Leaving Barrumbi

Dale stands up hanging onto the wire cage of the Toyota and sees his home,
Long Hole, shrinking away. The rusty iron roofs of the old people’s houses
at bottom camp are already disappearing into the red soil. And suddenly it
hits him that he’s leaving. He was born here at Long Hole, he’s been here
all his life, never slept anywhere else except for camping and fishing. Now
he’s going away for weeks, for months. Not coming home till the term is
over. His guts drops, his brain tingles. Bugger that! he thinks. I’m not going
to no boarding school. Gotta get outta here, gotta jump, run, hide!
The nine-hour trip to his new school is just the beginning of the worst time
in Dale Murphy’s life. He’s only ever lived with Aboriginal kids—his is the
only white family at the community— but once he starts at the Leichhardt
Secondary School everyone sees him as a whitefella. His best mate, Tomias
Andjurika, is a high achiever, good at everything, popular. Tomias even
starts to be interested in girls! And Dale’s left behind. He doesn’t know
who he is any more.
This is a story about adolescent kids in boarding school, but with a twist: set in
the Northern Territory, it deals with the relationship between Indigenous and
white kids.
• Third novel in the ‘Barrumbi’ series, following The Barrumbi Kids and The Spirit of
Barrumbi.
• In schools the book could be used in the study of several themes, including
Indigenous culture, adolescence, friendship, families, and the environment.