The author has effectively built the story around a myth of the aboriginal Australians, first recorded in the 1880s.

The tale itself is native to Australia; its air of loneliness in a vast arena of time and space seems to belong uniquely to this long-isolated continent. But the thematic concerns discussed in the previous section can be found in many other stories as well. Quarrels between brothers, impulsive youths defying social custom, an undead spirit whose touch kills even when it seeks to love, a natural realm where hidden powers infuse the stones and trees—each appears over and over again in literature and myth from all corners of the world. These draw on universal emotions and fantasies. Patricia Wrightson has used the motifs to tell a story which works on a philosophical level as well as the familiar plot line of a teen-ager being...