The Rainbow Serpent

The Rainbow Serpent came from Northern Australia in an era when this country was in its dreaming origins. As it travelled throughout the length and breadth of this country it created as it writhed over this land the mountainous geographic locations by pushing the land into many ranges and isolated areas.

The Great Dividing Range is said to be a creation of the Rainbow Serpents movements. Throughout its journey over and under the land it created rivers, valleys, lakes and was also careful to leave many areas flat, whilst shaping various land gradients for future water run offs; ie the gorge country in this land.
 
After it was satisfied with what it did it came to a point in Central Australia where it ceased to create any more geographical land forms. From its inside spirit people came out and began to move all over this country to create many different lifestyles, speak many languages and thus to evolve as different but similar entities in their own allotted Dreaming home lands.

Walya-Nam-Adiki
(My mother the land)

Through a series of events that took place in the Dreaming the land was ready to be lived on and looked after by people. But there were none.

Walya-Nam-Adiki was a large female culture heroine who walked out of the sea again in the Northern Regions of Australia. She saw that the land was ready but no people. Walya-Nam-Adiki then met up with a tribal man of extreme importance and they discussed the predicament of having a land that was in abundance of animal and plant life but no people.

The consummating event took place and they had many spirit children. She told them to travel to all corners of this country and speak new languages, and develop land and water management practices to sustain them in their chosen areas, to develop social and kinship systems which would ensure their continuity of existence within their tribal boundaries.

From the late Oodgeroo Noonunccal also known as Kath Walker

My name is Oodgeroo from the tribe Noonuccal, custodian of the land that the white man calls Stradbroke Island and that the Aboriginal people call Minjerribah. Oodgeroo means "paperbark tree".

Because I am a writer I was given that name because I need paperbark and charcoal, you see. So my responsibility to the paperbark tree is to respect it, never to let anyone harm it or chop it down. In this way we have instilled in us your wonderful conservation methods! 

I talk to children, colour doesn't mean a damn thing to me...on the culture of Aboriginal people...on the balance of nature...on how to treat every living thing as a brother or sister, and on how every living thing was created by the rainbow serpent and must be respected for that reason. 

Thats the main thing: the balance of nature. Some little children come in and say "but God made the world." And I say "Yes according to the bible, yes, God did; but according to my spiritual beliefs my rainbow serpent made these things".

So we don't have any arguments over that either; they understand: religion is their way, spiritualism is our way.
Oodgeroo Noonuccal in Thompson, Aboriginal Voices, 1990, p.154-155.

Our being is in the land. We belong to it as it has always belonged to us.
Message to the Pope, Northern Territory Land Rights News V2(1), November, 1986

Everything comes from the land and goes back to the land. Creation started from the land. It's cyclical. The spirit ancestors made it all; rocks, trees, animals, people.

Wayne Atkinson, Oral History Project, State Library of Victoria, Yorta Yorta Clan, Victoria, 1991.

We hope you have enjoyed this page about many different Aboriginal legends. One thing remains clear though, and that is the spiritual link to the land that is installed in every man, woman and child regardless of what Aboriginal tribal people or language group they are from.