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.
The third novel in the Barrumbi series (The Barrumbi Kids and The Spirit of Barrumbi) by award-winning author Leonie Norrington is a school story about Indigenous and white culture, friendship and families, and growing up.
CBCA Shortlist 2008 - Older Readers
Pharaoh
$15.99 – Paperback book / Harper Collins
The people call Prince Narmer 'the Golden One' – a boy with the brightest future ahead of him. Handsome and talented, he is destined to be King of Thinis, the greatest town in Egypt and, for Narmer, the centre of the wor... Buy or find out more →
The Ghost's Child
$24.95 – Hardcover book / Viking
A strange boy suddenly appears in a lonely old woman’s lounge room. As she serves him tea, Hartnett observes that the milk turns the tea ‘a pressed-rose brown’ and immediately we are in a world where language makes exhil... Buy or find out more →
Marty's Shadow
$17.99 – Paperback book / Omnibus Books
He liked trees. Trees are tough and strong. They've been around much longer than people. This one had, that's for sure. He'd seen an old yellowy photograph of the school from the days of carts and horses, with women in l... Buy or find out more →
Love Like Water
$19.95 – Paperback book / Allen & Unwin
Like Alex Miller’s awardwinning Journey to the Stone Country, Meme McDonald’s new book explores the relationship between a European woman and an Aboriginal man, and is about place and identity. It’s an exuberant, joyou... Buy or find out more →
Black Water
$18.95 – Paperback book / Penguin
The wind, blasting up over the horizon from the south, carried with it the coldness of polar ice, and wielded it like a sword. Already the waves at the Heads would be heavy and huge, Farren knew, the gale rising so fierc... Buy or find out more →
Leaving Barrumbi
$17.99 – Paperback book / Omnibus Books
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 Leichh... Buy or find out more →