Now he could stop hating Dumby's guts" Gwynne (1998:29,30).
Throughout the whole book, Blacky has different relationships with many different people. Blacky has a good relationship with his mother and seven brothers and sisters. His mum "loved the footy and came to every match" Gwynne (1998:31) and always supported him with it. After a scary incident while out on the boat with his dad, his dad regards him as a "gutless wonder" and since that day, he didn't ever go near the boat again. Pickles is "one of my (Blacky's) very bestest friends." Gwynne (1998:58). He is also on the football team, but doesn't really play well. He thinks a lot about girls and thinks of ways on how he could get girls to like him and do stuff with him. Pickles tells Blacky that if they win the footy game, they will be heroes and the girls will be "all over us like a rash". Pickles always made out that he got with a lot of girls down the bushes but Blacky knew that "as usual he was lying." Pickles wasn't the most hygienic person Blacky knew. Blacky said that Pickles .
"hair was a rat's nest. He never cleaned his teeth - they always looked like he"d just eaten a bowl of pond slime, his fingernails were filthy. He farted constantly and his undies had more skid marks than the Grand Prix circuit." Gwynne (1998:60).
and he didn't even really know the real reason he hung around with him. He said "there weren't many kids my (his) age in the Port. And his old man and my (Blacky's) old man were fishing partners." Gwynne (1998:60). In the beginning of the book Blacky's relationship with Dumby isn't that good, but as they keep on winning more and more games and start spending more time together Dumby becomes another one of Blacky's best friends. Blacky learns to not only accept people of his race, but also those of other races, such as Dumby who was an Aboriginal. And in the end when Blacky is at Dumby's funeral he says that "at death we"re all equal.
