The Rainbow Serpent

In the Dreaming — the time before time, when the world lay flat and sleeping — the great Rainbow Serpent stirred beneath the earth. It pushed upward, and where its vast body moved, the land buckled into hills and gorges.

As it travelled, it called to the frogs, whose bellies were full of water. It tickled them until they laughed, and the water spilled out to fill the tracks the Serpent had made — and so the rivers and waterholes were born.

Life woke across the land. But the Serpent set down the Law: the animals and the first peoples must respect the country and one another. Those who kept the Law were rewarded; those who broke it were swallowed, or turned to stone.

The Rainbow Serpent remains in the deep waterholes still, a keeper of the water and the Law. When it arcs across the sky after rain — the rainbow — it is the Serpent moving between one waterhole and the next.

Its story is not a tale of the distant past but a living map: the shape of the land itself is the record of the Serpent's journey, sung and re-sung to keep the country and its people whole.