The town of Boort represents a microcosm of the country of Australia. Particularly, the town embodies the socioeconomic divisions and hierarchies that exist between white and Aboriginal Australians. The prejudice that Aboriginal characters such as Jimmy Raven, David, and Walter are subjected to in Boort reflects wider national patterns of prejudice and division. This is exemplified, for instance, in the fact that the town is reluctant to include Jimmy Raven on its World War I monument, in spite of his service during the war. Walter and David also face their share of discrimination in the town—as when they receive hostile stares and looks when they enter the town pub. The prejudice that Jimmy, David, and Walter experience alludes to historical discrimination and prejudice faced by the country’s Aboriginal inhabitants. Furthermore, the socioeconomic inequality that exists between the white and Aboriginal residents of Boort reveals the gap that exists between these two groups; white Boort residents such as the Mortlocks wield an immense amount of socioeconomic power because of their legal ownership of much of the land around the town, while Aboriginal characters such as Jimmy Raven and Walter are socioeconomically disadvantaged and dispossessed. This is reflected in the fact that Aboriginal characters must fight for physical access to, and protection of, their Aboriginal heritage—such as the stone circle that sits on the Mortlocks’ property—even though they have a claim to this heritage, and the land in fact belonged to them before it belonged to white settlers such as the Mortlocks. As such, Boort’s economic and social fabric—which privileges whites over Aboriginals—embodies the wider unjust economic and social hierarchies of the Australian nation.
Boort Quotes in Crow Country
But the crow could read the old signs, the old stories. They might be hidden, but they had not vanished. Crow was hidden, too, but he was not gone. Crow was awake. Now it would begin.
“David and I,” Ellie said in a low voice, “well, we used to go out together.” She glanced about, but there was no one within earshot. “Years ago, before I met your father. But it was - difficult.”
“Because he’s black?”
“Yes, partly. Mostly.”
[…] Dad had fought the whole town council, when the war memorial was built, to have Jimmy’s name put on it, too. They said it couldn’t be done, because Jimmy hadn’t enlisted in Boort; he’d joined up down in Melbourne. But Dad said he belonged in Boort as much as anyone, and deserved to have his name up there with the rest. After all, Bert Murchison had joined up in Melbourne, too, and no one said he should be left off.
“Life’s not fair.” Jules wrenched Sadie’s cue from her. “Go on, piss off with your abo boyfriend.”
A ripple of nervous laughter ran around the annex. Sadie heard someone mutter something-lover.
“Like her mother,” murmured someone else.
“Well, it is his land, Jimmy,” said Clarry. “Why shouldn’t he build a dam if he wants to?”
[…]
“No!” Jimmy broke away; Sadie could see the fierce light in his eyes. “No. He mustn’t do that.” […] “It’s like - it’d be like me settin’ that church on fire.” Jimmy flung out his arm in the direction of the little weatherboard church. “What would you say if I set the church on fire, hey?”
“Can’t take discipline, though, that’s the trouble,” said Craig. “Brains aren’t wired up that way. Brilliant, quick, amazing skills, but unreliable. Can’t turn up to training week in, week out. No commitment, no discipline.”
“For our people, the land was created long ago, in the time of the Dreaming, when the ancestral spirits moved across the country. They made the hills and the rivers, the swamps and the waterholes. That’s why our spirit ancestors are so important. They make the land, and the land belongs to them, and they make us, too […] round this country, everything belongs to Bunjil the Eaglehawk, or Waa the Crow.”
Mr Mortlock’s hand shot out and twisted into Dad’s shirt. “I’ve killed the bugger, Clarry. I’ve gone and killed him.”
“Why are you doing this, Dad? Why?” And then Sadie’s voice had risen to a scream, and Dad grabbed her arm and shook her.
“Be quiet, Sadie, for God’s sake!”
“It’s not right, Dad, you know it!”
“I have to help Gerald; I promised I’d look out for him.”
“And what about Jimmy? Didn’t you promise him, too?” Her voice rose, shrill, hysterical. “Jimmy was murdered! Gerald Mortlock should hang for this!”
Dad slapped her face.
“We can’t leave him here!” Sadie was weeping. “If we leave him here, he will die!” She tried to lift Lachie’s head. He moaned, his face drained of colour.
The story tells itself again...
The three of them were in the grip of Crow’s story, just as Gerald and Clarry and Jimmy had been. But Crow couldn’t see, Crow couldn’t help them. Sadie was the only one who knew; it was all up to her.
Sadie edged closer to the bed. She pulled out the battered cigarette tin - heavy, so much heavier than it should be - and held it out. “I found it. His special things, the secret things. They’re in there.”
[…]
“Good girl.” [Auntie Lily] let out a deep sigh. “Go on, you go. I look after this now.”
“Bethany reckons he killed himself. Our great-grandpa,” said Lachie. “Because of the war. Posttraumatic stress or whatever. It was years after he came back. The family made out it was an accident. But Bethany thinks it was because of what he’d seen. What he’d been through.”
What he’d done, thought Sadie.
Together they planted [Jimmy Raven’s] marker in the ground at the place the crow had shown them.
“I should have brought some flowers or something,” said Sadie.
“Next time,” Walter said.
“Give us a hand?” Lachie called.
The three of them moved around the tiny graveyard, straightening the fallen crosses, digging them more firmly into the ground.
“That’s better,” said Lachie at last, and wiped his forehead on his sleeve. “Maybe we should build a fence round it or something.”
“We’d help you,” said Sadie.
“Make a real headstone for Jimmy, too,” said Walter.
“Yeah,” said Lachie.
Boort Symbol Timeline in Crow Country
