But not all creatures know how to get fire or how to keep it. In most origin myths, the possession of fire is the guarded secret of a creature who does not deserve it—a reptile like a lizard or a crocodile or, if a mammal, an aquatic dweller such as a water rat—a character hopelessly, recklessly selfish who refuses to share his fire and who lives in a nonflammable environment. Through the cunning and daring of his rivals, or his own carelessness, the fire hoarder loses his fire—but not before a final defiance in which he attempts to extinguish fire once and for all by tossing it into water. Thus Kanaula tries to end a corroboree by leaping into the sea with the fire, until Unwala impales his hand temporarily with a spear and Mulara flies to the scene and retrieves the firestick. Mulara then drops the firestick into pandamus, which flares and saves fire from extinction. An analogous version has Kunmanggur, the Rainbow Serpent, attempt to punish humans for their wickedness by retiring to the waters with the final firestick. At the last second Kartpur seizes the subsiding firestick and sets the grass alight, and fire is broadcast throughout creation. When the fire of Goodah, an evil magician, is pirated away, he attempts a retaliation by causing rain, and only the storage of fire in the basal cavities of large gums prevents a total loss. Birikbirik, the plover, acts quickly to rescue fire from Gumangan, the crocodile, who in a temper tantrum seeks to extinguish his firesticks in a river. The stories not only reestablish the proper relationship between human and nonhuman, but that between fire and water.8
The ritual uses of fire in caves, at night, and around gloomy waterholes—not every waterhole, only a select group—originate in the value of fire for illumination. Fear of ambush, alarm over poisonous snakes that might be trod upon accidentally, difficult footing in unburned vegetation all made a torch an act of prudence. But these fears attached to others, to a generic apprehension of darkness as a place of evil spirits who could be held at bay only by torches or fire. While Eyre noted that “all tribes of natives appear to dread evil spirits … [that] fly about at nights,” fire “appears to have a considerable effect in keeping these monsters away, and a native will rarely stir a yard at night … without carrying a firestick.” Grey reported that “if they are obliged to move away from the fire after dark,” they will “carry a light with them and set fire to dry bushes as they go along.” Angas observed that “their belief in spirits is universal; hence their dread of moving at night, unless provided with a firestick or torch.” More recently Gould observed the matter-of-fact way in which “women going out for firewood or water at dusk usually set fire to the vegetation along the way to illuminate their way to and from camp.” By such means cognitive and behavioral fire practices converged.9
Other legends identify the heat and light of fire with the sun and sometimes with the stars. In some, earthly fire leads to heavenly fire. Thus the sun and moon are the firesticks of Wuriupranill, the sun-woman, and Japara, the moon-man, each cycling the world in their own time. The first man, Purukupali, discovers fire accidentally and gives it to others with the instructions that they never allow it to expire. An emu egg hurled against a pyre built by Gnawdenoorte, the Great Man’s Son, kindles the light of day. The firestick of Koolulla, before he drowns, scatters embers skyward to make the stars. In most myths, this celestial fire is returned to an Earth—or at least to humans—that lacks it. Spears, boomerangs, and throwing sticks capture fire, a symbolic variant on fire hunting. From the Murrumbidgee region, an origin myth, closely following real conditions, relates how the magician Goodah captures lightning as it strikes a dead tree, then uses the captive lightning as a kind of personal firestick. When his selfishness becomes intolerable, a whirlwind sweeps Goodah’s fire and scatters it around the countryside where it quickly becomes common property.10
More important than joining the lights of heaven and earth, fire myths and fire rituals joined the spiritual and the physical; they married the great moieties of Aboriginal existence. Much as it made the world habitable, so fire made it understandable. Fire helped explain the colors of animals, the heat and light of celestial objects, the distribution of species, the warmth of the human body, the wondrous process by which fire may be extracted from wood. Fire’s power made it useful as a dramatic plot device. Even more, fire helped explain motives; it exposed character. By their relationship to fire, creatures are revealed as brave or pusillanimous, generous or selfish, obedient or defiant. By their use of fire, humans reveal themselves as either responsible or evil.
A reciprocity existed between the two worlds. What was abstracted into myth returns, rereified in practice. But in this fire cycle, the end is different from the beginning. When humans took fire out of the landscape, they passed it through a mental—a spiritual—world before returning it to the land. Anthropogenic fire had to reconcile both universes. Those myths and rites helped guide the proper use of fire by shaping fire practices around waterholes, campsites, hunting grounds, and along the corridors of the Dreamtime. As nomadic Aborigines traced and retraced the ancestral pathways of their Dreamtime totems, the legendary paths etched on their stone churingas took on a material existence in the Australian landscape by trails of fire and smoke. As they told and retold the saga of creation, each tribe holding a fragment of the master myth cycle in the form of a bushfire song, the rhythms of Australian fire took on a new cadence. If fire transported Aborigines into the Dreamtime, it also superimposed elements of the Dreamtime onto Australia. Fire ecology acquired symbolic dimensions; fire history, new depth of metaphor; fire practices, new codes of behavior. A fiery land became a burning bush.
MYTHIC FIRE
In the early Dreamtime the creatures of the world did not look as they do today. These disordered animals eventually gathered in the country of the Rembarrngas, where Nagorgo, the Father, examined them and proclaimed, “You are not proper people and not proper animals. We must change this.” With his firestick he lit a ceremonial fire that spread and spread until it encompassed the world. It swept over all the creatures. It burned the earth and the stones. After the fire passed, the creatures and the humans assumed their present forms and characters.11
In Aboriginal myths fire, once freed, spreads widely and impregnates woody flora and other phenomena. The fire spirit is not an exclusive possession of humans, but only humans have the capacity to invoke it and the necessary knowledge to preserve it, and only humans need to explain fire and to incorporate it into ritual. This special attribute, however, is enough to cause the natural world and the human world to diverge. Humans cannot renounce fire and still remain human, yet they must reconcile fire practices with both realms of existence. Because the possession of fire fundamentally changed the world, the behavior of humans toward fire becomes a moral paradigm for the behavior of humans toward one another and toward the rest of the natural world.
The crocodile possessed firesticks. The rainbow bird would ask for fire, but was knocked back every time. The rainbow bird was without fire: he had no light, slept without a camp fire, ate his food (fish, goanna lizards, mussels) raw.
The rainbow bird could not get fire because the crocodile was “boss” for fire and would knock him back.
“You can’t take fire!”
“What am I to do for men? Are they to eat raw?”
“They can eat raw. I won’t give you firesticks!”
The crocodile had fire. No man made it. The crocodile had had fire from a long time ago. Then the rainbow bird put fire everywhere. Every tree has fire inside now. It was the rainbow bird who put the fire inside.
The rainbow bird spoke. “Wirid, wirid, wirid!” He climbed into a tree, a dry place, a dry tree. Down he came, like a jet plane, to snatch the firesticks, but the crocodile had them clutched to his breast. Again and again the rainbow bird tried.
“You eat raw,” the crocodile told him. “I’m not giving you fire.”
“I want fire. You are too mean. If I had had fire I would have given it to you.
“Wirid,
