In the dreamtime all earth lay sleeping. Nothing moved. Nothing grew. One day the Rainbow Serpent awoke from her slumber and came out from underground.

She travelled far and wide and eventually grew tired and curled up and slept. She left marks of her sleeping body and her winding traces across the land. Then she returned to the place where she first appeared, and called to the frogs,” come out!”

The frogs came out slowly because their bellies were full of water, which they had stored in their sleep. The Rainbow serpent tickled their stomachs and when the frogs laughed, the water ran all over the earth to fill the tracks of the rainbow serpent’s wanderings. This is how the sea, lakes and rivers were formed.

With water, grass and trees sprang up. Also all the animals awoke and followed the Rainbow serpent across the land. They were happy on earth and each lived and gathered good with his own tribe. Some animals lived in rocks, others on plains, in trees, and in the air.

The Rainbow serpent made laws that they were all to obey, but some became quarrelsome and made trouble. The Rainbow serpent said,” Those who kept my laws will be rewarded; I shall give them human form. Those who break my laws will be punished and turned into stone, and never walk the earth again.

The lawbreakers became stone and turned into mountains and hills, but those who kept the laws were turned into human form. The Rainbow serpent gave each of them their own totem of the animal, bird or reptile from whence they came. The tribes knew themselves by their totems. Kanggaroo, emu, carpet snake, and many more. So no one would starve, the Rainbow serpent ruled that no man would eat of his own totem, but only of other totems. This way there was food for all.

The tribes lived together on the land given to them by the Rainbow serpent or Mother of Life and knew the land would always be theirs, and no one should take it from them.

2010 Collection -The Rainbow Serpent  (Creation)