DP9-Aboriginal-Spirituality

And that… is the resting place of the Rainbow Serpent, and all of the gullies and all of the lagoon itself was
about the Rainbow Serpent created after he had created the universe and all the dry gullies is the tracks that
he’s made looking for a resting place.
Carl McGrady, Aboriginal Education Assistant, Boggabilla, describing the path of the Rainbow Serpent
at Boobera Lagoon, northern New South Wales, 1996 (Australian Museum n.d.)
Another powerful creator, who is also one among many who all play a part, is Baiame, sometimes referred
to as a Sky God or a Supreme Being. Any apparent similarity to Christian beliefs assumed by the use of these
English terms is misplaced. Baiame is important for creating people themselves and when he completed his
creative work he returned to the sky behind the Milky Way. Fellow creator spirits can be seen in the night sky
where they, too, returned. The people of south-east Australia—including but not restricted to Kamilaroi, Eora,
Darkinjung, Wonnaruah, Awabakal, Worimi and Wiradjuri, and also into north-western New South Wales for the
Nhunggabarra people (Sveiby & Scuthorpe 2006:3)—commemorate places particularly associated with Baiame.
One such place is a famous rock painting near Singleton in the Hunter Valley, the Baiame Cave, where he is
depicted with large staring eyes and enormously long arms that hold representations of the seven tribes of
the Hunter region under his arms (Matthews 1893). For the Nhunggabarra he is the first initiated man and the
‘lawmaker’ (Sveiby & Scuthorpe 2006:3). The town of Byrock in the north west of New South Wales also takes
its name from his presence there. The stories of the sky gods, including Baiame, have different names for these
creation ancestors in different areas, and sometimes the stories differ according to the beliefs of people in
specific places. For the people on the adjoining mid-north coast—Biripi, Ngaku, Daingatti, and Gambangirr—it
is Ulidarra who made the tribes and their boundaries and whose son, Birrigun, made marriage Law (Ryan 1964;
GLCG 1992; Grieves forthcoming).
The specificities of these stories is more than can be covered here but it is fair to say that they encompass a similar
script. Before life as we know it as human beings, there was a complex chaotic mass of matter that included
these powerful beings. They were so powerful that they were able to change form and shape the chaos into
form. They developed order and life out of the chaos by filling it with their activity and power. In intense bursts
of activity, they were able to transform and develop formless matter into a landscape. The features of the land
they brought into being hold in their names the stories of their own creation. And the ancestors in the same way
gave rise to living forms, the animal species, all manner of plants, the landforms, watercourses (which, though
inanimate, are understood to have their own spirit or being) and, of course, people. Each person or specific
plant or place is linked to the spirit of its creation and thus to each other. This is a relationship of mutual spirit
being, often referred to as totemism.
The period of intense creativity was as yet without law or morality, as different totemic ancestors in their travels
and exploits negotiated, experimented, tested the options until they were finally closed and the boundaries were
set for the living and the acting of the descent line. So the ancestral spirits gave to each living form its own Law,
fixed for all time and written on the landscape. Some of these ancestral beings were culture heroes who taught
humans how to hunt, to make fire and utensils, to perform ceremony and all that was important for survival.
At length, after completing their tasks and overcome by weariness, they sank back into their original slumber.
Some vanished into the ground whence they first emerged, others turned into the physical features of the
landscape, leaving behind a trail of their life, the spirit-children yet to be born in the form of their ancestor.
Though immobilized, these creator spirits did not cease to be alive, powerful and conscious. This creative activity
continues through the life-force latent in their resting place, in sites of significance for their story and in their
various transformations—not only specific landmarks but sacred objects of many kinds, totemic emblems,
images, participants in ceremony and especially in their (human) totemic descendents (Stockton 1995).
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