As dusk began to draw out the shadows from the bush, Birrawong suckled her child at the homestead door. Then she walked past the white men and walked to the edge of the farm and her lips moved as she trem­bled in all her body. All evening she sat cross legged by the fire and on the verandah the white men watched the smoke rise in the whiteness of the moonlight.

Booraby, crouched by the clearing, watched the girl by the fire as she swayed and sang her totem and keened intermittently in no more than a whisper. He began to murmur his own totem and she shuddered and swayed the more at the sound. “Aya Aya Murrang gidoon”, her breath whispered on (he night. Booraby with his wild and staring eyes began beating his foot in the sand and his hands moved. The moon’s light cast its trellices of luminescence through the leaves and limbs of trees and onto the sticks and plants of the clearing floor. Booraby’s black hands moved in a patch of brilliant light, like a pair of moths caught in a jar, fluttering in jerky palsy as he murmured his song and beat at the sand with his foot. A boobook owl mourned in the bush. Boo Book, Boo Book, Boo Book. So slow and tired and alone.