A relationship of trust develops between boy and bird, one mirrored in the deepening friendship between Mike and Fingerbone and in the sense of mutual respect that grows between Fingerbone and Tom. Mike's sadness at this loss, which he accepts with uncomplaining maturity, turns to joy when his favourite of the three, Mr Percival, returns. When the pelicans are full-grown, though, Tom insists they be returned to the wild. We share his joy as he watches these extraordinary birds grow, and marvel with him at the wonderful sound of their gentle honking calls.
He names them Mr Proud, Mr Ponder and Mr Percival, then lovingly feeds and rears them. Mike and his newfound friend find three newborn, newly orphaned pelican chicks nearby and Mike adopts them. Fingerbone shoots at the unwelcome hunters, who flee, but not before they have killed a mother pelican. Fingerbone has made his way to the scene of the disturbance too and they fall in together. Fingerbone scares Mike, who scarpers, but the two meet again soon after, when, out collecting pebbles on the beach, Mike is drawn to the sound of gunfire. He lands to investigate and is startled by an Aboriginal outcast, 'Fingerbone Bill', exiled from his people, the Kunai, after breaking tribal law. While paddling the lagoon one day, he notices woodsmoke rising from the shore. Mike has a raft reminiscent of Huckleberry Finn's and inhabits a Boy's Own adventure playground. They have each other though, and a local landscape of breathtaking elemental beauty.
They don't need much and they don't have much.
#Greg rowe storm boy now free#
Mike and Tom, free spirits both, work together to generate a subsistence living from fishing consuming little, gleaning driftwood from the beach, taking each day as it comes. Mike lives contentedly with his Dad, 'Hideaway Tom', in a ramshackle hut on the Younghusband Peninsula, a low-lying sandbar separating the Coorong from the Southern Ocean. The film, adapted from Colin Thiele's much-loved children's classic, revolves around a ten-year-old boy, Mike Kingsley, brilliantly played by Greg Rowe in his first acting role. Storm Boy (1976) is an enchanting, subtly subversive coming-of-age drama set in and around the Coorong, a wetland lagoon at the mouth of the Murray River on Australia's southern seaboard. Rogers & Hammerstein, Happy Talk, South Pacific
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