Australian Aboriginal religion and mythology is the sacred spirituality represented in the stories performed by Aboriginal Australians within each of the language groups across Australia in their ceremonies. Aboriginal spirituality includes the Dreamtime, songlines, and Aboriginal oral literature.
Wollunqua, also written Wollunka or Wollunkua, is a snake-god of rain and fertility in Australian Aboriginal mythology of the Warramunga people of the Northern Territory of Australia, a variation of the "Rainbow Serpent" present in the mythology of many other Aboriginal Australian peoples. The snake, which emerged from a watering hole called Kadjinara in the Murchison Ranges, is said to be many miles long. When speaking of the Wollunqua snake in public, the name urkulu nappaurinnia is used, because if they were to call it too often by its real name they would lose control and it would come out and devour them all. It can place the rainbow in the sky at will.
Ballina is a town in the Northern Rivers region of New South Wales, Australia, and the seat of the Ballina Shire local government area. It lies 740 km (460 mi) north of Sydney and 185 km (115 mi) south of Brisbane. Ballina's urban population at the end of 2021 was 46,190. The town lies on the Richmond River and serves as a gateway to Byron Bay.
The Rainbow Serpent or Rainbow Snake is a common deity often seen as the creator God, known by numerous names in different Australian Aboriginal languages by the many different Aboriginal peoples. It is a common motif in the art and religion of many Aboriginal Australian peoples. Much like the archetypal mother goddess, the Rainbow Serpent creates land and diversity for the Aboriginal people, but when disturbed can bring great chaos.
The Clarence River is a river situated in the Northern Rivers district of New South Wales, Australia. It rises on the eastern slopes of the Great Dividing Range, in the Border Ranges west of Bonalbo, near Rivertree at the junction of Koreelah Creek and Maryland River, on the watershed that marks the border between New South Wales and Queensland. It flows generally south, south east and north east, and is joined by twenty-four tributaries including Tooloom Creek and the Mann, Nymboida, Cataract, Orara, Coldstream, Timbarra, and Esk rivers. It descends 256 metres (840 ft) over the course of its 394-kilometre (245 mi) length and empties into the Coral Sea in the South Pacific Ocean, between Iluka and Yamba.
The Wagyl is the Noongar manifestation of the Rainbow Serpent in Australian Aboriginal mythology, from the culture based around the south-west of Western Australia. The Noongar describe the Wagyl as a snakelike Dreaming creature responsible for the creation of the Swan and Canning rivers and other waterways and landforms around present day Perth and the south-west of Western Australia.
Snakes are a common occurrence in myths for a multitude of cultures. The Hopi people of North America viewed snakes as symbols of healing, transformation, and fertility. Snakes in Mexican folk culture tell about the fear of the snake to the pregnant women where the snake attacks the umbilical cord. The Great Goddess often had snakes as her familiars—sometimes twining around her sacred staff, as in ancient Crete—and they were worshipped as guardians of her mysteries of birth and regeneration. Although not entirely a snake, the plumed serpent, Quetzalcoatl, in Mesoamerican culture, particularly Mayan and Aztec, held a multitude of roles as a deity. He was viewed as a twin entity which embodied that of god and man and equally man and serpent, yet was closely associated with fertility. In ancient Aztec mythology, Quetzalcoatl was the son of the fertility earth goddess, Cihuacoatl, and cloud serpent and hunting god, Maxicoat. His roles took the form of everything from bringer of morning winds and bright daylight for healthy crops, to a sea god capable of bringing on great floods. As shown in the images there are images of the sky serpent with its tail in its mouth, it is believed to be a reverence to the sun, for which Quetzalcoatl was also closely linked.
Yugambeh–Bundjalung, also known as Bandjalangic, is a branch of the Pama–Nyungan language family, that is spoken in north-eastern New South Wales and South-East Queensland.
The Djabugay people are a group of Aboriginal Australian people who are the original inhabitants of mountains, gorges, lands and waters of a richly forested part of the Great Dividing Range including the Barron Gorge and surrounding areas within the Wet Tropics of Queensland.
The Richmond River massacres were a series of murders of groups of Indigenous Australians and European Australians in the region around the Richmond River in north-eastern New South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century.
The Bundjalung people are a large Aboriginal nation, a federation of a number of groups of clans which occupy the land from Grafton on the Clarence river of northern New South Wales north to the town of Ipswich and the Beaudesert, in southern Queensland, and down around the other side of the Great Dividing Range and back to Grafton. In the north, Bundjalung Nation shares a border with Yuggera Nation and Barrunggam Nation; to the east the Tasman Sea ; to the south Gumbaynggirr Nation; and to the west it borders Ngarabal Nation.
In the mythology of the Aboriginal people of South Australia, Akurra is a great snake deity, sometimes associated with the Rainbow Serpent. Adnyamathanha elders describe it as a giant water snake with a beard mane, scales and sharp fangs, whose movements shaped the land. Akurra is associated with the power of the shaman, and nobody else may go near him with impunity.
The Yugambeh, also known as the Minyangbal, or Nganduwal, are an Aboriginal Australian people of South East Queensland and the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, their territory lies between the Logan and Tweed rivers. A term for an Aboriginal of the Yugambeh tribe is Mibunn, which is derived from the word for the Wedge-tailed Eagle. Historically, some anthropologists have erroneously referred to them as the Chepara, the term for a first-degree initiate. Archaeological evidence indicates Aboriginal people have occupied the area for tens of thousands of years. By the time European colonisation began, the Yugambeh had a complex network of groups, and kinship. The Yugambeh territory is subdivided among clan groups with each occupying a designated locality, each clan having certain rights and responsibilities in relation to their respective areas.
The Ngugi are an Aboriginal Australian people, one of three Quandamooka peoples, and the traditional inhabitants of Moreton Island.
The Western Bundjalung or Bundjalung people are an aggregation of tribes of Australian Aboriginal people who inhabit north-east NSW along the Clarence River, now within the Clarence Valley, Glen Innes Severn Shire, Kyogle, Richmond Valley, and Tenterfield Shire Council areas.
Albert Digby Moran (1948–2020) was an Australian Aboriginal artist. His work derived inspiration from his Bundjalung ancestors in the north of New South Wales, Australia, where he remains one of the Northern Rivers' most recognised artists.
Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture is a book by the evolutionary anthropologist Chris Knight. Published by Yale University Press in hardback 1991 and in paperback four years later, it has remained in print ever since.
