MAMARAGAN THE GREAT RAINBOW SNAKE (2025)

Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake has come to Garbarla's tribe & is eating people

Late November 1984

Stalking through the sun-dried brush, we came upon an open plain where we saw a small band of great red kangaroos feeding. There were six adult females, three or four joeys and one solitary Old Man roo, standing nearly two metres tall upon his haunches.

Marbungga and Gunbuk began covering themselves from head to foot in brown dirt, “To keep in the man-spells.” As they told me later, “Kangaroos have weak eyesight and can’t easily distinguish between stationary objects, but they have a very powerful sense of smell.”

I remained behind as instructed and watched as my fellow tribesmen slowly began to circle around the small herd. Crawling along on their bellies upon the brown earth, Marbungga and Gunbuk crept forward, dragging their hunting spears behind them. Every few metres they paused and waited a few seconds, or even minutes, before moving on again. In this way it took them almost an hour to crawl from over a hundred metres away, to less than ten metres away from where the kangaroo herd grazed.

On the other hand it had taken Nanguru little more than ten minutes to circle around the back of the herd, moving stealthily, head down, through the brush outside the clearing. He was able to move more confidently than the other two, being outside the range of vision of the herd, behind the tall grass and shrubs. When at last the other two were in place, Nanguru began to close in upon the herd until he was only twenty metres away. Then he deliberately trod on a small twig to make it snap.

The adult kangaroos instantly stiffened to attention, their dog-like heads held high in the air, listening; the head of the Old Man roo went quickly round to Nanguru’s direction. Leaning backward slightly, balancing upon his powerful tail, the roo surveyed the terrain, sniffing lightly at the air, while his harem continued to listen and their joeys continued nipping unconcernedly at tender sprouts of grass.

Catching Nanguru’s scent, the roo shrieked a warning to his harem. Quickly the joeys dived headfirst into their mothers’ pouches and the herd leapt into flight, heading straight toward where Marbungga and Gunbuk lay in wait.

Leaping to their feet the two hunters loaded their three-metre long spears into their woomeras and launched the spears almost in the same action.

Marbungga’s spear felled a fleeing kangaroo but Gunbuk’s weapon narrowly missed its mark. Before the two hunters could reload their spear-launchers, the herd had moved past them and was bounding toward where I lay concealed in the tall grass a hundred metres behind the others.

Jumping to my feet I raised my own weapon, a large hunting boomerang, swung my right arm back and at the same time collided with an onrushing kangaroo. My aim was knocked off by the collision so that my weapon went astray and narrowly missed decapitating Marbungga, who ducked under the large boomerang, and without missing a step launched a spear from his loaded woomera and felled the roo that I had collided with.

Marbungga’s spear passed clean through the young kangaroo and through a small Joey in her pouch, pinning mother and baby alike to the ground. The Joey was killed instantly, but the mother struggled valiantly against the thick spear, tugging at it with her small front paws, biting at it with her strong teeth, while her powerful back feet kicked furiously at the ground, until Marbungga rushed across to slit her throat with his hunting knife.

The Old Man roo stopped and turned back toward us, anger flashed in his steely grey eyes, his nostrils quivered in rage. He obviously planned to make a bid to rescue his mates, but seeing that it was already too late, he turned and fled, to our relief, leaving us to begin preparing the two carcases for the long trip home. Gunbuk and Nanguru each took one end of the spear with which Marbungga had pinned the kangaroo to the ground, then, with Nanguru in the lead, they set off back to camp, each holding one end of the spear over his left shoulder. They travelled slowly to conserve energy as they had many kilometres to travel. Marbungga pulled the spear from the flank of the second roo, then speared it from backside to neck so that he and I could carry it home in tandem fashion also.

We had hardly set out for home though, when the sky began to darken and the air was filled with an angry sibilation, like the hissing of a million death adders all at once, which gradually increased in volume until we had to cover our ears, writhing from the physical agony in our eardrums, which felt as though they were about to burst.

The four of us stood still for a few seconds, then Gunbuk said, “Rainbow Serpent!”

Although he cupped his hands over his mouth and shrieked, his words were only just audible above the angry hissing that filled the sky. Still the others obviously knew what he was talking about and all three took off as fast as their legs would carry them, still carrying the two speared kangaroos between them: Poor Gunbuk having to carry the back end of one spear over each shoulder, after I had dropped my end.

While the others fled, I stood rooted to the spot watching in fascination as circles of blue, purple, green, yellow, orange, and brown undulated across the sky, reflecting the twilight sun’s rays back to earth in blinding kaleidoscopic bursts of colour, like the flashing of a strobe light at a discotheque.

“Rainbow Serpent!” Gunbuk had said, and even I knew enough about Aboriginal mythology to know that he was referring to the Great Rainbow Snake. Standing in the Victorian outback, all alone, with the roaring hissing in my ears, I was torn between my natural inclination to run after the others and an overpowering curiosity.

I had been born thirty-five years earlier, in 1949, Garbarla Bulilka, the son of a tribal Gin, Debbie Bulilka, and a travelling State Electricity Commission linesman, Edward Hunt. For a year or so we all lived together near my tribal village, then, forced to move north and unable to take Debbie and baby Garbarla with him, my father had promised to return for us as soon as possible. But we heard nothing more of him for over ten years, until at the age of eleven, I had been given to my white grandmother, Bettina Hunt, after my father had been electrocuted to death at work. Against my will I was taken from my black mother Debbie, and raised as Joseph Hunt.

Now back among my own people, I found myself torn. On the one hand my white blood and western education told me that there is no such thing as a giant snake that can fly, so I should stand my ground. On the other hand my black blood told me that of course there is a Great Rainbow Snake. And as I continued to stare upward, the varicoloured flashing lights rapidly began to take on the shape of a giant rainbow-coloured serpent swimming through the shimmering summer air, as it began slowly to dive down toward me.

Finally my black half won out and I turned tail and fled after my three tribesmen.

After tracking the footsteps of the fleeing hunters for hours, I finally reached the outer fringe of the village, where I saw women and Elders sitting around on the brown dirt, grinding grain against rocks, or working pelts, preparing them for tanning.

Toward the centre of the village, I found Gunbuk, Marbungga, and Nanguru standing around by a corrugated-iron hut, talking rapidly in our native tongue to half a dozen grey-haired Elders. Although I had not been able to speak a word of the language when I had returned to my tribe nearly two years ago, I was now quite fluent so that at my approach the nine men instantly fell silent.

Nanguru tried to lighten the mood by telling the Elders how I had nearly decapitated Marbungga with my hunting boomerang hours earlier. They all laughed loudly and one wizened old man, who looked well over a hundred, said, “No good eating there, Marbungga tough meat.” He poked the young man playfully in the ribs with a bony finger and they all began to cackle again, although I could tell by the look in their eyes that they were all terribly afraid of something.

“Back in the bush ...?” I began.

“Not back in the bush,” corrected Nanguru, “over by the fire,” pointing to where the two kangaroos were being baked in hot ashes at the other end of the camp.

“Time to eat,” said Gunbuk, my half-brother. “We hunt again tomorrow.”

