Terra Nullius

In the makeshift building that serves as his Settler community’s police station, Sergeant Rohan receives a letter requiring him to capture an Indigenous man, Jacky, who ran away from a nearby station. Rohan resents the orders. He knows the chase will be difficult and potentially dangerous. But he has no choice. He saddles his ride—the roads in this part of the country are too primitive for cars—and heads into the center of town, where he rounds up four young men to help him.

Rohan and his posse head toward Jacky’s last known location. Three of the young men are “merely muscle,” but the fourth, Mick, is a good hunter who allegedly learned to track game from an Indigenous servant on his father’s estate. Rohan is glad he doesn’t have to employ an Indigenous tracker, since he doesn’t trust them.

It’s a blazing hot day and after a while, Rohan decides to allow a rest in the shade. The young, undisciplined boys proceed to drain their canteens. Rohan warns them to save water—they might be in the bush for a while, and it can be extremely hard to find water without an Indigenous guide. One of the boys complains, and Rohan cooly retorts that thirst and privation are the risks one must take in exchange for a viable excuse to “hunt and kill Natives.” Cowed, the boys fall silent, and they don’t complain when Rohan starts them moving again. If they don’t already hate this place as much as he does, he knows they soon will.

In the refugee camp, Esperance watches from a distance as the council—not necessarily the wisest residents, just the oldest—meet to discuss affairs. In her shelter, she brews a cup of tea for Grandfather. She carries it to him, hoping to eavesdrop on the conversation, but she hears nothing illuminating.

Elsewhere, Jacky lies on his stomach in the bush, staring down at the mission school where he grew up. It’s the only “home” he knows, but it was also a place of mistreatment, abuse, and terror. He hopes that he might find a clue to his real home in the paperwork he knows the nuns keep in their office. Under the cover of darkness, Jacky slips off his shoes and silently infiltrates the school grounds. In the main office, he searches the file cabinet by the light of an improvised torch made of sheets of paper lighted from the nuns’ cooking fire. He finds his file, but he struggles to read the handwritten notes it contains. He’s squinting at them when the door swings open and a young nun with a lantern (Sister Mel) sweeps in.

Jacky panics and tries to flee through the window, but it’s locked. Clinging to his file, he turns and faces the nun (Sister Mel). Although she’s surprised to find him, she speaks to him in a calm voice. Jacky’s need to know the truth overcomes his desire to flee, and he finds himself telling her that he’s just looking for his family. Realizing that he's a former inmate of the school, the nun takes the file and starts to decipher the notes. In a moment, she tells Jacky that he was taken from a camp near Jerramungup, to the east. When Jacky looks confused, she points to the location on a map of Australia hanging on the wall, but he still doesn’t understand.

Then, Jacky and the young nun (Sister Mel) hear the door to the building opening. The nun screams, throwing Jacky’s file on the floor and haphazardly tossing other files from the cabinet after it. As footsteps approach down the hall, Jacky seizes the fireplace poker and smashes the pane out of the window. Then he scrambles out into the night, cutting himself badly on the glass in the process. Luckily, before anyone can follow him, he breaks into the protective cover of the forest.

Not long after Jacky’s surprise visit, Sergeant Rohan and his men arrive at the school. It’s lucky they heard about the break-in because Mick’s tracking skills, it turns out, are practically nonexistent. Still, the school offers few clues. Neither Rohan nor Sister Bagra can fathom why Jacky would have returned there so many years after he left, other than a wanton and uncivilized taste for destruction. Rohan knows Sister Bagra resents his intrusion, but he’s in no hurry to leave, at least not until she resupplies him and his posse with food and water.