That Deadman Dance is set in the first decades of the 19th century in and around what is now
Albany, Western Australia, an area known by some historians as "the friendly frontier". The book explores the early contact between the Aboriginal
Noongar people, European settlers and American
whalers. The novel's hero is a young Noongar man named Bobby Wabalanginy. Clever, resourceful and eager to please, Bobby befriends the new arrivals, joining them hunting whales, tilling the land, exploring the hinterland and establishing the fledgling colony. But slowly – by design and by accident – things begin to change. Not everyone is happy with how the colony is developing. Stock mysteriously start to disappear; crops are destroyed; there are "accidents" and injuries. As the new arrivals impose ever stricter rules and regulations to keep the peace, Bobby Wabalanginy's
elders decide they must respond. A friend to everyone, Bobby is forced to take sides: he must choose between the old world and the new, his ancestors and his settler friends. Inexorably, he is drawn into a series of events that will forever change not just the colony but the future of Australia. The novel is a vivid narrative seeking to recreate what an initial encounter with the white settlers might have been like from both the perspective of the coloniser and the colonised. Mainly told through the eyes of a young Aboriginal boy, it reflects some of the main concerns with colonisation and the tragic story behind a magnificent culture. ==Awards and nominations==