Later, after the others had left the fire site, I confronted my half-brother and asked him about what we had seen while hunting. He was reluctant to speak at first but I refused to be put off.

“Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake,” he finally said.

“Then why were you all so afraid?” I asked. “I thought that the Rainbow Serpent is the Giver of Life, the Creator?”

“Mamaragan is the creator,” agreed Gunbuk. “His body contained the first Aborigines and also created the features of the land by tunnelling from one waterhole to another. But he is also the Destroyer. Dream-Time legend says Mamaragan spends the dry season deep underground. In wet season he lives in thunder clouds in the sky. Any interference with his tunnels will cause Mamaragan to rise up and destroy the culprits, or cause water to overflow from waterholes to flood the whole country. Mamaragan appears in the sky as an immense, brightly coloured serpent. The rainbow is a sign someone has broken tribal law and Mamaragan is going to come down from the sky to gobble them up!”

Fascinated by the idea that an ancient Aboriginal legend may have actually come to life in the 1980s, I tried to question him further, but after his brief moment of openness he suddenly became reticent again, and the others refused to even confirm what Gunbuk had told me, when I tried to question them ....

“I’ve run into a brick wall with my own people,” said Garbarla, finally finishing his monologue, looking across at Ernie Singleton, a tall, raven-haired man, Garbarla's age, who sat on the edge of his seat, listening with rapt attention to his friend’s tale. After his legal abduction by his grandmother in 1960, Joseph Garbarla (as he had come to think of himself) had been raised in white society in Queensland and educated to Bachelor of Arts standard, doing majors in economics and sociology, before returning to Victoria in early 1983. He had been pleasantly surprised to find that the white-supremacist attitudes of Queensland did not exist in his home state any longer. So he was able to get employment at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology, teaching TAFE (Technical and Further Education) students in the evenings four evenings a week -- having been offered a full-time position teaching in the day, which he had turned down so that he could live with his tribe on their reservation just outside Pettiwood (four or five kilometres from Merridale where Ernie Singleton lived) and try to fit back into tribal life by day, while teaching in the evening. Initially he had taught only economics and sociology, but from the start of the 1984 season in February, he had been granted permission to introduce a course of Aboriginal studies into the TAFE curriculum -- although he had been expressly forbidden to use the word Koori (the political name certain Aboriginal groups use) anywhere in the course. Having spent so much of his life in white society, Garbarla knew that unlike the Aborigines who had unquestioning faith in both religion and the supernatural, the white man had little faith in his religion and none in the supernatural. So, he fully expected Ernie to scoff at his tale of a rainbow-coloured serpent writhing across the sky.

Instead, Ernie sat there in silence, staring at his friend, not knowing what to say; not knowing what to believe. Eighteen months ago he would certainly have rejected Garbarla’s story out-of-hand, like most whites he would have been simply unable to believe in a gigantic flying serpent. But eighteen months ago his attitude toward the supernatural had undergone a painful transformation. Literally painful, since in early February 1983 Ernie (who had hardly had a day’s illness in his life up until then) had been overwhelmed by horrendous aches and pains in his limbs and his back; agony that seemed to penetrate right through to his bones. At their worst, the pangs felt as though every bone in his body had been shattered -- although he knew that this wasn’t the case, because even at their worst he was able to move around, though at first uncertain whether movement helped or made things worse.

By the middle of February Ernie had almost despaired (along with his family doctor) of ever finding the cause of his near-debilitating illness. Then one evening, unable to face lying around the house any longer, he had wandered out onto the back porch. The hot summer night air seemed to strangely revive him and almost immediately the aches began to vanish from his body. Exhilarated by his new-found vigour, he had started to run across the farmhouse-yard, easily bounding over the metre-high, chain-link fence to start toward the forest a quarter of a kilometre away. The further he ran, the faster he seemed to run, and the better he felt. It was only when he stopped to drink at a narrow tributary of the Yannan River that his euphoria had been shattered: looking up at him had not been the reflexion of a human being, but rather that of a large, black wolf!

Ernie had realised then that the reason for his aches and pains had been supernatural not natural: a sort of change-of-life process whereby his body had to adjust itself to the requirements of physically changing two or three nights each month from man to wolf, then back again. For the last eighteen months Ernie had struggled to come to grips with the fact that he was a werewolf!

In July 1983 (by which time the aches and pains associated with his lycanthropy had all but vanished) he had started to do TAFE classes a couple of evenings a week at the Glen Hartwell Institute of Technology. In 1983 he had done courses in woodwork and pottery. But he had noticed the young, articulate Aboriginal lecturer, Joseph Garbarla, around the campus, and on a whim in February 1984 he had dropped his old courses and changed across to Garbarla’s course in Aboriginal studies.

Although at first their relationship had been on a strictly teacher-student basis, the two men had quickly recognised each other as like souls. Both intelligent, lonely men. So, the two men had quickly become firm friends, which was why Ernie was now the one white man whom Garbarla felt that he could go to with the story of his encounter with the Great Rainbow Snake.

Ernie considered Garbarla’s tale a moment, not quite certain what his friend expected of him. “What ... what exactly were you hoping that I could do to help ...?” he finally asked.

Taken aback by the question, Garbarla realised that he didn’t really know what he had expected of Ernie. After his experience the day before he had needed to seek Ernie out to tell him what he had seen, but now when asked straight out he didn’t really know how he had expected Ernie to help. After a moment he said, “I know this is asking a Hell of a lot to ask ... But if you could get someone to look after your sheep station for a few weeks, I’d be happy to have you stay with me at my tribal village ... The end of year break has just started at G.H.I.T., so I can take off up to eight weeks right now.”

Ernie considered the proposition for a moment. There was no real problem getting someone to look after the station -- he had helped Brian Horne and his parents on occasions when bumper crops on their Cherrytree Farm had meant a shortage of pickers to bring in the fruit before it spoilt on the trees, and he knew that he could rely on Brian to repay the favour.

Also, although he hesitated because he knew that tonight he was due to metamorphose into the black wolf, on the other hand (still not really knowing what his werewolf taint involved) he could not help wondering whether his werewolf senses might somehow allow him to help Garbarla as the black wolf in ways that he never could help as plain Ernie Singleton.

‘Besides it’ll help me to clear my head a bit!’ he thought. Aloud he said, “All right, I’ll just have to stop in and see if Brian will look after the farm.”


As Ernie had expected, Brian quickly agreed to look after the sheep station for a few weeks. So, by late afternoon, Ernie and Garbarla were ready to set out in Ernie’s brown Range Rover.

‘What am I letting myself in for?’ wondered Ernie as they said their goodbyes to Brian and his retarded brother Warren.

Twenty minutes later as they were driving through the township of Pettiwood (a town of only fifty houses) Ernie was still having his doubts about his new adventure.

So engrossed was he in his thoughts and self doubts, that Ernie almost drove straight into the Aboriginal village, despite Garbarla’s advice to park the Range Rover just outside the reservation.

“We’re here, Ernie,” said Garbarla for at least the third time.

