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An old Aboriginal ritual leader, Bungawa, lives with a pack of dingoes on his tribal land in a remote part of Arnhem Land (Australia) just as his ancestors lived since time immemorial. His children have been forcibly taken from him by State authorities to be brought up and assimilated into the white man's world.

Bungawa, however, sees them embodied in the souls of the dingoes with whom he shares life in the wilderness, according to traditional teachings.

Didjeridu Charmer is the last novel of B. Wongar's Nuclear Cycle, presided by Walg, Karan, Gabo Djara, Raki and Manhunt.

Cover illustrations by Yumanna Buarrana.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the British devastated the lands and the tribes of the Australian aborigines through the extensive mining of uranium and through secret nuclear tests. B. Wongar uses these shocking historical events as the starting point for this powerful novel about the destruction of a people and a culture.

According to myth, Gabo Djara, an immense green ant and the spiritual ancestor of local tribes, created the aboriginal land and the pattern of human life there. Then he retreated to the spirit world. But if the land were disturbed, he would "rise again, monstrous, to harass the intruders". And so he does, in this satiric and scathing allegory which pits culture against culture.

Gabo Djara returns, following the nuclear and mining devastations. He infiltrates the reigning circles of white man's society and creates havoc in politics and government, industry, and the church. Although he is pursued relentlessly, he is never captured. Finally, he succeeds in his quest for regeneration and the restoration of aboriginal ways.

'Gabo Djara' is the third book in B. Wongar's highly acclaimed 'nuclear trilogy'. 'Walg' and 'Karan', the first and second books, are also available, and the trilogy has since been extended with the addition of a prequel 'Manhunt', and two further books, 'Raki' and 'Didjeridu Charmer'.

During the 1950s and 1960s, the British devastated the lands and the tribes of the Australian aborigines through the extensive mining of uranium and through secret nuclear tests. B. Wongar uses these shocking historical events as the starting point for this powerful novel about the destruction of a people and a culture.

Anawari, an aborigine, is comfortably assimilated into the white man's world. Educated in white schools, he lives with a white woman and has a good job at the Tribal Research and Assimilation Center. But one morning he awakens to find tribal identification marks mysteriously cut into his chest. To understand their meaning, he turns to information stored in the Center's computers. There he learns about the original nuclear blast, and also about the whites' intention to exterminate the last of his people: they are hunting down aborigines to use in gruesome genetic experiments.

Anawari's rebellion and escape - a harrowing flight through the desert to ancestral lands - gradually cleanse him of his white man's mentality and restore his 'karan', his tribal soul.

'Karan' is the second book of B. Wongar's highly acclaimed 'nuclear trilogy'. 'Walg' and 'Gabo Djara', the first and third books, are also available, and the trilogy has since been extended with the addition of a prequel 'Manhunt', and two further books, 'Raki' and 'Didjeridu Charmer'.

Dao Ba Khang has left war-ravaged Vietnam and settles in Australia with an Australian wife and family. One day he discovers that his skin has turned black. He thinks to hide among tribal Aborigines in the Australian outback, but finds as he progresses on his journey that they too have been made victims of a tragic fate - annihilated by British nuclear testing and deprived of their land.

Written in the 1970s, Manhunt is the first novel of B. Wongar's Nuclear cycle.

'Raki' is the Australian Aboriginal generic word for rope, the unifying metaphor of Wongar's novel, representing the conquered or bound state of oppressed people. From the confines of an outback Australian prison cell to war-torn Serbia, 'Raki' invokes a powerful story of enchantment and struggle - the struggle to uphold traditions and nurture memory and joyous fortitude in the face of human devastation.

Drawing on tragic similarities between the forced separation of Aboriginal children from their tribal families and the decimation of his Serbian native land, B. Wongar has written an epic, surprisingly optimistic novel. And the unifying symbol is raki - the rope which fuses the historical facts, linking the Serbian and Aboriginal cultures to time immemorial. But raki is also the yoke of servitude, the rope which snaps with the shock of genocide, but which ultimately binds people together with love.

Pioneering ecologist and humanist N. N. Miklouho-Maclay lived at a time of great colonial and industrial expansion; he was a pupil of the German philosopher Ernst Haeckel. To prove that the people of all races are equally human, Maclay went to the island of New Guinea (1870), the first white man to do so and stayed years with native Papuans while the rest of the world presumed he had been eaten. His diaries are testimony to his time in New Guinea where he observed a native culture untouched by the outside world. Maclay describes his first meeting with the natives; "A few Papuans moved closer to me. Suddenly two arrows flashed in rapid succession close by me... As the first arrow passed me by, the eyes of many natives were fixed upon me, trying to read the impressions in my face; except for fatigue and curiosity, registered I no emotion." He was instead befriended by the Papuans; they called him Tamo Russ, believing that he had descended from the moon.

The diaries were originally edited with the help of Russian author Leo Tolstoy. The books sold millions of copies in Eastern Europe. Maclay tried hard to save Papuans and their traditional culture and died disillusioned at the age of 42. He tried to revise Darwin's theory of the selection of the species and challenged the idea that certain races of people are born genetically superior.

The New Guinea Diaries provide an authentic portrait of a timeless, sustainable and egalitarian tribal society before the Europeans moved into the area. The book is illustrated with original drawings made by Maclay during his New Guinean expedition.

For ten years during the 1950s and 60s the British conducted secret nuclear tests on Australian tribal lands. The cancer and radiation poisoning resulting from these tests led to the deaths of countless aborigines. B. Wongar uses these tests as the starting point for a powerful trilogy about the destruction of a culture and a land. 'Walg', the first of these novels, is told from the point of view of an aboriginal woman. Pregnant, travelling on foot through a landscape destroyed by nuclear blasts and mining, she seeks her tribal country - her 'walg' (womb) - to learn the secrets of motherhood which might help her prolong the life of her decimated tribe.

'Walg' is the first book of B. Wongar's highly acclaimed 'nuclear trilogy'. 'Karan' and 'Gabo Djara', the second and third books, are also available, and the trilogy has since been extended with the addition of a prequel 'Manhunt', and two further books, 'Raki' and 'Didjeridu Charmer'.