Melissa Lucashenko

Well, yeah, they're the pivotal romantic pair in the 1850s.

Mullinyan is a young tribal man.

He's come up from the Gold Coast area, Yugumbir land, to go through ceremony in Woolloongabba, which is now on the south side of Brisbane.

He gets stuck in Brisbane and is given into the care of the Yaggara people.

and adopted by the Agra headman and his wife.

But his love and the woman who becomes his wife is Nita.

And Nita has grown up in a different fashion.

She's been adopted by a white family, the Petrie family.

And she's Christian.

So the two of them represent a meeting of the new Christian Aboriginal life and the coming out of a very tribal existence.

And it's about how they fall in love, how they negotiate a future for themselves while colonisation is ramping up and everything is collapsing around them and what kind of life and love they can build.

Well, if you're a saltwater person as I am, then the Barra Garra, the ocean, is hugely significant.

You know, for First Nations people all over the world, it doesn't matter if you're up in the desert or in mountainous country or

you know, in some Peruvian rainforest or on the saltwater of northern New South Wales.

Your country is the most exquisite and important and beautiful country on the planet.

That's without exception.

And so he's living just away from his country.

It's four days walk.

He's walked up with his father.

And, yeah, he's torn between staying in McGungeon, Brisbane, and getting together the resources to get himself a whale boat, a fishing boat, and marrying Nita and then going back home, going back to his people, going back to his country.