Walkabout by James Vance Marshall is a story about Mary and Peter, 2 siblings from Charleston, South Carolina, who are flying to their Uncle Keith in Adelaide, Australia. Suddenly, their plane crashes in Sturt Plain and they are forced to walk all the way to Adelaide on their feet, with no food, water, or knowledge about the territory they are in. On their adventure, they meet a naked aboriginal boy who is on his walkabout, a test of physical and mental strength in which he proves his manhood by walking from one water to another in the desert. This aborigine boy will provide them with food, water, and knowledge of the area they are currently in. Each of these three children, in different ways, changed during their walkabout, and Peter, out of the three children, changed the most.
             Mary changed the least out of the three children. A small way she changed was her feeling of the aborigine. Mary was always scared of him but when he was near death she found out that he wasn't as bad as she thought he was. As said in the book, right before the aborigine died, "He smiled and in a moment of truth all her fears and inhibitions were sponged away and she saw that the world, which she had thought, was split in two was one "(page 123). Mary also changed emotionally. Early on in the story, she thought she would never find her Uncle Keith in Adelaide. She thought she would die alongside her brother but as they developed skills from the aborigine, Mary felt more and more confident that she would survive and not die in the Outback. This was a big change as this also lifted Peter's spirits of survival. During her walkabout, Mary changed emotionally and her feelings of the aborigine changed.
             The black Aboriginal boy changed a great amount, but it wasn't as much as Peter changed. Mary was trying to make the aborigine more of a civilized human being and the black boy often tried to be. An example of this was when Mary gave t
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