Dreamtime Myth

Australian Mythology

Assignment: You will create your own dreamtime myth and illustrations.

Pick one of the pictures on this page and write a myth about it. You could write about the animal or place’s creation or you could write a myth in which the place or animal plays a central role. Use the myth on the back of this paper as an example for your story. You will need to type your myth in columns (half a page with a landscape layout) so that you can cut and paste it and create an illustrated book. Your myth should be written/typed at home and there will be class time to illustrate your book with Aboriginal dot or cross hatch designs. There should be at least two illustrations per book.
You are welcome to extend this project and create more myths and images for extra credit.


The Boomerang and the Sun

From the Aborigine people of the Flinders Range of southern Australia comes the story of how the distinction first arose between night and day – for in the world’s infancy, it seems, all was light and sunshine, with no intervening darkness.

The trouble started one Dreamtime day when the goanna lizard and the gecko set out to visit neighbours. On arrival, however, they found that their friends had all been massacred: with one voice they vowed vengeance upon those responsible. It had, it soon transpired, been the sun-woman and her dingo dogs who had attacked and killed the defenceless community: she was a formidable foe, but the goanna and the gecko were quite undaunted. As the sun-woman stormed and shouted her defiance, the lizard drew his boomerang and hurled it – and dashed the sun clean out of the sky. It plummeted over the western horizon, plunging the world into total darkness – and now the lizard and the gecko really were alarmed. What would become of them without the sun-woman and her warming, illuminating rays? They must do everything they could to restore her to the heavens. The goanna took another boomerang and hurled it westwards with al his might to where he had seen his target disappearing. It fell ineffectually to ground so he threw two others to the south and north, but they too drifted back without hitting anything. In despair, the goanna took his last boomerang and launched it into the eastern sky – the opposite direction from that in which he had seen the sun-woman sinking. To his astonishment it returned, driving before it the sun’s burning sphere, which tracked westwards across the sky before disappearing. From that day on the sun maintained this course, rising in the east and setting in the west, lighting up the day for work and hunting and casting the night into shade fro sleeping. All agreed this was an ideal arrangement, and the Aborigines of the Flinders have felt a debt of gratitude to the goanna and the gecko ever since.