Dedication: Although Inapatua is purely a novel, the Abunda tribe are more of a composite group than a myth. In fact, the initiation rites and ceremonies described are mostly Arunta and Aranda with overtones of Myall and Warrumunga. Though telescoped in time and shifted in place to fit the framework of the novel, fact prodominates over fiction. As few anthropologists would appreciate their years of painstaking work acknowledged on the fly-leaf of a novel, the dozens of reference books from which these facts were obtained have not been listed. To those anthropologists who spent many years of they lives among the tribes, recording the basic religion of a dying segment of humanity, this book is dedicated.