The First Walkabout


The First Walkabout is a novel for children by Australian authors Norman B. Tindale & Harold Arthur Lindsay, illustrated by Madeleine Boyce. It won the in 1955.

Plot outline

The book tells the story of the very earliest occupation of the continent of Australia by the Negrito people, a diminutive race that arrived in Australia before the present-day aborigines' ancestors.

Critical reception

While covering a selection of possible Christmas book gifts for children in The Brisbane Telegraph in 1954, a reviewer noted: "Mr. Tindale is ethnologist at the South Australian museum, and Mr. Lindsay is the well-known authority on the Australian bushland. They have collaborated to produce an authentic and entertaining story of Australia some ten or twelve thousand years ago."