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'Dick Hawkins escapes from an unhappy home-life with his tame wallaby, Frong Frong. No sooner had they joined the wild wallabies than they were fired upon by white hunters [...] Dick finds himself turning into a wallaby. The grandmother wallaby of the tribe reminds Dick in an indefinable way of someone he once knew, and he also becomes strongly attached to Frong's cousin, Mia Mia. After a ferocious "wallaby drive" in which Dick acquits himself creditably, the wallaby family shelter in a cave inhabited by an old man wallaby who sings a nonsenical song. The hunt over, Dick sets out to convince his relatives of the evils of hunting wallabies. When he is reabsorbed into his human home the grandmother wallaby and Mia Mia take on the forms of his mother, and his sister, Ettie' (Saxby, A History of Australian Children's Literature 1841-1941, p. 50).
Notes
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Saxby suggests that this work was influenced by Alice in Wonderland, and itself 'foreshadowed Ethel Pedley's Dot and the Kangaroo (1899) so obviously that it would be interesting to know to what extent Miss Pedley may have been influenced by Ferres' book [...] Dick, like Dot, can understand the language of wild creatures, and like Dot, he rides in his friend's pouch' (Saxby, A History of Australian Children's Literature 1841-1941, p. 50).
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Last amended 25 Nov 2010 10:51:58
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