“Here? What?” said Ernie, waking from his reverie at last, to drive the Rover over to a spot that his friend was pointing to.

At the reserve, Ernie was in for two shocks: Firstly, not quite knowing what he had expected of the reservation, he was surprised to find that it was quite large. With nearly two hundred lean-toes and one- or two-room corrugated-iron huts, it was many times larger than the nearby white township of Pettiwood. Secondly, walking along the dirt path, among a large collection of near naked men and women who had gathered to stare at this strange new arrival, he was soon aroused by the sight of naked breasts and female buttocks.

As the children in particular swarmed around the two men, eager to get a good look at the newcomer, Garbarla took Ernie by one arm to guide him toward the centre of the village. With seemingly half the villagers following them, Ernie and Garbarla finally stopped at a rare three-room iron-hut.

Leading Ernie into the hut, Garbarla introduced his friend to the five inhabitants: Debbie Bulilka (Garbarla’s mother), a tall, pretty chocolate-coloured woman in her late fifties; Mayuldjumbajum, a tall, grey-haired elder commonly known as Jumjum; Garbarla’s half-brother Gunbuk, and two of the tribal hunters, Ulagang Gang and Jalburgul Gul, all three of whom were tall, lean young men with barely a kilo of spare fat on their bodies (due to the rigours of tribal life).

“Looks like we’ve got two white fellas to look after now,” joked Ulagang Gang as he was introduced to Ernie.

Although Garbarla laughed along with the others, Ernie could tell that the remark cut deep: uncertain of his own place in the tribe, Garbarla desperately wanted to fit back into the life that he had been snatched from as a child twenty-odd years before.

They had arrived at the village around dinner time, so that after the brief introductions Ernie was guided toward a large outdoors cook-fire, where two kangaroos (the spoils of that day’s hunting) were cooking.

Normally Ernie would have shied away from eating roo meat but seated around the open fire with all the others, he was too entranced by the sight of naked lubras (some very beautiful; many of the younger women astute enough to be aware of the effect they were having on him -- with one or two openly flirting with him to the cackles of amusement of the whole tribe) to even be aware of what he was eating.

Grinning at his friend’s discomfort, Garbarla advised, “Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to it ... Anyway, from tomorrow we’ll be spending most of our days out hunting.”

In spite of his reservations, Ernie settled down for the night on a thin mattress on the dirt floor of the two-room iron hut that Garbarla shared with his mother Debbie and his half-brother Gunbuk. He had almost fallen asleep when in the distant came a tremendous rumbling of thunder crashing in the night sky.

Despite the humid summer conditions, Ernie fully expected the village to soon be inundated with rain. But to his surprise and relief, although the thunder crashed throughout the night, the rain held off.

Fearful of metamorphosing into the black wolf in front of the others, Ernie had managed to get them to allow him to bed down in the front room (the living room) by himself, while the others slept in the back bedroom. Using the heat of the summer as an excuse he slept in the nude, so that after his transformation he would not be held up by the struggle to escape from his night-clothes.

But despite the thundering sky he soon fell asleep and awoke at dawn, perplexed to find that his transformation had not occurred as it should have done. ‘What’s wrong?’ he thought, hurriedly dressing as he heard the others starting to move about in the back room. ‘Maybe I have to be at the farmhouse before the shape shifting can happen?’

As Garbarla and the others joined him, Ernie thought, ‘If that’s all it takes to get rid of this accursed disease, then all I have to do to return to a normal life is to sell the station and move to Glen Hartwell or LePage!’

Buoyed up by this new found hope, Ernie eagerly helped with the preparations for the day-long hunting party. And even managed to get through breakfast without being (too) distracted by the naked lubras (some of whom seemed a little put out by his sudden indifference).

Straight after breakfast (cold scraps of meat left over from the night before mixed with tubers and roots dug up by the lubras) Ernie, Garbarla, Gunbuk, Wururuma, Ulagang Gang, and a youth named Judawali set off, carrying long thin spears, woomeras, and large hunting boomerangs.


They had been stalking a herd of small grey kangaroos for hours across the brown dirt plains, forced to travel slowly, using the thin, tall Native Australian grass for cover, when to their surprise Wururuma (who was their leader) suddenly came to a halt a hundred metres or so ahead of where Ernie and the others followed.

“What’s wrong?” called out Ernie, grateful for the rest, receiving a sharp look from Ulagang Gang and a “shush” signal from Garbarla.

Wururuma, on the other hand, didn’t even acknowledge the careless outburst. Instead he seemed hypnotised by something at his feet.

After a few moments the others sprinted forward to catch up and saw what held their leader so captivated: a deep canal sunk more than twenty metres into the earth, like a gigantic dry riverbed.

Although impressed by the sight, Ernie didn’t understand what held the others so entranced. Until Garbarla said, “That’s impossible ... It wasn’t here yesterday!” Then as Ernie looked round at him, “I’m telling you Ernie, it wasn’t here yesterday!”

“But it must have been!” protested Ernie.

“It wasn’t!” insisted Garbarla. “I might not be an expert tracker yet like Wururuma or Ulagang Gang, but I’ve been back among my tribal people long enough now to have picked up more than a passing knowledge of tracking and the local geography. And I’m telling you Ernie, this is where we hunted a roo herd a few days ago, and there definitely was no dry riverbed here then!”

Ernie might have argued the point further but Gunbuk and Judawali quickly agreed with Garbarla and he was forced to concede to himself, ‘They can’t all be wrong about something as major as the location of a great riverbed!

‘But how could it have been formed in a few days?’ thought Ernie. Yet even as he asked himself, his mind returned to the sound of thunderous roaring of the night before. At the time he had naturally assumed that it was thunder, but now he thought, ‘It was this! The sound of this great canal being carven into the plains. But how? By what?’

Looking down into the canal, which was sunk twenty metres and extended for as far as the eye could see in either direction, he thought, ‘Nothing on Earth could dig a tunnel like this in a single night!’

Wururuma and Judawali had already started down the sloping side of the canal, before Ernie and the others realised what they were doing.

Gunbuk, Garbarla, and Ernie were all opposed to exploring the mysterious canal: Gunbuk out of a desire to continue on the trail of the kangaroo herd (which had clearly continued along the top of the canal); Garbarla and Ernie out of a mutual terror that neither of them could have explained, but which they both felt for the canal. But Ulagang Gang, Wururuma and Judawali were all intent upon exploring the tunnel and would not be put off by the exhortations of the others.

After futilely screaming his protests at the three men from the top of the “riverbed” for a few moments, finally, heaving a deep sigh of frustration, Gunbuk started down the sloping dirt side after them. After a few more seconds’ hesitation, Ernie and Garbarla started down also.

Unlike a real riverbed which would have been cracked and brittle, the canal floor was solid brown earth. Still hard-packed, it seemed almost as though a giant ice cream scoop had scooped out the canal without chipping or cracking the remaining dirt.

After a moment’s discussion at the bottom, Wururuma, Ulagang Gang and Judawali set off to explore in one direction; Gunbuk, Garbarla, and Ernie in the other.

