Desert tracks by Marly Wells and Linda Wells

An intriguing YA novel from mother and daughter author duo, Linda and Marly Wells, gives the time-traveller genre a different twist. When Millie is so absorbed in a fascinating history book that suddenly she is swept up in a willy-willy and transported to a central Australian homestead in 1924, it is not a warp in time from which she can secretly return. Her family becomes aware that she has gone missing and want to know what happened. Millie’s extended family is ‘bush mob’, Warlpiri people. Her Aunty Gem understands Millie’s experience and helps her learn more about her people’s past.

Chapters from the book she reads, and Millie’s own encounters with three children, Spike, Sonny and Beryl in the past, reveal the truths of the colonial frontier, the massacres and the stolen children. The authors balance the horror and sadness of this with comedic scenes when the outstation children are transported in turn to modern day Alice Springs. Ultimately they realise that while many things have improved, there are still unresolved tensions between white people and the original inhabitants. As Aunty Gem says ‘Past isn’t past. Past is here, right now’.

I liked the depiction of how Millie’s family accepted her account of entering another realm. It put me in mind of the Yolngu story A piece of red cloth (2025), written for older readers, which included descriptions of the mind travel of Elders, entering other beings and places. It is an acceptance of another way of understanding.

I also loved the conversations in Desert tracks, the mix of Aboriginal English and Warlpiri words, the voices so authentic, it seems like you can hear them talking.

Similar to Millie’s experience of entering the past through a book, readers of this novel enter into her world, and follow in the path of her curiosity and thoughtfulness. It is a wonderful way to present history to a young reader, in a way that is magical but also enlightening and informative. Desert tracks is the deserving winner of the 2024 Daisy Utemorrah Award for an unpublished manuscript of junior or YA fiction by an Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander writer. It is highly recommended to young readers and makes an essential addition to school libraries.

Themes: Australian history, Truth-telling, Aboriginal people, Time-travel.

Helen Eddy