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Long long ago in the Dreamtime, a
group of aboriginals were out hunting for kangaroos.
It had been raining and the ground was soft making
it difficult for the hunters to catch their prey.
The hunters came to a clump of trees near the edge
of a small plain and decided to rest in the shade.
The hunters sat around resting,
telling stories and warming their hands by the fire
when on the horizon they saw a beautiful multi-coloured
arch - a rainbow. It was the rainbow snake moving
from his old waterhole to another. They were a
little fearful as they did not want this hugh
brightly coloured serpent in a waterhole near their
camp.
When the hunting party returned
to their camp, the children ran out to great them.
Even though they caught only 2 kangaroos - not
really enough to feed everyone - there would be
singing and dancing - a big corroboree that night.
During the corroboree, a young
hunter went over to where the old men were sitting
and asked them to tell him about the Rainbow Snake -
if everyone was so fearful of him why could he not
spear him then no one would fear this serpent any
more?
The old men were horrified and
explained that the Rainbow Snake was one of the
Dreamtime creatures who had shaped the earth. In the
beginning the earth was flat, a vast barren plain.
As the Rainbow Snake wound his way across the land,
the movement of his body heaped up the mountains and
dug troughs for the rivers. With each new thrust of
his huge multi-coloured body, a landform was
created. He was the biggest of the Dreamtime Beings.
At last, tired with the effort of shaping the earth,
he crawled into a waterhole to be cooled and soothed
and then sank out of sight.
Each time the animals visited the
waterhole they were careful not to disturb the
Rainbow Snake for although they could not see him,
they knew he was there. Then one day after a huge
rainstorm his huge coloured body was arched up from
the waterhole, over the tree-tops, up through the
clouds and across the plain to another waterhole.
To this day, aboriginals are
careful not to disturb the Rainbow Snake as they see
him going across the sky from one waterhole to
another.
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