[NOTE: This is the Northern bandicoot myth which centres around Ilbalintja. It tells the life-story of the famous gurra (bandicoot) ancestor called Karora, who lived at the spot now known as the Ilbalintja Soak, situated on the Burt Plain of Central Australia. This is not a complete translation of the myth as actually told by native informants in Aranda, but rather a “compression,” that is, a translation of only a skeletal text. No complete English translations of any such extensive Australian Aboriginal myths as this one have ever been published.]
In the very beginning everything was resting in perpetual darkness: night oppressed all the earth like an impenetrable thicket. The gurra ancestor—his name was Karora—was lying asleep, in everlasting night, at the very bottom of the Soak of Ilbalintja; as yet there was no water in it, but all was dry ground. Over him the soil was red with flowers and overgrown with many grasses; and a great tnatantja was swaying above him. This tnatantja [for definition of this word, see “The Theft of the Tnatantja”] had sprung from the midst of the bed of purple flowers which grew over the soak of Ilbalintja. At its root rested the head of Karora himself: from thence it mounted up towards the sky as though it would strike the very vault of the heavens. It was a living creature, covered with a smooth skin like the skin of a man.
And Karora’s head lay at the root of the great tnatantja; he had rested thus ever from the beginning.
And Karora was thinking, and wishes and desires flashed through his mind. Bandicoots began to come out from his navel and from his arm-pits. They burst through the sod above, and sprang into life.
And now dawn was beginning to break. From all quarters men saw a new light appearing: the sun itself began to rise at Ilbalintja, and flooded everything with its light [Ilbalintja was also a Sun-totem site, as well as th site of Bandicoot-totem ritual]. Then the gurra ancestor was minded to rise, now that the sun was mounting higher. He burst through the crust that had covered him: and the gaping hole that he left behind became the Ilbalintja Soak, filled with the sweet dark juice of honeysuckle buds. The gurra ancestor rose, feeling hungry, since magical powers had gone out from his body.
As yet he feels dazed; slowly his eyelids begin to flutter, then he opens them a little. He gropes about in his dazed state; he feels a moving mass of bandicoots all around him. He is now standing more firmly on his feet. He thinks, he desires. In his great hunger he seizes two young bandicoots; he cooks them some little distance away, close to the spot where the sun is standing, in the white-hot soil heated by the sun: the sun’s fingers alone provide him with fire and hot ashes.
His hunger satisfied, his thoughts turn towards a helpmeet. But now evening is approaching over the earth; the sun hides his face with a veil of hair-string, covers his body with hair-string pendants, vanishes from the sight of men. And Karora falls asleep, stretching his arms out on both sides.
While he is asleep, something emerges from underneath his armpit in the shape of a bull-roarer [which is a piece of flat wood pointed at both ends; it has a hole drilled into one end and through this hole a length of hair-string is threaded. Often the end with the drill hole is rounded rather than pointed. Bull-roarers are twirled vigorously in ceremonies where young men are summoned by their humming or whistling sound]. It takes on human form, and grows in one night to a full-grown young man: this is his first-born son. That night Karora wakes up because he feels that his arm is being oppressed with the weight of something heavy; he sees his first-born son lying at his side, his head resting on his father’s shoulder.
Dawn breaks. Karora rises; he sounds the loud vibrating call known as raiangkintja. The son is thereby stirred into life. He rises; he dances the ceremonial dance around his father who is sitting adorned with full ceremonial designs worked in blood and feather-down. The son totters and stumbles; he is still only half-awake. The father puts his body and chest into a violent quiver; then the son places his hands upon him. The first ceremony has come to an end.
The son is now sent by his father to kill some more of the bandicoots which are playing peacefully about in the shade nearby. The son brings them back to his father who cooks them in the sunglowing soil as before, and shares the cooked meat with his son. Evening has come again, and soon both are asleep. Two more sons are born that night to the father, from out of his arm-pits; these he calls into life on he following morning by the raiangkintja call as before.
This process is repeated for many days and nights. The sons do the hunting; and the father brings into life an increasing number of sons each night—as many as fifty on some nights. But the end cannot be delayed overlong: soon father and sons have succeeded in devouring all the bandicoots which had originally sprung from Karora’s body. In their hunger the father sends his sons away on a three-days’ hunt, to scour the great Ilbalintja Plain as far as Ininta and Ekallakuna. For hours they search patiently amongst the tall white grass, in the half-light of the almost limitless expanse of mulga trees. But the vast mulga thicket is devoid of bandicoots, and they have to return. It is the third day.
The sons are returning, hungry and tired, through the great stillness. Suddenly a sound comes to their cars, a sound like that of a whirling bull-roarer. They listen; they proceed to search for the man who may be swinging it. They search and search and search. They stab with their tjurunga sticks into all bandicoot nests and resting places. Suddenly something dark and hairy darts up and is gone. A shout goes up, ‘There goes a sandhill wallaby!’ They hurl their tjurunga sticks after it and break its leg. And then they hear the words of a song coming from the injured animal:
I, Tjenterama, have now grown lame,
Yes, lame; and the purple everlastings
are clinging to me.
I am a man as you are; I am not a bandicoot.
With these words the lame Tjenterama limps away.
The astonished gurra brothers continue on their way home to their father. Soon they see him approaching. He leads them back to the soak. They sit on its edge in circles, one circle around the other, ever widening out like ripples in disturbed water. And then the great pmoara flood [of sweet juice honey from honeysuckle buds] comes from the east and engulfs them; it swirls them back into the Ilbalintja Soak.
[NOTE: Here the aged Karora remained; but his sons were carried underground by the flood to a spot in the mulga thicket (three miles away). Here they rejoined the great Tjenterama, whose leg they had unintentionally broken with their tjurunga sticks.]