Walkabout practically bleeds with metaphor. Walkabout is not a story about "ancient Aborginal-meets-modern-English". Instead, it's a story about the essential relationships between men and women in the post industrial world.
 

Her English father and her Aboriginal suitor both commit suicide in her presence. Like her father's rage, the young man's mating dance is unseen by the woman. Her suitor's death by suicide at her refusal to "marry" him was an act of despair and incredulity, and may reflect her father's despair over the loss of his own wife and his dreams of domestic harmony.
 

The message here is that men have been bred by nature for 150,000 years to be able hunter-gatherers, and our evolution has not caught up to the reality of life in the post industrial era.

On his first dreamwalk as a man, the young man encounters a young English woman and her kid brother. The lizards on his belt are his kills, which he will eat later. Obviously water is no problem, either. This man is quite able to live, drink and eat in the harsh environment of the Australian Outback. But the woman - totally disconnect from the environment -- asks desparately, "where do they keep the water?"
 

Walkabout joins the essential aboriginal man with the most essential woman of the modern world. While women and children survive through dependence on others, the man's work and utility for survival is no longer valued or rewarded.