Ernie’s team had hardly set out when from behind them came a tremendous rumbling, and the ground began to shake beneath their feet. ‘Earthquake!’ thought Ernie, looking wistfully toward the surface above them. A mere twenty metres away, it looked kilometres to Ernie (terrified by the thought of being buried alive in the riverbed), an inaccessible distance as they were pitched around like small boats on a raging sea.

As the three men were sent flying to the ground Ernie’s thoughts of an earthquake were replaced by an even more frightening notion, ‘A flood!’ he thought. In the outback of Australia, sometimes riverbeds lie dry as a bone for years or even decades, before flash rains fill the river to overflowing -- sometimes in a matter of only minutes, as though the heavens were hell bent on making up for the previous years of drought. ‘My God, we’ll all be drowned!’ thought Ernie, realising that anyone caught exploring a dry riverbed in a flash flood would be washed away or drowned before they could climb the bank to safety.

“A flood!” Ernie shouted to the others, as he went across to help Garbarla with his half-brother Gunbuk, who had badly sprained an ankle when he had been pitched to the ground.

“Mamaragan!” responded Garbarla and Gunbuk as one.

“This is no time ...!” Ernie shouted, starting to chide them for their foolish native superstitions. But the looks of stark terror on their faces silenced him.

Looking round to where they were both staring behind him, Ernie saw the truth of their claim: Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake itself filled the canal behind them: a gargantuan diamond-headed serpent, whose dinner plate-sized scales flashed red, blue, green, brown, yellow, and orange in the sunlight. More than thirty metres tall (its back protruding well above the top of the canal) and many hundreds, perhaps even thousands of metres in length.

The three men stood rooted to the spot from terror at the apparition, thankful for the gulf of nearly half a kilometre that separated them from the monstrous reptile as its great head slowly turned round to stare in their direction. Its green eyes flared like emeralds and its great mouth dropped open to reveal ivory fangs as long as trees; its long forked-tongue lashed out more than a hundred metres, making Ernie instinctively jump backward in fear -- although he knew that snakes lash out their tongues to scent the air.

For a moment Mamaragan looked as though he were about to head in their direction.

But then Wururuma and Ulagang Gang (who had both been standing rigid from fright directly beneath the towering head of the serpent) made the fatal mistake of trying to run for it: Ulagang Gang straight forward (toward Ernie’s group); Wururuma toward the sloping side of the canal, furiously trying to scramble up the bank to safety, but making no progress as the loose dirt continually gave way beneath his scrambling feet.

In an instant the serpent lashed out its huge head and plucked up Ulagang Gang (who seemed a tiny morsel for such a vast creature) who it raised screaming into the air then rapidly swallowed through its enormous jaws. Then, as Ernie, Garbarla, Gunbuk, and Judawali began slowly reversing back down the canal, hoping to reach the next turning a few hundred metres away to escape from sight (and hopefully from mind) of the giant reptile, the serpent’s attention was distracted by the futile scrambling of Wururuma, who quickly followed Ulagang Gang down the monster’s throat.

Even as they reached the turning, the four men heard the thunderous movement of the serpent as it started forward through the channel like an express train.

“We’re not going to make it!” cried Garbarla as they started to scale the side of the canal as slowly as they dared, to prevent themselves from being the victims of the dirt slides that Wururuma had caused in his frantic scrambling.

They had almost reached the top of the canal when Ernie started to feel faint and realised that his metamorphosis to the black wolf was about to happen. ‘It can’t happen now!’ he thought in despair, afraid that the transformation would leave him at the mercy of the unspeakable monster roaring through the tunnel -- now almost on top of them. ‘It’s still an hour before sunset!’ he thought looking up at the sky. Although his transformations had happened during twilight once or twice before, the most common time for the shape shifting was between 11:00 PM and 2:00 AM

But, as the others moved ahead of him (unaware in their terror that he had fallen behind), Ernie realised that the change was indeed taking place and quickly stripped out of his clothes rather than be caught in them in wolf form.

As the rainbow serpent came into view again, Ernie looked back toward his fleeing friends tempted (even in wolf guise) to flee after them. However, he realised that they were moving too slowly (held up by the necessity of half carrying the injured Gunbuk) and would soon be overtaken and devoured by the gargantuan reptile. So, despite his own fear of the serpent, Ernie realised that it was up to him as the black wolf to lead Mamaragan away from the others.

After a moment’s hesitation, Ernie reversed direction and raced back down the sloping side of the canal, across the bottom of the tunnel (narrowly being missed as the diamond-shaped head lashed out at him) then rapidly up the opposite bank (his four canine legs able to race up the dirt siding whereas two human legs couldn’t) to draw the serpent away from the fleeing men, further into the arid plains, far from civilisation. Having spent most of the day hunting further and further from the village, Ernie knew that they could not be too far distant from Willamby township.

Although he had lived on the Melbourne to Willamby rail line all of his life, Willamby was almost as far from Ernie’s home town of Merridale as Melbourne was, and therefore was every bit as alien to him. But he realised that unlike Pettiwood, Willamby was a large township (at least by country standards) and so, although wanting to lead the rainbow serpent away from his friends, he could not risk the lives of the two thousand or so residents of the town. So his only choice was to travel round and round the open plains, in huge circles, hoping to steer the monstrous reptile as far away from all human habitats as possible.

As he raced along through the advancing darkness, Ernie was grateful for his werewolf senses which enabled him to see without difficulty in the dark, but less so for his heightened sense of hearing which made the rainbow serpent’s thunderous movement behind him seem even closer than it really was as it tunnelled its way along behind him, boring out new canals for itself as it pursued the fleeing black wolf.

With a flash of life-saving inspiration, Ernie soon realised that the less often he crossed existing channels, the more likely he was to stay out of reach of the monster, since it travelled considerably faster along existing canals, than when it had to bore new tunnels to move along.

For hours the black wolf raced across the night plains, until he was aching all over from fatigue. Only the memory of the Rainbow Snake effortlessly gulping down Ulagang Gang and Wururuma allowed him to keep going at all. His original intention had been to circle round and round the flatbush outside Pettiwood, Upton, and Briarwood. But as the night wore on he started to double back, heading past Pettiwood, East Merridale, then on toward Merridale.

Doing his best not to be unsettled by the unearthly steam-shovel dredging of the Great Rainbow Snake behind him, the black wolf had started to become relieved that the deafening roaring at least gave him warning of how close the serpent was behind him.

When dawn finally approached, it seemed to the black wolf as though he had been running for days not merely hours, with the giant reptile thundering along in pursuit. By the time that he realised that the snake had finally given up the chase (either tiring of the “game” or else afraid of full daylight), he had already reached the outskirts of the thick forest of wattles, pines, and ghost gums around Merridale. Not wanting to metamorphose back in the nude out in the open, since there was no way that he could make it back to Pettiwood in the next quarter hour or so, even if he could have explained his nudity to Garbarla and the Aboriginal tribe, he headed toward his sheep station instead.

Coming to the edge of the forest at last, the black wolf found himself at the back of a large sheep paddock on the perimeter of his farm. He started to lope across the paddock, heading toward the base of the small rise upon which the farmhouse sat, when at last he transformed back into human form.

