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SYNOPSIS
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At fourteen, Lorrpu and his friends are on the verge of manhood. Dawu, a powerful tribal elder, has chosen him and Milika to further their traditional education, but Botj has been left behind. Botj's recklessness in the community, due to an addiction to petrol sniffing, has landed him a stint in jail and left him feeling like an outsider in two worlds.
Confused, angry and defiant, he returns to a community in which the prevailing attitude towards him is that he will one day end up a hopeless drunk like his father living amongst the "long grass people", a collection of lost souls in Darwin. With no connections and no access to his family, apart from his Uncle Matjala, the local corrections officer, he immediately seeks refuge in the friendships of childhood. But with his friends moving on to their ceremonial education and forced to work to earn the trust of his elders, Botj soon finds himself falling into old habits. And despite Lorrpu's assurances that their friendship will never be affected by anything, Botj becomes determined to ruin things for the other boys, especially when he witnesses a secret men's ceremony to which he is not privy.
An initially harmless prank becomes a major catastrophe when one night Botj convinces the other two boys to raid the local community store for cigarettes. For Lorrpu and Milika, jubilation swiftly becomes remorse when the situation escalates and Botj rampages through the store. Lorrpu tries to stop him, to make his friend see sense, but to no avail. A fight ensues and Botj is left there, beaten, feeling hopeless and abandoned, and he succumbs to his addiction - petrol.