Stone Songlines

I mentioned a while back how Nicholas Rothwell, a journalist who reports on events in the north of Australia,  had written an article about an Aboriginal Elder and his journey to the Spirit world.  Last week, the same writer had an article about the Oenpelli Python and some of the comments below are mine but most are his. He has a sensitivity to Aboriginal culture which is quite rare in Australia.   Here is a link to a picture of this python, it is renowned for its size (about 4 metres which is around 14-16 feet) and this pic really shows you have big this lovely snake is (I couldn't copy it for you all as the right click has been disabled):

http://www.pbase.com/gehyra/image/25432645

It is grey in colour but has a beautiful iridescence so that it shimmers like a rainbow.  It is very rare, only 30-odd pythons ahve been documented to date by Western herpetologists who have only known of the existence of this python since the early 1970s.  It has, however, long been known to Aboriginal groups around Oenpelli and the eastern edges of the Alligator River flood plain in the Northern Territory. Greg Miles a young Kakadu ranger, says: "There's a great charisma about this particular snake.  They have  a strong appeal, not just because of their elegance, and size, and the natural attraction that surrounds a mysterious python in a remote environment.  They aren't hostile to human company; they radiate a kind of acceptance.  They have a very gentle disposition, quite unlike other pythons.

Snakes have tremendous spiritual significance to Aboriginal people as the whole continent, in Aboriginal belief, is criss-crossed by winding, snake-like tracks down which ancestral beings made their way: the snake is the key creative figure in much indigenous ceremony, from the song-cyles of the desert to the dance rituals of Arnham Land.  The Rainbow Serpent is the most visible incarnation of the Dreaming: the initial creator is a serpent being whose first offpsring is the archetypal rainbow snake, Ngalyod, the same Ngalyod so often depicted in classical bark paintings with Mimih spirits, stick-thin, like attendant angels around its head, and water-lilies growing from its scales.

Ngalyod is present in waterholes: great noise heralds its approach and a dazzling light gleams in its eyes. The Oenpelli Python is known as nawaran and it is widely understood in Aboriginal lore that nawaran is profound and precious. There is one authority on python information in west Arnhem Land: 84-year-old Lofty Bardayal Nadjamerrek, Order of Australia, artist, ecologist, speaker of many languages and holder of many near-vanished traditions.  Bardayal now lives at remote Kabulwarnamyo outstation, site of a sacred bush apple tree, and surrounded by creeks and cliff formations, by pandanus and paperbarks.  He oversees the mapping of his ocuntyr and the recording of its dense array of rock art.  A particularly large rock painting of a nawaran had been found at a rock overhang at the nearby site of Kundjorlomdjorlom.

"People tell you that if you look at the snake, you can see all the colours of the rainbow, and it's true," Garde says. "I had an epiphany one day, watching an Oenpelli python in the bush as it coiled and wound: the colours came out of its body, gleaming, vivid, bright.  it was a living snake, of course, but for a moment it was also the Ngalyod, the proper rainbow serpent, there before me, more dazzling than the day."

As you've probably realised, I'm entranced by Australia and its wildlife but rest assured - I have had plenty enough encounters of the snake kind, particularly after living in semi-tropical south-east Queensland, and I have no intention - I hope - of repeating that experience. So, trust me, I will not be found scouting around in the far reaches of the Northern Territory, seeking out Oenpelli pythons.  I'm quite content to read about them and view their pics from a great distance.