s title story.
Billy can afford to more laissez-faire about the downside of assimilation by virtue of the advantage he holds over about ninety-nine percent of the population of “his people.” He is a star athlete in school. And just like many star athletes of all colors and nationalities in schools around the world, he is easily duped by his own success and very quick to latch onto delusion as reality. His is an example of all the all-in type of assimilation in which the delusion is that just because they love what you do, that must mean they love you.
