But Prindy's mother Nell and her Chinese husband, who believe that white culture is superior for the boy, pursue them into the bush.

As a result, Nell is placed into an institution for Indigenous women while Prindy is taken by the state and relocated to Port Palmerston, a fictional version of Darwin.

In Palmerston, Prindy bonds with his new schoolmistress, Mrs Alfrieda "Alfie" Candlemas, although her progressive views on Aboriginal education see her trade blows with many of the locals.

Jeremy joins forces with Alfie and her husband Frank to embarrass Lady Rhoda and the other members of conservative white society.

Ultimately Alfie leaves the Territory to go back to Sydney, convinced that integration of Aboriginal people has to be the goal, rather than the self-determination which Jeremy believes in.

The two plan to get back to Jeremy, with the help of two other Indigenous people, Queeny and "King George", and they undergo a lengthy and dangerous journey.

In a violent confrontation, all three adults die, and Prindy wanders alone until he is rescued by an Indian travelling salesman, Ali Barbu, whose young daughter Savitra quickly falls for the boy.

Prindy is pursued several times by police sergeant Dinny Cahoon and Eddy McCusky, administrator of the Aboriginal people, both of whom have their own patronising views of the boy's future.

Australia agrees to take in thousands of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and two of them, Dr. Kurt Hoff and Rebecca "Rifkah" Rosen arrive in Beatrice.

The pair have suffered horrors at the hands of the Nazis, including forced sterilisation, and Rifkah especially finds herself in love with the Australian landscape and the Aboriginal people.

Several men in town, including Jeremy, are forcefully attracted to Rifkah, however she rejects them all, in part because she is sterile and believes that any husband will eventually want children.

She finds herself in open water, being attacked by sharks, and is saved by Father Stephen Glascock, the minister at a mission for Aboriginal Australians on Leopold Island.

There is now greater fear Prindy will be taken by the state again, so Jeremy arranges to transport him to the island mission also, where the boy and Rifkah can live discreetly out of the public eye.

Jeremy heads to Sydney, at Alfie and Frank's invitation, where he is introduced to the men who run the Free Australia Party.

He argues that the movement is racist and conflicted with itself, and that the true Australian spirit has been lost, comparing the group's tactics to Nazism.

In late 1941, Australia's new prime minister, John Curtin, declares the entire Northern portion of the continent to be a Combat Zone, which is to be fought and ceded to the Japanese if necessary during an invasion, so as to protect the rest of the country.

Rifkah, Prindy, and the Indian girl Savitra, are supposed to have been evacuated also, but Father Glascock agrees to hide them at the Mission.

Rifkah and Father Glascock fall in love also, although they manage to keep it a secret from everyone except a jealous young lay-preacher, David.

Alfie has fled Sydney, where she was going to be interned as an enemy of the state, and plans on travelling to Portuguese Timor where she will make radio broadcasts back to Australia, trying to convince people that their views on the war are wrong.

In an epilogue set in 1974, we learn that after the War, much of the area was bought by corporations and mining trusts, or used for military purposes by the Americans.

Rifkah ends up marrying Pat Hannaford, who has lost an arm, a leg, and an eye in the War, so she can retain Australian citizenship.

During a visit by Prince Charles to the area, where he is speaking about conservation, Rifkah raises the issue of Indigenous Australians, and asserts that the only way for them to save their culture is to be given amounts of good land for them to own without qualifications.

[6] He drew extensively on his own life experiences and those of interesting people he had met around Australia, especially in the Northern Territory.

His first book, Capricornia, had been deliberately released in the same year (1938) as the country's sesquicentenary, when Aboriginal groups in New South Wales held the first Day of Mourning in protest at colonialism and racist policies by the Australian government.

Among those considered were Angus & Robertson, represented by his longtime friend and literary advisor Beatrice Deloitte Davis, whom he rejected due to growing animosity over their usage of the copyright for his earlier novels,[12] and the University of Queensland Press, represented by Craig Munro, whom he rejected when Munro gave him honest feedback including suggesting the novel be published in three volumes due to its size.

[15] By the time of the novel's publication, the Australia Council for the Arts had been founded, with rapidly increasing amounts of funding available for Australian artists and writers.

On the strength of Herbert's name, Poor Fellow My Country was awarded over $20,000 in subsidies to assist with typing and printing, allowing the novel to be sold at $20 - a low amount for a book weighing more than 4 pounds and containing 1,463 pages.

[18] In 1980, the novel was translated into Japanese by Professor Michio Ochi in 11 volumes, under the title of Kawaisô na watashi no kuni .

[22] The Adelaide Advertiser review was entitled "A Passionate Cry for a Land and a People",[23] while the Courier-Mail called it a "big blockbuster".

[30] The novel won the 1976 Miles Franklin Award, beating Frank Hardy's But the Dead Are Many and Thomas Keneally's Gossip from the Forest.