Heading around the back of the farmhouse, he began to scale the steep incline with great difficulty due to his fatigue and raging hunger (which had begun to assail Ernie the moment that he had returned to human form). Although the house was less than a hundred metres above the level of the paddock, it seemed as though he were scaling Mount Kosciusko as he dragged himself painfully up the slope, using small saplings to pull himself along.

At the top of the rise he paused for a moment from fatigue, then afraid of collapsing and being found naked outside, he half climbed, half fell over the metre-high chain-link fence that circled the farmhouse yard. Keeping close to the white, weatherboard house, he started around toward the back porch and almost came face-to-face with Brian Horne, who was coming out through the back doorway.

‘Oh, Hell!’ thought Ernie, quickly back-pedalling.

Fortunately Brian was looking back toward the kitchen as he shut the door, so that Ernie had a split second to back out of view before he turned around.

Running as quietly as his aching limbs allowed, Ernie raced back round to the far side of the house, where he was safely out of sight -- for the moment. Stopping at his bedroom window, he took a moment to peer into the room to make certain that it was empty. Then, with some difficulty, he pried up the window and painfully dragged himself through into the bedroom.

He lay on the bedroom floor for nearly ten minutes panting furiously to recover his breath. Then, finally, he dragged himself to his feet, stumbled into some clothes, before heading down to the kitchen at the other end of the house.

At the kitchen he took a quick look out through the window to watch Brian feeding the station dogs, then set about preparing his own vast breakfast: the veritable feast that he always needed to quench his famine-like hunger the morning after his metamorphosis to the black wolf -- but never more so than that morning after his all-night race across the Victorian countryside with Mamaragan in hot pursuit.

After a forty-five minute meal of everything from bacon and eggs to cornflakes, salad, toast, and cold roast meat, he was finally sated and ready to depart. When, to his consternation, in walked Brian Horne -- having fed the dogs and chickens and now ready for his own breakfast.

“When did you get back?” asked Brian cheerfully as he strode across to put the kettle on the stove. “I didn’t expect to see you for a few more weeks?”

Trying to think quickly, but never a very good liar, Ernie said, “I just stopped back to pick up a few things I meant to take along with me.”

Looking around Brian asked, “Where’s Joe? Up in the lounge room?”

“Ah ... no. No, he dropped me off then drove back to the reservation,” lied Ernie, realising that he’d have to explain how he got back from Pettiwood without the Range Rover. “He was going to come back for me around noon ... But if you don’t mind dropping me off there, we can save him the trouble?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Brian shrugging, a little perplexed by Ernie’s sudden materialisation at the farmhouse, but thinking, ‘Well, it’s his station, I can hardly demand that he tells me what he’s doing here, if he doesn’t want me to know!’


As they drove back to the reservation just beyond Pettiwood, Ernie realised that Brian half suspected that he had actually walked back and knew that he must be dying of curiosity to know why. ‘I suppose I just should be grateful that he didn’t see he starkers!’ thought Ernie. ‘I’d have never been able to explain what I needed so urgently from the farmhouse that I’d walk back all the way from Pettiwood, without stopping to put some clothes on first!’

When they arrived back at the village Joseph Garbarla was ecstatic to see Ernie again. “My God, I didn’t know you weren’t with us till we got back to the reservation,” he explained after Brian had departed again. “I almost had a heart attack, thinking that Mamaragan had eaten you.” He stopped and swallowed heavily, thinking of his two friends who had been devoured by the Great Rainbow Snake.

“Despite their fear of Mamaragan, I managed to cajole Judawali and half a dozen other hunters into going back out with me to search round for you. We scoured around for hours, terrified by the distant crashing of the rainbow serpent, without finding any trace of you ... So naturally we suspected the worst.”

As they walked through the jumble of corrugated iron sided huts and lean-toes, Ernie realised that Garbarla was waiting for an explanation. After a moment he said, “I guess when we all started running I just took off in a different direction to the rest of you.” Not completely lying he added, “I ran all night long, till I found myself back at my sheep station, then got a lift back here.”

“I’m glad that you did,” said Garbarla clasping Ernie in a warm embrace. “There aren’t too many people who would have had the guts to come back after what we all saw last night.”

Expecting to be led back to the hut of Garbarla’s mother, Debbie Bulilka, Ernie was surprised when his friend led him off in a different direction altogether. Passing swarms of naked children and elderly lubras weaving grass mats and grinding maize in wooden bowls, they finally arrived at the three-room hut of tall, spindly Mayuldjumbajum, who was as effusive in his greeting as Garbarla had been.

To Ernie’s astonishment, the old man hugged him to his chest with surprising strength, obviously both genuinely pleased to see him alive and well, and also relieved that they did not have to try to explain to the white authorities that a local sheep farmer had been eaten by an Aboriginal Dream-Time legend.

While Jumjum was still hugging Ernie half to death (or so it seemed to Ernie), Garbarla and the old man began talking in their native dialect. After a few minutes Jumjum released Ernie (to his great relief) and began gesticulating wildly with his arms, shouting in anger at Garbarla.

Although he could not understand the language, even Ernie knew that the old man was ordering them to leave, when Jumjum pointed repeatedly at the open doorway, screaming at first Garbarla, then Ernie himself.

‘So much for my warm welcome back!’ thought Ernie as Garbarla took him by one arm and led him outside.

As they walked out into the dirt “streets” of the village, Garbarla explained, “After the death of Wururuma and Ulagang Gang last night, we told what had happened to Jumjum and other Elders of the tribe, and they have called for a special corroboree for tonight. To discuss what happened to the hunting party, and what, if anything, we can do about it.”

“So that’s what all the shouting was about.”

“No, all that was decided late last night. The shouting was about my suggestion that you should be allowed to attend the corroboree ....”

While his friend kept walking, Ernie stopped to think about that for a moment, wondering whether he should feel offended. “What’s wrong with me attending?” he finally asked, running a few paces to catch up.

“Don’t take this personally ... But the Aborigines take the religious side of the corroboree very seriously. A corroboree is sort of a cross between a prayer-meeting at church and a meeting of the local council. The sanctity of the religious side must be protected above all else. The idea of a white man attending a corroboree is akin to blasphemy in your religion.”

“Oh, I see,” said Ernie, joking although genuinely annoyed at his exclusion. “They’re racists!”

Garbarla chuckled a little nervously, then said, “Anyway, we’ll soon get our chance to see the damage done to the countryside by Mamaragan last night. When we go out hunting today.”

But when they got back to Debbie Bulilka’s hut, they found the middle-aged lubra standing by the door grinning nervously at their approach. Debbie and Garbarla exchanged words in their native tongue -- the initial pleasantries soon changing to an angry exchange. Finally, as Debbie turned and stormed back into the metal-sided hut, Garbarla explained to Ernie, “We’ve been demoted.”

“Demoted ...? What ...?”

“We’ve been taken off the hunting party. Gunbuk and the others have already gone out.”

Looking stunned, Ernie asked, “What? Can they do that?”

