The Rainbow Serpent - Aboriginal Australian

Hello there! My name is Gark, and I’m a little frog with very big eyes. Long, long ago, before the mountains stood tall and the rivers flowed, the world was a flat, quiet, and colorless place. It was like a big, empty piece of paper waiting for someone to draw on it. All the animals, including my great-great-great-grandfrogs, were sleeping deep beneath the earth, just waiting. We didn't know what we were waiting for, but we felt a rumbling, a tickling, a feeling that a big change was coming. This is the story of how our world was born, the great story of the Rainbow Serpent.

One day, a deep rumbling started far below the ground. It tickled my feet and woke me from my long nap. Slowly, a magnificent creature pushed its way up from the darkness and into the light. It was the Rainbow Serpent! Its scales shimmered with every color you can imagine—the bright red of a sunset, the deep blue of a summer sky, and the fresh green of the first tiny leaves. It was so long that I couldn't see its beginning or its end. As the Serpent moved its giant body across the flat land, it carved deep, winding paths like a giant snake slithering through sand. Where it traveled, water from inside the earth bubbled up to fill the tracks, creating the first rivers and waterholes. The sound of the gushing water was like a happy song, and it woke everyone up. Me and all the other animals—bouncy kangaroos, sleepy wombats, and laughing kookaburras—crawled out from our sleeping places and blinked our eyes at the new, wonderful world.

The Rainbow Serpent didn’t just bring water; it brought life and color everywhere. Green plants that looked like tiny spears sprouted along the riverbanks, and flowers bloomed in fantastic shades of pink, yellow, and purple. The world was no longer quiet and grey! The Serpent gathered all the animals together. Its voice was like the sound of flowing water, and it gave us laws to live by. It taught us how to share the water, how to care for the land, and how to respect one another so we could all live together happily. When its work was done, the great Serpent coiled up in the deepest waterhole to rest. Its spirit, however, still watches over us. Sometimes, after it rains, you can see it arching across the sky as a beautiful rainbow. That’s the Serpent reminding us of its gifts and the promise of life. My people, the First Peoples of Australia, have told this story for thousands of years. They paint it on rocks and bark and share it through songs and dances. It teaches us that water is precious, that we must protect our world, and that all living things are connected, from the biggest serpent to the littlest frog like me.