Motley Talk with Australian stories
Traditional Aboriginal creation story, with stunning pictures painted by Peter Coad.
Dear Motley Friends, back in January 2021 the UK was entering its third Covid lockdown, and everyone was downhearted. So I wrote about Australia Day, as an escape from our dreary situation in wintery Britain. I asked the Australian artist Peter Coad if I could use his wonderful pictures in the article, because I thought they would cheer us up. Peter is a distinguished artist and I was astonished that he gave me permission then, and again today. Please visit his website to see more of his glorious artwork. The article is unchanged.
Dear friends, Australia Day was on 26 January. So, for the duration of this letter, let us leave this dreary, winter-bound, Covid-confined island1. Let us travel, with the help of the artist Peter Coad, to the sun drenched, amazing continent of Australia. We will start with a traditional Aboriginal story.
‘At the beginning of the Dreamtime, the earth was flat and dry and empty. There were no trees, no rivers, no animals and no grass. It was a dry and flat land.
One day, Goorialla the rainbow serpent, woke from his sleep and set off to find his tribe. He crossed Australia from east to west and north to south, stopping to listen for his people. He crossed every part of the dry, flat Australian land but he found nothing. As he looked for his people his big, long body cut great gouges into the land. After searching for a long time, he grew tired and lay down to sleep.
Goorialla lay in the sand all alone. Then he decided to create more life in the world. He called “Frogs, come out!” and frogs rose out of the ground with their bellies full of the water they stored. He tickled the frogs until the water burst from their mouth and filled the gouges he had made in the land. The gouges made the rivers and streams we see today. As the water flowed over the land, grass and trees began to grow and fill the land with colour. Now that there was grass to eat and water to drink, Goorialla woke the rest of the animals.
The kookaburra laughed, the goanna walked, and the wombat climbed out of her burrow, all for the first time. Some animals lived in the sea, swimming back and forward. Some animals lived in the sky, flying to distant places.
Some animals lived on the land, digging and playing. They were happy and gathered food and water to take back to their tribes. One day, it started to rain. And it rained like it had never rained before. Rain fell for days and days and the world became flooded with water. Two young men, Bil-bil the Rainbow Lorikeet brothers, had no shelter, so they asked Goorialla for help.
Goorialla was hungry and tricked the young men “I have no shelter, but you can hide in my mouth. You’ll be safe from the rain in there.” The young men climbed into Goorialla’s mouth and he closed it shut, swallowing both men.
Goorialla soon realised that people would notice the young men were missing and come looking for them. He knew they would find their tracks leading right into his mouth. He didn’t want to be caught and so he decided to hide in the only place he knew he would be safe, the sky.
He hid in the sky away from the people chasing him, but he saw their sadness at losing the Rainbow Lorikeet brothers. He decided to try and make them happy again, so he turned his body into a big arc of beautiful colours.
Now, just after it rains, you can see Goorialla the Rainbow Serpent sharing his beautiful colours with the people on the ground, as his way of saying sorry for eating the Rainbow Lorikeet brothers. One version of a traditional Aboriginal creation story.
The Thomson river (yes, my maiden name!) becomes Cooper Creek, part of the Cooper Channel system, draining an area of 296000km² in Australia's interior. Conservationists consider this system to be of world environmental significance. Indigenous Australians have lived in the area for at least 50,000 years.
In 1860 The Royal Society of Victoria organised an expedition to cross Australia from South to North, about 2000 miles. The expedition consisted of 19 men led by Robert Burke, an Irish policeman, who had no experience of bushcraft (which would have been useful).
They managed to reach the north coast, but the return journey was plagued by delays, mistakes and monsoon rains. When they reached the depot at Cooper Creek, they found it had been abandoned just hours earlier. Burke and Wills (second in command) died of exhaustion and starvation at Cooper Creek on or about 30 June 1861. Altogether, seven men lost their lives.
Only one man in the Burke & Wills expedition, John King, returned alive to Melbourne, because he found sanctuary with the Yandruwandha people.
The Coorong National Park is located in South Australia about 97 miles southeast of Adelaide. The Coorong is of enormous cultural significance to its Aboriginal traditional owners, the Ngarrindjeri. ‘Kurangk’ is the name given to the area by the Ngarrindjeri people, meaning long narrow neck.
‘Storm Boy lived between the Coorong and the sea. His home was the long, long snout of sandhill and scrub that curves away south-eastwards from the Murray Mouth. A wild strip it is, windswept and tussocky, with the flat shallow water of the South Australian Coorong on one side and the endless slam of the Southern Ocean on the other.’ Excerpt from Colin Thiele’s book Storm Boy2.
I hope being amongst the sunshine and vivid colours of Australia, even for a short time, has lightened your load, just a little bit.
Many thanks to Peter Coad for allowing me to use his wonderful paintings in this letter.
Peter Coad has kindly given permission for the use of his images and text in this letter. Please Note: reproduction of any image shown in this article may not be made for any reason whatsoever without the artist’s permission - copyright remains with the artist. Click here for Peter’s website and contact details.
As always, any links are provided to give the reader more information. I do not make any money from these links. If there is an issue with copyright, please contact me. I am an amateur historian covering a wide range of subjects. I do careful research using secondary sources (books, articles, videos and a little bit of Wikipedia). If there are any mistakes I apologise and please let me know.
If you like what you read, please share with your friends…
It is ironic that this week, as this article is republished, rather than winter we have the hottest days ever experienced in the UK (15 July 2022).
‘Storm Boy’ by Colin Thiele is a children’s story (click here to buy). When Storm Boy goes walking along the beach or in the sanctuary, the birds are not afraid. They know Storm Boy is a friend. A pelican lives with Storm Boy and his father, Hideaway. They call him Mr Percival.