Bobby Wabalanginy never learned fear, not until he was pretty well a grown man. Sure, he grew up doing the Dead Man Dance - those stiff movements, those jerking limbs - as if he'd learned it from their very own selves; but with him it was a dance of life, a lively dance for people to do together... Told through the eyes of black and white, young and old, That Deadman Dance is a story about a fledgling Western Australian community in the early 1800s known as the 'friendly frontier'. Poetic, warm-hearted and bold, it is a story which shows that first contact did not have to lead to war. It is a story for our times.