“Oh yes they can do it all right. The Aboriginal society is a commune set-up; everyone has to be prepared to help out wherever they’re needed most. Even the most experienced hunters like Gunbuk and Judawali can be made to do menial work for a while, if that’s where they’re needed most ... And let’s face it, you and I are hardly the most expert of hunters with either spear or boomerang.”

“That’s true enough,” agreed Ernie, “ but I thought that the whole point of me being here at all was so that I could go out on the daily hunting parties?”

Nodding his agreement, Garbarla said, “That was my whole point to wanting you here. But since I didn’t get the permission of the Elders first, they’re hardly bound by what I want.”

“But why have they taken us off hunting?”

“Officially, Debbie says that they have moved us because the Elders want my re-education into tribal life to include other skills besides hunting and tracking.”

“And unofficially?”

“Unofficially, they are punishing us both for what happened last night.”

“Punishing us? For what ...?”

“They blame us for the deaths of Ulagang Gang and Wururuma, accuse us both of stirring up trouble.”

“But that doesn’t make any sense!” protested Ernie angrily, drawing sidelong glances from two elderly lubras passing by.

“No,” agreed Garbarla, “except that as I told you earlier, the Aborigines take their religion very seriously. Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake, has always been more-or-less a passive deity to my people. Like in many religious pantheons, Mamaragan has the dual role of creator and destroyer: he punishes by gobbling up any Aborigines who break tribal law. However, his main role is as the creator: his main function is to protect and watch over my people. For Mamaragan to suddenly turn on the Aborigines as he did last night, some great violation of tribal law must have been involved ...” He paused for a moment to gauge Ernie’s reaction, before adding, “Such as two white fellas like you and I learning secrets of tribal life ....”

“But that’s nonsense!” protested Ernie. “Whatever that monstrous creature we encountered last night was, it sure as Hell wasn’t an Aboriginal deity! Maybe it’s the basis of the Dream-Time legend of the Great Rainbow Snake, if the Aborigines have known about these ... these giant serpents for thousands of years and have mistaken them for supernatural creatures. But it’s no more a god than I am!”

“Maybe not,” said Garbarla, although his tone surprised Ernie who thought:

‘Surely with your western education you can’t really believe that this monster is some kind of a god?’

“But you’ll never convince the village Elders that Mamaragan is anything but an authentic deity. And as long as they believe that, we’re both banished from the hunting parties for offending their god,” continued Garbarla.

So instead of helping with the hunting that day, Ernie found himself sitting on the dirt with three enormously fat, grey-haired lubras who did their best to teach him the intricacies of weaving large grass mats -- occasionally shaking their heads in dismay or muttering their exasperation at his feeble efforts.

Garbarla on the other hand was assigned the slightly more prized job of helping to manufacture large hunting boomerangs. Unlike other native races who use fire to help straighten or bend wood to shapes that they need for weapons, the Australian Aborigines simplify matters by having the women and children devote great amounts of their time to searching through the forest floor to locate fallen tree branches in roughly the correct boomerang shape, then use fire to burn away most of the excess thickness, before using stone-chisels to scrape the boughs down to the desired size.

That evening Ernie and Debbie Bulilka (who as a woman was forbidden to attend a man’s corroboree -- although the tribal women were allowed to hold their own corroborees, from which men were in turn forbidden) waited impatiently outside the front door of Debbie’s corrugated-iron hut, looking toward a great circle of blue gum trees, a hundred metres past the village heading toward the brown dirt desert, where the men of the village sat around before a eucalyptus fire at the corroboree. They heard a lot of shouting in Aboriginal and Debbie translated some of the debate into English but they were too far away from the meeting for Debbie to make out more than a few smatterings.

It was nearly midnight (and Ernie had started to fear that his transformation to the black wolf would occur before Garbarla returned), when at last the meeting ended. Seeing Garbarla stalking toward the hut at the front of a large group of men, Debbie and Ernie both asked, “Well?”

Ignoring his mother and best friend Garbarla stalked straight past them and stormed into the back room of the hut, where he slammed his fist hard against the corrugated iron wall, making Ernie and Debbie both jump.

“Bad news,” suggested Debbie, putting Ernie’s thoughts to words.

As Gunbuk approached the hut Debbie questioned him at length in their native tongue, then explained to Ernie, “Nothing. The Elders say to do nothing about Mamaragan”

“What?” asked Ernie, not certain if he had heard correctly.

“Elders say to do nothing,” repeated Debbie. “Then Mamaragan forgive Aborigines for breaking tribal law and all will be like before again.”

“In other words we shut our eyes and hope it goes away!” shouted Joseph Garbarla from the back room of the hut, slamming his fist into the iron wall again.

Not knowing what to do or say to comfort his friend, although understanding his rage, Ernie followed Debbie and Gunbuk into the hut.

They talked for nearly an hour, with Garbarla doing most of the talking -- mainly cursing the small-mindedness of the village Elders, to the astonishment of Debbie and Gunbuk, who both agreed that something more positive should be done, but whose indoctrination into tribal thinking was so much more thorough than Garbarla’s that they would never have dared to suggest aloud that the village Elders were wrong.

“How can they be so blind?” Garbarla asked Ernie, almost pleading with his friend to provide an answer. “That thing ... that monster gobbled up Ulagang Gang and Wururuma before our eyes and now they tell us to sit on our backsides doing nothing and hope that Mamaragan forgives us. Forgives us!” As he repeated the phrase his voice had risen in indignation. “As though we have done anything that could possibly justify what that bloody monster did!”

By one o’clock they were all too tired to argue any longer, so they prepared for bed. Just in time for Ernie, who left the others in the back room again, then hurriedly undressed in the front room, then metamorphosed into the black wolf.

‘So much for my hopes of being cured!’ he thought as he stood in the doorway gazing around the village to make certain that there were no stragglers from the corroboree lingering around (having vainly hoped that the previous night’s transformation might have been a one-off thing due to an adrenaline surge, caused by his terror at actually meeting the Great Rainbow Snake). After a moment, he stepped cautious out into the village then set off at a gallop, racing toward the open plains beyond the reservation.

Originally the black wolf had planned to stay well clear of the tunnel network cut through the dirt plains by Mamaragan the night before. But Ernie found himself instinctively drawn back to the sight of the previous night’s hunt, like iron filings drawn along by a magnet.

When at last he arrived at the canal where Ulagang Gang and Wururuma had been killed the night before, he hesitated. Remembering the sight of the great, diamond-headed serpent the night before, he knew that he had been damned lucky to outrun the monster once, and would be pushing his luck to tempt fate a second time.

Nevertheless, after a moment’s hesitation he scrambled down the dirt side of the canal to stand at the bottom. Since the tunnel extended for as far as the eye could see in both directions, he decided that it didn’t matter which way he went and set off at an easy lope, heading further away from the Aboriginal village.

The black wolf seemed to travel along the canal for hours, although it was probably only a half an hour or so, when the ground suddenly started to slope downward. He continued for a few hundred metres more, when he came to the entrance to a yawning cavern. Almost perfectly round, the entranceway was much larger than an underground railway tunnel and led deep down into the bowels of the Earth.

