They walk into the loungeroom. The old lady seats herself by the window overlooking the untidy front garden; the lawn has long gone succeeded by a wild mixture of trees and shrubs. Gunyok eases into a low chair in the middle of the room. She has her favourite dress on, a sleeveless, a crisp white cotton with large spots of cerulean blue. I don't know the other two women. They hover nervously just inside the door.

"Tea?"

"Yo." Gunyok answers me directly, peering from under her heavy brows.
Her mum, swinging her glance away from the window nods before gazing out again between the louvres. The others avoid my glance. I carry the tray into the loungeroom and setting it on the table ask one of the new women to pour.
"Okay, what's up?" I've adopted Gunyok's forthright manner. Gunyok plunges in.

"We gonna sing you."

A bar-shouldered dove calls somewhere in the distance, its quiet 'golalagok" just discernible above the hum of traffic from the nearby Stuart Highway. My breath leaves me. What have I done wrong? Rapidly I sort through previous actions, words. Gunyok, her great arms folded across her breasts peers at my face. and frowns. And then the penny drops and she gapes in surprise.

"You think we sing for death!"

I can't answer.

"But we sing you for love!"

And with that she hoots with laughter, slapping her heavy thighs and throwing her head back. She roars until tears run in rivulets down her sweat-shining face. The other women look puzzled so Gunyok attempts to explain in 'language' but she can't, because she's laughing so much. Finally everyone catches on, and soon they're all hysterical.

"Aah, Aaah," they shriek, holding their sides and rocking back and forth. All except me. And I still don't understand. Gunyok wipes her eyes with the hem of her dress.

"Ngalawamud", she says kindly, "we don' wan' kill you." Chuckle, chuckle. "We wan' sing you so that you can fall out of love with that husban' and in love with someone more better for you. We pick you out good husban'."

Gunyok stresses 'good' forcefully. Poor James, I think; whatever our troubles he had always been kind to these women and he doesn't deserve this. Gunyok interrupts my thoughts to hug my shoulders. She's just trying to look after me in the Aboriginal way.

My scepticism must have showed. So Gunyok told me a story while the others sat around and sipped their tea in my lounge room.

A young balanda teacher was transferred to Borroloola, a small town near the Gulf of Carpentaria. There was a young balanda policeman in the town, and the teacher fell for him in a big way. However he was so shy that he couldn't even bring himself to say hullo to her when they passed in the street, let alone ask her out. And so the teacher mooned about in a state of unrequited love (my words, not Gunyok's).

By this time she had been in the town for some months and the mothers of her Aboriginal students had got to like her very much; not only was she a good teacher, but she didn't put Aboriginal people down.

These women, experienced in the ways of love recognised the young teacher's state and so they decided to offer to help. So one day after school, they sent their kids into the playground and asked the teacher if they could talk to her about 'serious business.'

"We know 'bout that whitefella policeman," they said.

The young teacher was very embarrassed - she'd not known that her feelings were so obvious. However the mums ignored her embarrassed denials and offered a solution.

"We can sing him so he love you, want you for wife."

Immediately the flustered teacher refused the offer. But the mothers weren't offended. They knew that their ways would seem strange, and so they waited patiently for her to come to them.

As the weeks went by and her love seemed ever more likely not to be returned, the teacher began to think about the women's offer. One day she sought one of them out after school and asked if 'singing' worked on everyone. Here, Gunyok fixed me with a knowing eye.

"Colour don't matter. " she was told.

"How do you carry it out?" asked the teacher.

The answer was simple. The teacher had to hand over a dress. Oh, and she had to get hold of one of the policeman's shirts.

"And how do I do that when he won't even look me in the eye?" she queried. "I can't just ask him!"

"Easy!" answered the mum. "When he does his washing you just 'um nick one from the line." The young teacher was horrified. She'd never 'nicked' anything in her life and wasn't about to start now.

"But it not stealing," explained the Aboriginal mum, "just sort of borrowing."
All the same, stealing and borrowing. The teacher rejected the idea again so the mum shrugged her shoulders, collected her kid from the playground, and went away, certain that the teacher would, in the end, accept their services.

More time went by and the young teacher became really desperate. Here Gunyok rolled her eyes to simulate a woman in the throes of thwarted love.

In a town as small as Borroloola everyone knows where everyone else lives and the young teacher was no exception. She actually passed the policeman's house on her way to the school every day. The next morning she saw his washing flapping on the line. Without thinking she jumped the low fence, 'nicked' a shirt and ran off as fast as she could. When the mums came to collect their kids next day the young teacher, a triumphant grin from ear to ear, handed them the shirt and a dress in a plastic bag.

