The Rainbow Serpent

Come close to the fire. Closer. The night is cold, and the shadows are long, but the story I have for you is made of light.

You look at the hills and you see dirt and rock. You look at the river and you see water. But I look, and I see a track. I see a memory.

In the Time Before Time—what we call the Dreamtime—the earth was flat. It was silent. There were no mountains to catch the clouds. There were no valleys to hold the mist. There were no trees, no birds, no songs.

Nothing moved. The world was like a blank canvas, waiting for the first brushstroke.

But underneath the crust, deep in the belly of the world, something was sleeping.

It was *Goorialla*, the Great Rainbow Serpent.

He had slept for millions of years, gathering strength, his scales shimmering with colors that had no names yet: the red of the desert dust, the blue of the deep ocean, the green of the rainforest fern, the yellow of the sun.

One day, he woke up. Maybe he was hungry. Maybe he was lonely. Maybe he just knew it was time.

He pushed through the earth, cracking the surface. *Cracckkk!* The sound was the first thunder.

He slithered out into the sunlight, and he was huge. His body was miles long. When he raised his head, he brushed the stars. When he turned, the wind was born.

He began to travel. He moved across the flat land, searching for his people. And as he moved, his heavy body carved the earth.

Where he turned his great body, he made the winding rivers.

Where he grew tired and curled up to sleep, he made the waterholes and the billabongs.

Where his scales scraped the ground, he pushed up the rock to make the mountains.

He went from north to south, from the salt water to the red sand. He was drawing the map of Australia with his belly.

But the world was still quiet. So Goorialla began to sing.

He sang the songs of creation.

He sang to the frogs, who were hiding deep underground with bellies full of water. "Come out!" he boomed. "Wake up!"

The frogs woke up slow and sleepy. They laughed when they saw the sun, and when they laughed, the water spilled from their mouths. It filled the tracks Goorialla had made. The rivers began to flow. The billabongs filled.

Then he sang to the animals. He sang the Kangaroo into the jumping grass. He sang the Emu into the scrub. He sang the Kookaburra into the gum tree, telling him to wake the sun every morning.

He gave them their shapes, their colors, and their laws. He told the dingo not to bark, but to howl. He told the echidna to dig. He told the magpie to sing the dawn.

And finally, he created the people. He made us from the red earth and the black charcoal. He gave us our totems—the Wallaby people, the Emu people, the Lizard people. He told us: "This land is your mother. If you look after her, she will look after you."

But Goorialla was not just a creator. He was the Law.

There were two young men, the Bilby brothers. They had no shelter. The rain was coming—a great storm sent by the Serpent to wash the dust from the new world.

"Where shall we hide?" they cried.

Goorialla said, "Build a shelter of bark. But do not take more than you need."

But the brothers were greedy. They cut down the whole tree. They cut down the next tree. They wanted the biggest shelter in the world.

Goorialla saw this. His eyes flashed with lightning. He opened his great jaws, wide enough to swallow a mountain, and *gulp!*

He swallowed the two brothers whole.

He traveled on, his belly heavy. But he felt sad. He did not want to eat them; he wanted to teach them. He spit them out onto a high rock.

They turned into two granite boulders that stand there to this day. You can see them if you go to the Cape. They stand as a warning: *Greed breaks the Law.*

The Rainbow Serpent traveled for a long time. Eventually, he grew tired. The world was finished. The rivers were flowing, the people were dancing, the animals were hunting.

He returned to his waterhole. He coiled himself up at the bottom, deep in the cool, dark water.

Some say he went back to sleep. But I say he is just resting.

When you see a rainbow curve across the sky after a storm, that is him. He is moving from one waterhole to another. He is checking on his creation. He is making sure the rivers are running clear and the Law is being kept.

People think the Dreamtime is the past. They think it is merely a tale of the past. But they are wrong.

The Dreamtime is Everywhen. It is past, present, and future all at once. Goorialla is creating the world *right now*. Every time a river flows, he is moving. Every time a child is born, he is singing.

So when you walk on this land, walk soft. You are walking on his tracks. When you drink from the river, say thank you. You are drinking from the work of his body.

And listen. Listen close. Can you hear the wind in the she-oaks? Can you hear the distant thunder?

That is him. Breathing.