"They say we have been here for 40 000 years, but
it is much longer.
We have been here since time began.
We have come directly out of the Dreamtime of our creative
ancestors.
We have kept the earth as it was on the first day.
Our culture is focused on recording the origins of
life.
We refer to forces and powers that created the world as creative
ancestors.
Our beautiful world has been created only inaccordance with the power, wisdom and intentionsof our ancestral beings. THE DREAMTIME
During the creation of our world, the ancestors moved across a
barren land, hunting, camping, fighting and loving and in
doing so shaped a featureless landscape. Moving from Dreams to actions, the ancestors made the ants, the
emus, the crows, the possums, the wallabies, the
kangaroos, the lizard, the goanna, the snakes and all the food and plants. They
made the sun, the moon and the planets. They made the humans,
tribes and clans. Each could transform into the other. A plant could
become an animal, an animal a landform, a landform a man or a
woman.
Everything was created from the same source.
Everything was created in our Dreamtime.
As the world took shape and was filled with species and varieties of
the ancestral transformations, the ancestors tired and retired into the earth
the sky
the clouds
and the creatures to live within all
their created
In our Dreamtime "
DREAMTIME TJUKURRPAKU
Explanation.
The Dreamtime is the time of the Ancestors before they went 'back in'.
This includes the act of creation itself, Dreamtime is the time leading up to and culminating in
human existence.
'Dreaming' is somewhat more difficult to define. 'Dreaming' has several different applications. An Aborigines' totem is called his 'Dreaming'. Also, the Ancestors' songs of
creation are kept in the memories of the Aborigines, each individual inheriting at birth a few 'bars' of all creation so that the whole song
perpetuates. These sections of song are termed 'Dreamings'. There are others, but I
understand them less than these two for which I have already risked misinterpretation through phrasing my
inadequate understanding.
When an Aboriginal inherits a Dreaming, they inherit also the land created by song, not in the sense of personal property as we think of it but as a responsibility to maintain the land in the form the
Ancestors sang it into existence in the Dreamtime. Songs can be shared, borrowed or lent but not sold or otherwise got rid of; they
are lifetime commitments.
Also, since the Ancestors created all the land through song, and they walked while they sang, the Aborigines maintain a roadmap of the entire continent in song. You can get anywhere in Australia,
know the waterholes and hunting-grounds along the way, if you learn the right songs. Apparently, an Aboriginal gone 'Walkabout'
was doing just that, learning songs by travelling to the end of the song lines he knew and asking whoever he found
at the end who could teach him the next few bars and whether he would have
permission to sing them, to walk to the end of the new verse.
