So Mr Percival stays and a powerful bond grows between the boy and the bird. For an instant it looked like a magic bird.’ As it banked against the western sun its beak and big black-tipped wings glowed in the shooting beams of light. …as if hearing Storm Boy’s startled voice, it suddenly spread out two big wings and launched itself into the air. Hide-Away Tom insists they must be released into the wild to fend for themselves, but Mr Percival returns. One of them, named Mr Percival, is close to death before he nurses it gently back to life. When a band of young men make a raid nearby, killing pelicans and smashing their nesting area, Storm Boy rescues three surviving chicks. These three characters live in harmony with their environment until destroyers intrude with guns and idiocy. This wiry Aboriginal man, with his knowledge of country, shares with Storm Boy the language of the wind and the waves, and the scribbly stories made by creatures trekking across the sand hills at night. The boy grows up supple and strong and spends his days befriending the living creatures, combing the beach for sea treasures, and spending time with their only neighbour, Fingerbone Bill. Storm Boy and his fisherman father, Hide-Away Tom, are dreamers who live in a makeshift humpy in the sand dunes by the sea. Thiele characterises the Coorong as a place that attracts two types of humanity: those who dream and those who destroy.
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