WEST KIMBERLEY PLACE REPORT - Department of Sustainability ...

Martuwarra encompasses four contiguous and distinctive freshwater-based Aboriginal
cultural domains, focused upon the tradition of the Rainbow Serpent, as exemplified
by the religious tradtions of Galaroo, Woonyoomboo-Yoongoorroonkoo, Wanjina-
Wunggurr, and the jila-kalpurtu cultural systems. A song line known as
Warloongarriy (Walungarri) serves to unite Aboriginal people and their Rainbow
Serpent traditions along the Fitzroy River as part of one regional ritual complex,
called Warloongarriy Law or 'River Law'.
Rainbow Serpent traditions in Australia
Australia is the most arid inhabited continent on earth (Rose 1996, 51). Water is life
and throughout Australia, Aboriginal people hold detailed ecological and cultural
knowledge about water sources transmitted from one generation to another over
millennia. Images of and belief in the Rainbow Serpent are found across Aboriginal
Australia. The concept recurs in Aboriginal art, religion, ritual, and social and
economic life.
According to Radcliffe-Brown (1926, 19; 1930, 342) there are a number of common
elements to the Rainbow Serpent tradition found throughout Australia including: the
belief that rainbow snakes live in deep and permanent waterholes; they are visible to
humans in the form of a rainbow; they are associated with rain and rain-making; they
are often associated with quartz crystal; and in many parts of Australia, as a result of
this later connection, they are linked to medicine men and the practice of magic.
While belief in the Rainbow Serpent may once have been pervasive across Australia,
a survey of the literature as noted by Pannell (2009) suggests that the tradition
survives in some places mostly in a fragmentary form or is referred to only in
perfunctory ways. David McKnight is one of the few anthropologists in Australia to
write a detailed ethnography explicitly based around Aboriginal traditions concerning
the Rainbow Serpent. McKnight (1999) provides a detailed account of the
significance of the Rainbow Serpent (Thuwathu) to the Lardil people of Mornington
Island. For the Lardil, the Rainbow Serpent is credited with creating the Dugong
River: 'Writhing, turning and twisting he travels up the Dugong River which he forms
as he goes along…in making Dugong River he thrusts in and out of places, finally
doubling back to the main stream' (McKnight 1999, 196).
Thuwathu is said to dwell in wells and water holes. The environment the Rainbow
Serpent is said to favour the most are the mangroves located along the tidal flats and
mud coast, and at the mouth and banks of rivers and creeks (McKnight 1999, 194-
195). The setting of the main Lardil story about Thuwathu is near the mouth of the
Dugong River. This narrative equates to the Nyikina story about Woonyoomboo-
Yoongoorroonkoo and the creation of the lower Fitzroy River.
Beckett and Hercus (2009) have recorded a mura (Dreaming or Creation Being track)
about the Two Rainbow Serpents (Ngatyi) from 'Corner Country', where the
boundaries of New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia come together. This
is sandhill country which continues into South Australia and has links with the
Strzelecki Desert. Like the Fitzroy River, Aboriginal people of Corner Country are
connected together over a wide area by a shared narrative focused on the creation and
movement of water by Rainbow Serpents. Speakers of four different language
affiliations – including the Karnic languages of the Lake Eyre Basin (Wangkumara
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