As the children in particular swarmed around the two men, eager to get a good look at the newcomer, Garbarla took Ernie by one arm to guide him toward the centre of the village.   With seemingly half the villagers following them, Ernie and Garbarla finally stopped at a rare three-room iron-hut.

Leading Ernie into the hut Garbarla introduced his friend to the five inhabitants: Debbie Bulilka (Garbarla’s mother), a tall, lean woman in her late fifties; Mayuldjumbajum, a tall, grey-haired elder commonly known as Jumjum; Garbarla’s half-brother Gunbuk, and two of the tribal hunters, Ulagang Gang and Jalburgul Gul, all three of whom were tall, lean young men with barely a kilo of spare fat on their bodies (due to the rigours of tribal life).

“Looks like we’ve got two white fellas to look after now,” joked Ulagang Gang as he was introduced to Ernie.

Although Garbarla laughed along with the others, Ernie could tell that the remark cut deep: uncertain of his own place in the tribe, Garbarla desperately wanted to fit back into the life that he had been snatched from as a child twenty-odd years before.

They had arrived at the village around dinner time, so after the brief introductions Ernie was guided toward a large outdoors cook-fire, where two kangaroos (the spoils of that day’s hunting) were cooking.

Normally Ernie would have shied away from eating roo meat but seated around the open fire with all the others, he was too entranced by the sight of naked lubras (some very beautiful; many of the younger women astute enough to be aware of the effect they were having on him — with one or two openly flirting with him to the cackles of amusement of the whole tribe) to even be aware of what he was eating.

Grinning at his friend’s discomfort, Garbarla advised, “Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to it…Anyway, from tomorrow we’ll be spending most of our days out hunting.”

In spite of his reservations, Ernie settled down for the night on a thin mattress on the dirt floor of the two-room iron hut that Garbarla shared with his mother Debbie and his half-brother Gunbuk.   He had almost fallen asleep when in the distant came a tremendous rumbling of thunder crashing in the night sky.