110 percent novice

[hexaplus]

I have written a good deal of code in java and now must port a program to C++.
If I have a method that returns an object in java equivalently I will return a pointer in c++?

example:
//java

public treeNode getNode(){
return rootNode;
}

//C++
treeNode* getNode(){
return *rootNode;
}
//please pick apart any and all syntactical errors I have made. Thanks!!