The Aboriginal Indigenous communities believe that our earth and everything on and in it was created by their ancestral spirits. This is known as the Dreamtime or Dreaming. During this significant period the ancestral spirits evolved from the earth and descended from the sky to walk on the land where they created and sculptured its land formations. It was a time when the mountains, rivers, rocks, deserts, people and all flora and fauna were made. It was the spirit ancestors who provided Aboriginal people the lores, (laws) customs and codes of conduct and religious expression.
Australian Aborigines have the longest continuous cultural history of any group of people on Earth. Educated estimates date this history around 50 to 60,000 years ago.
Naturally this is incredibly important to the Aboriginal people to be kept alive and handed down through the generations. It is the basis of their culture, history, heritage, traditions and everything they believe in.
These ancestors were spirits who appeared in a variety of ways such as animals, snakes, goannas, kangaroos or land forms such as rivers etc. When their work was finished the ancestral spirits returned to the earth, the sky and into the animals, land formation, and rivers. The ancestors-beings are ‘alive’ in the spirit of Australian Aboriginals.
The Dreamtime stories are an essential part of the Aboriginal culture.