Cockatoo Creek

North Western Australia.

The Kimberley.

When Sister Kathleen Murphy decided to visit the old Aboriginal woman, Anna Cook, in the district hospital in the outback town of Derby to ask for her help with a project for her students about her life on the vast cattle station, Cockatoo Creek, she had no real idea what to expect. But, what she learns surprises and shocks her. What she hears from the old woman is a tale of murder and rape by white men who lived with apparent impunity of the laws of that time. A heart-wrenching story of true love despite the demeaning racial problems of those days, told in a land of ruthless men, skilled black trackers, and a mysterious Kadaitcha man named Pirramurar, a shaman, a medicine man that some say can travel the land as a great eagle, as a Spirit Bird. This is a story as powerful as any from the pages of the American West.