The black wolf peered into the inky blackness for a while, unable, despite his superior werewolf vision, to see more than a few metres into the tunnel. He stood peering into the darkness for nearly five minutes before summoning up enough courage to take his first tentative step forward.

The wolf had only ventured a dozen or so paces into the tunnel though, when the ground began to rumble furiously as though in the grip of an earthquake. As dirt began to fall around his ears from the roof and sides of the cavern, from the depths of the earth Ernie heard the express train-roar that he recognised as Mamaragan racing up along the tunnel, toward the surface world.

Whimpering from terror at the thought of being trapped in the tunnel with the Great Rainbow Snake, the black wolf reversed direction and bounded back out of the tunnel. Hating himself for his cowardice, Ernie thundered up the side of the canal, then loped across the wide open plain, heading back toward the relative safety of the Aboriginal village. As he ran across the dark plains, he found himself hating the open lands, longing for the protective coverage of the dense forest of wattles and gum trees that he was more familiar with back at Merridale.

For a long time as he raced along, the black wolf fancied that he could hear the express train roar of Mamaragan hot on his trail. But after awhile, he managed to get a grip on his terror and as his heartbeat slowed enough so that it was no longer deafening him with its bass drum beat, he realised that the thunderous crashing of the rainbow serpent was moving away from Pettiwood, on toward Upton.

Ernie reached the village still in the form of the black wolf, but was still a hundred metres from Debbie Bulilka’s hut when he metamorphosed back into Ernie Singleton. He tiptoed naked through the village, freezing despite it being early summer, and managed to sneak back into his sleeping bag on the floor in the front room without waking the others in the back room.


Despite their protests at the unfair treatment, Ernie and Garbarla continued to be banned from the hunting parties. “Got to learn other tasks too!” insisted Jumjum, refusing to be swayed by their protests.

Around a fortnight later, they were part of a group of a half dozen or so tending to the laying of the fire, in preparation for the cooking of whatever meat, if any, was brought back to the tribe by the hunting party that afternoon. As the hours began to advance and twilight approached, they began to despair of having any feed that night, when they saw two figures far in the distance. From the amount of dust that they were throwing up, it was obvious that the two young men were approaching at a run.

“Tiger on their tail,” said an old lubra, with a yellow-toothed grin, squatting on her haunches in the dust, closer to the truth than any of them realised.

As the two runners drew nearer, they could make out the figures of Nambidjimba and Gudjiwa (two teenagers) carrying a speared wallaby in tandem fashion.

“Where Gunbuk? Where Judawali?” demanded the squatting lubra. But the two hunters dropped the wallaby at her feet, making her squawk her protest as dust and hot ashes flew up over her, then turned and continued on their way through the village.

It was obvious that Nambidjimba and Gudjiwa had been running for a great distance and were both on the brink of collapse. But they did not stop running until reaching the three-room iron hut that Ernie recognised as belonging to Jumjum.

“Mayuldjumbajum’s hut,” said the aged lubra, obviously surprised, as she started to prepare the carcase for baking in the hot ashes.

“Now what could they want with Mayuldjumbajum so urgently?” wondered Garbarla aloud. Jumjum was by nature a jovial old man, always quick with a laugh, or a sly wink at one of the young half naked lubras, and had always struck Ernie as one of the village characters. But there was nothing jovial about him when the old man addressed an all-male corroboree which was held an hour or so after dinner.

Yet again Ernie was forced to stay away. But Garbarla made certain that he arrived early so that he could sit close to the ceremonial fire within the blue-gum circle, so that he would not miss a word of the debate, and agreed to fill Ernie in on everything that was said.

After the religious ceremonies were done with, Jumjum called on one of the young hunters, Nambidjimba (commonly called Jimba), to step forward and address the circle of men squatting upon the dirt around the ceremonial fire.

Jimba’s story was similar to what had happened to the hunting party that Ernie and Garbarla had gone out in. They had just brought down a wallaby on the flatlands about five kilometres from the village, when they had heard the roaring thunder that they knew presaged the approach of Mamaragan. The Great Rainbow Snake had borne down on them like lightning, leaving a great canal in its wake, gobbling down Judawali and Gunbuk without even stopping. The serpent had been long-gone before Jimba and his one remaining companion had time to react. Grabbing up the speared Wallaby they had set off at full pelt back to the village to inform Jumjum what had happened.

They sat around on the dirt in silence, staring into the ceremonial fire and inhaling the sweet smelling eucalyptus from the burning blue gum boughs for what seemed like hours, considering what young Jimba had told them. They were all horrified by the tale, but Garbarla was devastated by the death of his half-brother, Gunbuk. In white society such a story would have been laughed off. But the Aboriginal religion has never been weakened by false prophets, so when told that the Great Rainbow Snake had landed in the nearby plains, the Aborigines accepted it without question.

Therefore the question was what, if anything, could they do about the deaths of the two hunters. It was argued by Jumjum that they had no right to do anything at all, since the rainbow serpent was the protector of the Aborigines and would not have devoured Gunbuk and Judawali unless they had both broken same tribal law.

“What tribal law?” demanded Yudbunji, a spindly, deathly thin old man.

“Gunbuk and Judawali did nothing wrong!” insisted young Jimba, receiving a nod of agreement from Gudjiwa, his recent hunting companion.

“They must have done something wrong!” insisted Jumjum. “Mamaragan only gobbles up those who do something wrong.”

“But what we do about it?” demanded Jimba.

“Gunbuk and Judawali were gobbled up for interfering with Mamaragan. If we do anything about it, we get gobbled up too!”

“Mamaragan can’t gobble up the whole village!” protested Jimba, and Garbarla was grateful to the teenager for his pluckiness.

Although, remembering his own encounter with the monstrous serpent, Garbarla wondered, ‘Or can he?’ He remembered the giant diamond shaped head baring down on them like an express train, except that it dwarfed any train that he had ever seen. ‘Maybe he could eat the whole village if he wanted to!’ thought Garbarla, tempted to put his thoughts to words. But then he felt ashamed of the idea. Young Jimba was fighting a lone battle to stir the Elders to action to get them to avenge the murder of his brother Gunbuk; while Garbarla sat there in silence, afraid to even support the youth. As an outsider, Garbarla still was unsure of his place in the tribe; still lacked the confidence to speak out against Jumjum in support of Gunbuk. ‘Besides,’ he tried to defend his weakness to himself, ‘no-one would take any notice of my opinion, even if they let me speak my piece.’

“Perhaps if we pray to Mamaragan, the rainbow serpent will forgive Judawali and Gunbuk and return them to the village,” suggested Jumjum.

“No point in praying to Mamaragan,” insisted seventeen year old Jimba. “Why would rainbow serpent return Judawali and Gunbuk because we pray? Rainbow serpent gobbled up Judawali and Gunbuk for no reason, so we must kill rainbow serpent!”

“How we kill rainbow serpent?” asked Jumjum and at last the old man had raised a valid point.

