In the Dreamtime before time and space the Great Serpent Koniara slithered and thrashed mightily, creating the Land of Oz, the Sky above it, and the Sea that washed its shores. And when his mighty slithering was done, Koniara called a great Corroboree to honour his creation.
Among those who came to the Corroboree was the scaly crocodile, Gumungung, who spake unto Koniara, saying, “O Great One, what thee or thou have wrought is awesome and immense, but there is no colour, no excitement, no magic or joy in the Land. As far as the eye can see, all is red and brown and flat as a toenail, and that’s more dull and boring than a pub with no beer. And newsflash: it’s also way too frickin’ hot!”
“My sacred doings be not to thy satisfaction,” spake Koniara unto Gumungung, “and yet I made the whole ball of wax in just two days not six, and I didn’t need to chuck a sickie* on the seventh neither.”
“A bit more elbow grease, maybe, that might have helped,” quoth Kuruku the Kookaburra, whose laughter rang out long and loud in the dry and beerless air.
“Don’t you come the raw prawn with me*,” spake Koniara unto Kuruku, waxing full wroth and dry-throated to the max, “Fair dinkum, mate. Hard work? I been flat out like a lizard drinking, for sure!”
“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on it,” laughed Kuruku, his merriment boomeranging into the Great Serpent’s heart of hearts, which lay pulsing somewhere between the eighty third and ninety sixth rib of the lengthy Koniara.
Now Koniara hearkened unto the words of the laughing one and the scaly one. Rising up as high as he could upon his rib-full loops, he looked out upon his creation and found it wanting.
So Koniara made the Great Rock Uluru, the shapely Olgas, and all the hills and plains, yea, and escarpments too he wrought.
Then Koniara quoth unto Gumungung and Kuruku, thuswise, saying, “Youse have spake ye whinges, and ye have whined ye whinings. Therefore have I deflattened the Land, which now lays before ye strewn with humps and hillocks and shapely stones and boulders to delight the eye…”
“Well that’s as much good as tits on a bull, if you’re a farmer,” quoth Gumungung, ...
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I love this version of the creation myth. Had me laughing!
I also love the painting of the skulls.
It's been many a years since I chucked a sickie. Used to do it quite a lot. Really can't afford to now, and at least I can put up with this job well enough that I'm usually not too tempted.
Hi Cara, great to hear from you. I hope the piece doesn't end up offending someone. Although I'm perfectly happy to make fun of judaism, christianity, islam and other religions too. I'm an equal-opportunity blasphemer, a non-discriminatory heretic! Thanks for your comments, MM.
New reserach in Oz is unearthing wonders. Thanks to their culture-religion called "the Law", the natives survived multiple, major changes in climate over 10s of thousands of years. Their great "rock temples" in the north have just been found. Unfortunately, the relevance may be quite indigestible to the adherents of the current, global culture-religion called capitalism.
Hi mgeorge, the crucial fork in the road, I think, was when hunter-gatherer cultures could have exterminated most if not all of the newly emerging agriculture-based cultures but sadly stayed their hands! If only they hadn't discovered the uses to which barley and hops could be put, perhaps those early farmers would have given it up as a bad job with too much hard work.
Re the Aboriginal cultures of Oz, it is believed by some that the extinction of the continent's megafauna was the result of human predation. And also that the early human populations caused major changes to the Land and its ecological systems via their practice of using fire on a large scale as a hunting technique.
Still, when all's said and done, IMO no other culture in the (known-by-humans) history of this Planet has come even remotely close to the destruction wrought by out culture upon the Planet and its inhabitantsm, including ourselves.
Thanks for stopping by. Cheers, MM
Perhaps the laid-back types stuck to hunting and gathering, while the organised types went ahead with agriculture before finding themselves serfs and foot soldiers.
At least in one case - maybe 20,000 years ago - the remains of the giant bird and humans were found together, raising the possibility of megafauna surviving long after the arrival of humans.
Fires: Oz authorities seem agree with the aboriginal practice of starting fires. It is now used in some national parks. They learnt the hard way. It seems the idea is to limit the extent of fires by starting them early. In California, the policy was to put out every single fire, through private contracts. We now know where that led.
Pehaps most of the reduction in plants and animals on the continent was due to the overall drying out. Some of the propaganda on potential productivity (a) ignores this reality (b) promotes profit for an elite (c) disenfranchises those who make ancestral claims or have a radically differing view of life.
E.g. on the subject of productivity, in Queensland, the production of electricity must not be interrupted regardless of cost-cutting in removing vegetation near power cables, heatwave warnings and past tragedies. Two other neighbouring states simply shut off electrcity for a while.
Maybe that should have been Victoria, not Queensland.
mgeorge, no argument from me about points a, b and c!
Re the fires, I don't think it's a bad thing. And it's now well accepted that "hazard reduction burns" do help minimise the risk of large scale bushfires.
Cheers, MM.
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