A hungry young girl sneaks under a missionary's fence and steals the swill from a pigs trough. Eight children are ripped from the bosom of their family in a single day.
A boy is hung in a sack on a clothes-line as punishment.
A woman gets a letter in the mail telling her that because she has married a white man she herself is now white. A child runs in terror from the Welfare Authorities and whispers to her grandmother the question that has haunted black Australia for two centuries:
"Iwenhenge? Why?
These are just some of the shocking realities of life for Australia's indigenous people, from behind the stile that divided white and black Australians.
The Wailing is about memories: about the long time" of poison in the flour, deadening years of protection and assimilation. But it is also about the pride and power of black Australia in 1993.
The Wailing is Australia's first national black oral history. Aboriginal history is oral history. The Wailing adds new voices to old voices.