To Charlotte
The land was empty until the great snake came. He roamed over all the land and, when he slept, deep pools of water formed and flowed into the channels left by his passing. These became the river. As the snake moved from waterhole to waterhole, rainbows formed in the sky.
The lightning man, who the first people would call Namarrgon, came after the serpent. When he was angry, he hurled his spears of light into the ground and woke the fire.
Thousands of years ago, when the first people came to the land, they used the fire. In small groups they moved across the plains, hunting their food and gathering around fires at night to sing and dance, and tell stories of the Dreaming. Sometimes the fire escaped. The trees and the grass burned, and the animals burned. But always the land survived and the first people trusted that the Rainbow Serpent would bring the water back. The plants would grow again. The animals would return and the first men would follow them.
Everything changed when the white men came.
They had tamed the fire. They brought it in guns and trapped it inside the houses that they built, houses that got bigger and stronger as the years passed. They brought new animals too and claimed the land for them. The native animals were driven away by these strange big beasts, just as the first men were driven away by the white men.
In the middle of this plain, a white man built a great stone house. Around that house, there were small buildings and yards for the animals, and, down by the river, the first men had their camp. Sometimes the first men talked of taking back the land that had been theirs. Until then, they worked that land for the white man and for his sons and their sons.
Now the land is dotted with fire. At night, the light gleams from the windows of the white man’s big house and figures can be seen moving. There are lights in the other buildings where the white men work and eat and sleep. And small fires still burn where the first men sit by the river and tell their tales.
But, tonight the fire has escaped and it has taken the big stone house in the middle of the plain. The first men and the white men will try to capture it again. But when the fire is set free, it burns until there is nothing left at all.
