Francis Firebrace is a 'Wirrigan man', a name given to a wise Aboriginal elder whose songs, including traditional didgeridoo, retell the old stories and speak of freeing the spirit. He is one of Australia's foremost Aboriginal storytellers who has been 'yarning' since he can't remember when and performing at schools, festivals and theatres. He is also a highly respected artist whose works have been displayed throughout the world. He paints in the four colours his people (the Yorta Yorta) have used since the beginning of time: black from fire coals, white from pipe clay, red and yellow from ground ochre, and he mixes these with acrylic to achieve his own distinctive, contemporary effect. Francis lives in Weybridge, Surrey. James Vance Marshall is also published under the names Ian Cameron and Donald Payne. His most famous book, Walkabout, was first published as The Children, and was later made into a movie by the director Nicholas Roeg. His other books include A River Ran Out of Eden, The Lost Ones (dramatised by Disney as The Island at the Top of the World) and White-Out. He lives in Dorking, Surrey
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The Rainbow Serpent and the Story of Creation
In the beginning, there was no life on the surface of the Earth. But beneath the surface the Great Mother Snake, the Rainbow Serpent, lay asleep.
She slept for a long, long time. Then one day she woke up, uncoiled herself, and crawled into the open. As she moved slowly over the flat, dry, empty land, she said to herself, â “This isn’t much of a place.â ” So she used her magic to make rain.
It rained day after day. Week after week. Month after month. Year after year. And after a while the tracks left by the body of the Rainbow Serpent filled with water. This is how the long winding rivers, the billabongs and the waterholes came into being.
Sometimes, as the Rainbow Serpent moved forward, she pushed her nose into the Earth, and the soil piled up in front of her. This is how the mountains, the hills and the valleys came
into being.
In some places, the milk from her breasts soaked into the Earth and made it fertile. And here great rainforests sprang up, and all sorts of grasses, and carpets of bright-coloured flowers.
When the Rainbow Serpent had made the land to her liking, she went back inside the Earth and woke the creatures who,
like her, had been asleep there.
