The Boab Tree

The Boab Tree

Helen Milroy

Fremantle Press, 2024

40pp., hbk., RRP $A24.99

9781760994631

In the desert-like lands of northern Australia stands a huge family of boab trees, witnesses to the scaping and shaping of the land as generations survived and thrived in conditions ideal for them and those that followed as their flowers bloomed, the nuts formed, fell to the ground and a new generation began.  But at the precise moment one little nut fell, an eagle flew beneath it and instead of landing on the ground, it became wedged in the bird’s feathers and carried for hours before it finally rolled off over a forest of very different trees, taller than it had ever seen.

Tumbling through the branches it finally landed in a soft pile of leaves covering the earth, but even though it was safe, nothing was familiar,  There were birds but they looked different and sang a different language, the trees around looked down in disdain, and Boab felt lost and alone.  How was it to survive in this alien place so different from all that was familiar and without the support of those who knew its story and all that it needed to become a grown-up as Nature intended?

Written by the Western Australia 2021 Australian of the Year and descendant of the Palyku people of the Pilbara Region, this is a story of many layers that is more than a tale about the boab nut and its eventual return home because of the friendships it forms with the hopping mice and their growing interdependence.  Not only does it echo Aesop’s fable of The Lion and the Mouse   and all that can be learned from that, but Boab’s feelings will also resonate with anyone who has been uprooted and finds themselves trying to find their way in a new and unfamiliar place. Most significantly though, is the dedication to “all our Stolen Children” that will take this to a new audience of older readers who are learning about that period in Australia’s history and who, through the personification on Boab, can begin to understand the loss and bewilderment that the children felt and how, deep in their DNA, they knew their real home was elsewhere and there was a need to return. 

While the comprehensive teachers’ notes examine vocabulary, science and the mice’s message that ‘We are all important’, for me it is that clarification of connection to Country that so many non-Indigenous people find hard to comprehend and which is such a prominent part of school life now, that is important.  Using the displacement of the boab nut and its inherent and intrinsic instinct to survive as an allegory, puts those feelings into a context that can be more readily understood. The power of that connection underpinning and driving the resilience and determination to return to their roots, to that which has sustained endless generations over thousands of years, now has an almost tangible setting that they can relate to, acknowledge and appreciate.

With strong, vibrant illustrations this is one that needs to be promoted, particularly to those for whom this period of history is in their curriculum and even moreso, to those who still believe that picture books are for the very young who are not yet independent readers.