Walkabout (film) - Plot

Plot

A teenage schoolgirl (Jenny Agutter) and her much younger brother (Luc Roeg) become stranded in the wilderness after their father (John Meillon) goes berserk. After driving them far into the Australian outback for a picnic, the father suddenly begins shooting at his children. When they run behind rocks for cover, he sets the car on fire and shoots himself in the head. The girl conceals what has happened from her brother. After salvaging what she can, the pair head out into the desert.

By the middle of the next day, they are weak, and the boy can barely walk. Discovering a small pool with a fruiting tree, they spend the day playing, bathing, and resting. Next morning, the pool has dried up. An Aboriginal youth (David Gulpilil) appears. Though the girl cannot communicate with him, her brother mimes their need for water, and the newcomer cheerfully shows them how to draw it from the drying bed of the oasis.

Then the three travel together for several days, with the Aborigine sharing food he has caught hunting. The boys learn to communicate, using words and mime. While the Aborigine goes hunting, she swims naked in a deep pool.

A change of scene shows a research team working in the desert, all the men attracted to the only woman. One of them carelessly loses a weather balloon, which is later found by the three young wanderers. In some versions of the film, one scene depicts a Caucasian woman walking past the Aboriginal boy, speaking to him, and spotting the other children. They do not see her, however. When the boy does not reply, the woman continues walking over a ridge to a plantation. There, a white man is seen roughly directing a group of Aboriginal children, who are making plaster statuettes and other things. He calls a break and enters the house, where the woman awaits him on a bed.

The older boy guides the siblings to a deserted farm. He discovers a paved road while collecting sticks in the forest, and excitedly shows the brother. Soon afterward, he hunts down a water buffalo and is wrestling it to the ground when two white hunters nearly run him over in a truck. He watches them shoot several buffalo with a rifle. He returns to the house, catching the girl dressing. He courts her with an intense, silent dance. Although he dances outside all day and into the night until he becomes exhausted, she cannot understand the nature of his dance.

In the morning, the brother wakes his sister and tells her their companion is gone. After they wash and dress in their school uniforms, the brother takes her to the Aborigine's body, hanging in a tree. Not fully comprehending death, the boy offers the body his pen-knife. Before leaving, the girl wipes ants from the dead boy's chest.

Hiking up the road, the siblings find a nearly deserted mining town, where they are met by a surly white man who tells them of a place they can stay.

Years later, a businessman arrives at the home of the now grown-up girl; while he relates office gossip, she daydreams, imagining a scene in which she, her brother, and the Aborigine are playing and swimming naked in the deep pool in the outback.