Oban's Myths & Legends
About the Aboriginal Dreamtime
explained by Oban
The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders are the Indigenous people of Australia. The word Indigenous means that historical and scientific records have proved that they were the first people to live there.
At least 30,000 years ago, Aboriginal people lived in all parts of Australia - and Torres Strait Islanders lived on the islands between Australia and Papua New Guinea.
There were many different communities or tribes of Aboriginal people, with their own languages and cultures. But they all believed in the Dreamtime, which is the ‘time before time’ or the time when the Great Spirit Ancestors came out of the earth and created all the things we know today. It was the beginning of time, and the beginning of knowledge.
In the ‘time before time’ the Earth was dark and silent. The Great Spirit Ancestors slept underground, until one day they woke and broke through to the surface. The sun then came up out of the ground and the Earth had light for the first time.
The Ancestors began to travel around, and on their journeys they created the landscape – the mountains, rivers, trees, waterholes and plains. They made the tribes of people, who became their descendants, and they made all the animals. They also made water, air and fire – and the moon and stars.
The Ancestors were tired after creating everything. They lay down to rest and sank back into the ground again. But their spirits stayed on the Earth. They went into particular rocks and trees and other parts of the landscape. These things and places were very special. People believed they were sacred, and could only be visited and seen by men who had learned about the Ancestors and had been initiated, or made keepers of their knowledge.
The Dreamtime stories, ceremonies and dances have been handed down and are an important part of an Indigenous person’s ‘Dreaming’ today. Their understanding of how everything was created also includes ideas and beliefs that are special to their own tribe and relate to the land they came from. The Ancestor Spirits are still here, in the forms they changed into at the end of the Dreamtime.