"Didn't the policeman notice his shirt was missing?"

Gunyok brushed the question aside.

"Oh he goin' out of town for few days. Forget to bring in washing."

A few days later, Gunyok continued, the plastic bag was handed back.

"What happens next?" asked the teacher.

"You put the shirt back," she was told, and next time there is a dance in town, "you goin' wearin' that dress," the speaker indicated the garment crumpled up in the bag. The shirt seemed clean and so at the next opportunity the teacher pegged it back in place. She didn't have long to wait, according to Gunyok, because in Borroloola there wasn't much else to do apart from fishing, and you couldn't fish all the time. I took her point.

The young teacher did what the mums had told her - she donned the dress, put some lipstick on, combed her hair, and went to the dance. When she arrived she was surprised to see all the Aboriginal mums hanging around outside the hall.

"Didn't they go inside?" I queried. Gunyok pinned me with a patient but scornful eye.

"That whitefella business, dancin' like that!" She continued. "They just wanna see what happen."

So the mums hung around the windows and the open door looking in at the milling crowd. They didn't have long to wait. The young teacher took a seat but was immediately whirled into the arms of an itinerant stockman who'd had his eye on her for a while. They danced several dances before someone else intervened. Again she was whirled around the floor, the expectant faces at the nearby window a blur. And then another man interrupted. This time it was the policeman.

"And," Gunyok added with a knowing glance at me, "he was wearin' that shirt that was sung."

The policeman gathered the young woman into his arms and waltzed her around the floor. Dance after dance they had together, eyes only for each other, arms tightening around each other with growing familiarity, and I gather, although Gunyok didn't say it, desire. Meanwhile the mums at the nearby window were frantic. There was something they hadn't told the young teacher, something that could wreck all their hopes and aspirations. When the policeman left the teacher to fetch drinks, the mums frantically tried to catch her attention. Finally she came to the window.

"Isn't it going well?" she might have said, thoroughly pleased with the night's results.

"You can't go home with him." they clamoured, "You have to be good, for a week!"

The teacher was a bit stunned. Whatever she felt, she hadn't entertained the thought of falling into bed with 'her' policeman, as she already thought of him, on the first night. And she told them so!

"Not good enough," they said. She wasn't even to walk through his front door until the week was up, not even for a cup of coffee.

"What if I do?" she asked. Then, she was informed, she would never have her policeman.

The couple had a few more dances, and then he said he had to leave, maybe to get up early for work, who knows? But he'd like to walk her home if he could. As they passed his place on the way to hers, the policeman hesitated at the gate.

"How about coming in for a nightcap? he asked.

"No!" the teacher said hurriedly, then quickly explained that her day too, started very early.

"Can I see you tomorrow?" he wanted to know. "Of course," she replied.

They met every day taking walks down to the river, watching the birds, and having long talks. But whenever he asked her back to his place she remembered the warnings of the Aboriginal mums and declined. Then he kissed her and immediately (or so I imagine although Gunyok didn't elaborate) the hours became like weeks and the rest of the week stretched before them like eternity. Still she said no. Her policeman didn't understand but he was patient and prepared to wait. I pictured them in my mind's eye, kissing and touching under trees and in dark corners; the kisses becoming more frantic, the touching more desperate, hour by hour, day by day. Still she wouldn't go home with him.

Then, finally the week was up, and that night they both went back to his place. Soon, according to Gunyok, they were married, and within a few years had several children whom the Aboriginal mums babysat, and they all lived happily ever after.

Gunyok fixed me with a steely eye.

"It's okay," I said. "I truly believe you!"

Within two years James and I separated but Gunyok didn't live to see it, to make sure that I got a good husband. Unfortunately.

Some time later while in Kakadu National Park with a group of American birdwatchers I tell Gunyok's story and after dinner two young women ask to speak to me, in private.

To my astonishment they want to know if I can arrange to have their boyfriends sung. It seems they travel a lot, and want to ensure that their men will stay faithful. And of course they're thinking of me and Gunyok.

"This could be a lucrative line of business, you know!" one says.

But later they have doubts. They worry their men will fall so deeply in love that they will be satisfied with nothing short of marriage, an unintended consequence the footloose girls wish to avoid. They ask me if the degree of 'singing' can be controlled but I haven't the foggiest.

To my relief they decide by the end of the trip that they don't want their men to be 'sung' after all.