Waraganj is expelled from the Edwards homestead

Waraganj is expelled from the Edwards homestead after Charles Edwards recognizes that she may be the daughter he fathered during an earlier expedition into Ngarigo country. His decision converts the settlers’ concealed violence into a new act of dispossession: the young woman who had found shelter and a place in the household is abruptly cast out by the man who may be her father. The episode also establishes the name Black Mary, by which the district comes to know her, and foreshadows the racialized threat later directed at Molly Johnson and her children.

Causes and Recognition

After nearly eight months away, Charles returns to the homestead. Florence and Eleanor describe Waraganj as a hardworking and capable helper who has become part of their household. Their welcome contrasts with Evelyn’s reserve: she has kept the young woman there until Charles returns, having recognized a resemblance that she had not disclosed to Florence.

Evelyn draws Charles aside. When he looks again at Waraganj, he sees that she resembles his younger daughter, Bertha. The resemblance recalls his earlier expedition with the Ngarigo, when he took a young woman at gunpoint. Charles understands that Waraganj may be the child conceived through that assault; her age and appearance reinforce his suspicion. The recognition is a turning point, but it does not lead him to acknowledge her as kin or take responsibility for her. Instead, his mother’s reaction and his own knowledge make the household’s hospitality collapse.

Expulsion from the Homestead

The next day Charles orders Waraganj to leave. Eleanor and Waraganj embrace and cry, while Evelyn and Charles disapprove; Florence is stunned by her husband’s severity, but he has the final say. The contrast between the women’s grief and Charles’s command makes clear that Waraganj’s place in the home depends not on her labor or the ties she has formed, but on the authority of the man who controls the property.

Charles personally marches her down the track and out through the gates. During the expulsion, her small carved wombat falls from her bundle. She retrieves the treasured object, and Charles drives her onward, warning her never to return. The keepsake is the only possession singled out in the scene: amid the abrupt severing of her household ties, it remains something she can gather up and carry away. Waraganj leaves quickly and does not look back.

From Waraganj to Black Mary

The district comes to know Waraganj as Black Mary, a name attached to the rejection that has cut her off from the Edwards household. She also becomes known as the whitest gin around, and as a woman of striking beauty, sharp wit, and a feisty nature. White men call her an untamed filly and desire her; the narrative presents her intelligence and bravado as qualities that help her survive in a society that has already marked her by race and denied her security.

The name Black Mary carries a lasting irony. Charles has recognized the possibility of his own paternity, yet expels Waraganj rather than publicly claim her. The resemblance to Bertha exposes the family connection to him, but it does not secure Waraganj a place within the family. Her subsequent reputation is formed outside the gates, among people who know her by a name that records racial difference while obscuring the paternal history Charles refuses to face.

Colonial Power and Later Echoes

The expulsion takes place against the wider dispossession of the Ngarigo and neighboring peoples. Settlers fence land and drive Aboriginal people from their homelands; official and local power treats their movement and survival as subject to white authority. Charles is not only a father who rejects a possible child: he is a wealthy settler whose family has helped establish itself on Indigenous land. His authority over the homestead gives immediate force to a rejection that echoes the larger colonial removal of people from Country.

The event’s pattern recurs in the later threat against Molly Johnson’s family. Miss Shirley presents Molly’s children as removable on the basis of their mixed heritage, and Judge Eisenmangher authorizes their removal under the language of safety. When Danny reports that the children have been called octaroons, Molly recognizes the danger; she later burns the authorization. These later events do not make Waraganj’s expulsion identical to a state order, but they connect the episodes through the power of racial classification to define who belongs and to separate children from maternal or Indigenous family ties.

The novel’s author’s note situates its fictional world within a broader history of cultural loss under government policy, while describing research and listening to elders’ oral stories as ways of recovering that history. In this context, Waraganj’s expulsion is both a decisive personal rupture and part of the novel’s account of colonial power: a possible family bond is subordinated to a settler household’s authority, while Waraganj’s survival and later identity unfold beyond the home that rejects her.