Outback Gold

In the late seventies, when Neil Murray was a raw, young musician, he set off for Central Australia. It was a journey that catapulted him onto a new world.

In retrospect, he says, "It was something I felt I had to do. Other people might backpack around Europe or Asia, but I felt there was something to be learnt from Aboriginal people, because they've lived on this continent the longest. I wanted to be with them."

Murray's first novel, Sing For Me Countryman, is partly autobiographical. It begins with the naive Paul Munro travelling with an eccentric American through the outback in search of "gold". First they find an Aboriginal movie star, who happens to be the teller of great tales and is on his way to Sydney for a "film meeting". Later, when the desert surrounds Munro, he finds a richness that is astounding: "Like magic, the desert revealed itself."

But in the isolated community of Papunya, which Munro calls Mandarra, there is a complex Aboriginal and white society, where whites are either "missionaries, mercenaries or misfits". Fortunately Munro doesn't fit into any of these categories. But he does find Aboriginal women who want to sneak into his bed, the desert princess he wants but can't have, the old men who tell him stories and give him a skin name, the young men who want to jam with him, and the kids who want to empty his petrol tank.