‘My God he’s right!’ thought Garbarla. ‘How the hell do you kill a snake as tall as a four or five storey building, that can travel as fast as an express train?’

They continued to argue for another hour but in the end no one had an answer for Jumjum’s question, so it was resolved that they would hold special corroborees every night for the next week to pray to Mamaragan, asking him to return Judawali and Gunbuk, as well as Ulagang Gang and Wururuma taken at the earlier hunt. But if this failed they would accept the loss of the four hunters as the will of Mamaragan.

Although Garbarla recognised the validity of Jumjum’s question, “How we kill rainbow serpent?” he was determined not to let the matter stop at prayers to the Great Rainbow Snake. As soon as the corroboree broke up, he sought out young Jimba to ask for his help, expecting him to readily assent. But to his surprise, despite the pluck that the young hunter had displayed earlier, Jimba now refused to go against the will of the council of Elders.

“Elders say not to hunt Mamaragan,” pointed out Jimba as they walked through the dark village, heading toward their respective huts.

“The Elders are wrong!” insisted Garbarla, realising by the look of horror that spread across the teenager’s face that he had gone too far. So for now he let Jimba go without further argument but he was determined to keep after the young hunter in the hope that in a week or two he might be able to win him over.

‘In a week’s time, once he sees how futile praying to that monster is, surely then he’ll agree to help me?’ thought Garbarla. ‘But until then I guess it's up to just Ernie and me to try to work something out.’

But to his dismay, upon his return to his mother’s hut he found Ernie reluctant to offer any help either.

“Jumjum is probably right,” conceded Ernie to his friend’s disappointment. “What the hell can we hope to do against that monster? Whether it’s an Aboriginal god come to life, or only some kind of monstrous mutation, doesn’t really matter. Either way it’s far too powerful to be killed by mere spears and boomerangs. Even shotguns would probably have little or no effect against it.”

“Then what do you suggest?” asked Garbarla as they squatted on the floor in the front room of his mother’s hut, hoping that his friend was only leading up to some solution that he had missed.

Shrugging his shoulders Ernie said, “Frankly I don’t know what to suggest. It’s got me beaten.” He sighed guiltily, then added, “Besides it’s about time I was getting back to my sheep station anyway ....”

“What?” asked Garbarla, not believing his ears.

“I ... I know that I said I’d stay here as long as I could to help out if I could. But the truth is that there’s not much I can do to help here and I can’t expect Brian Horne to work my station for ever ... So I’ve decided to leave in the morning.”

Although crushed by Ernie’s defection, Garbarla did not try to dissuade him from leaving. Instead, as he helped Ernie to pack his few possessions into his Range Rover early the next morning, Garbarla tried his best to be cheerful, although he felt heartsick at all that had happened to him and his family over the last fortnight.

“Why don’t you return with me?” asked Ernie. “There’s not really anything more that you can do here, you know.”

Garbarla shook his head. “No, I’ve got to stay.” He waved goodbye as Ernie started the Rover, then started back toward Debbie Bulilka’s hut to attempt to comfort his mother who was distraught over the death of her youngest son.

Ernie drove mechanically across the plains, hardly aware of where he was driving, trying without success not to feel guilty for deserting his close friend. But I was no use to you back there, Joe, he thought. After more than a year and a half of suffering from the werewolf curse, Ernie still was uncertain how far his “supernatural” powers extended, but thought, ‘Even the black wolf would have no chance in a face to face battle with that monstrous snake!’


Back at Merridale, Ernie stopped at the sheep station for a moment to see how Brian Horne was getting along, before heading off again.

“Welcome stranger,” greeted Brian, “I didn’t expect to see you so soon,” thinking, ‘You’re getting into the habit of popping up unexpectedly ... But at least this time you’ve got your car.’ He was still unsure what to make of Ernie’s previous sudden appearance.

“Just stopped in to see how you were making out,” explained Ernie. They chatted for a while, then Ernie helped out with some of the farm chores -- feeling guilty for leaving Brian with the care of his sheep station for so long -- then set off again.

‘Now where’s he going?’ thought Brian as Ernie set out again, realising that instead of heading for Pettiwood he was going in the general direction of Glen Hartwell.


Ernie drove up along Boothy Street until almost reaching the end of the Glen, finally turning off into Mitchell Street. Parking in front of the two-room police station, he started up the concrete steps as Constable Terry Blewett stepped outside.

Seeing Ernie, Terry smiled and pointed back over his shoulder saying, “Bear’s in the office,” knowing without being told who Ernie would be looking for.

“Thanks,” said Ernie curtly, surprising Terry by pushing past him almost rudely, without stopping for the customary small talk.

‘Wonder what’s his big hurry?’ thought Terry, heading across the lawn toward the sky-blue Ford Fairlane parked in the driveway beside the small police station.


After a brief exchange of greetings Ernie quickly related what had happened at the Aboriginal village over the last few weeks to Bear Ross (so named because of his great height and powerful physique), barely stopping for breath between sentences.

Knowing how sceptical most whites would be about his tale (without having seen the rainbow serpent for themselves) Ernie feared that Bear might laugh his story off. But he hoped that Bear might be the one white man who might believe him. Both because the two men had been the closest of friends (and drinking companions when Bear was off duty) for the last two years, since Bear Ross had been promoted to sergeant of police and transferred from BeauLarkin to Glen Hartwell, and also because of something which had happened to Bear in February 1983: When Bear had come face to0 face with a man-sized monster which had been causing the bush fires: The Infernal Beast [See my story, 'The Infernal Beast'].

So now it was Ernie’s turn to tell an incredible tale, sitting on the edge of his seat, fully expecting Bear Ross to consider him crazy. To his relief though, Bear said, “I’ll help you in any way that I can Ernie.”

They discussed the dilemma at length until well past noon without reaching any conclusion about what, if anything, they could do about the Rainbow Snake.

“Anyway let’s have a break for lunch,” suggested Bear shortly before two PM.

Since Terry Blewett was still out in the police Fairlane, they headed out in Ernie’s Range Rover. They stopped at a fish-and-chip shop in Boothy Street for a lunch of flake and potato cakes, and were driving back when Bear suddenly called out, “That’s it!”

Startled Ernie dropped his bag of potato cakes and almost crashed the car. After fighting the skidding vehicle to a stop he looked at Bear and asked, “What’s what?”

“The library,” replied Bear, pointing to the Glen Hartwell City Library in Dirk Hartog Place. Then seeing Ernie still didn’t understand, “The Great Rainbow Snake is a legend right?”

“Except that it’s real,” pointed out Ernie picking up his potato cakes from the floor of the Range Rover.

“Agreed,” said Bear, “but like all legends, there have been scads of books on it, and one of them might be based loosely on the real rainbow serpent and therefore might have a genuine solution to the problem of dealing with the monster!”

So, the two men left the car by the kerb and hurried up the stone steps, past the marble lions guarding the entranceway and stepped into the library: a single vast room, separated into sections by enormous wooden, floor-to-ceiling length bookcases, containing thousands of books upon every conceivable subject.

“My God,” said Ernie, having not been in the library in years and having forgotten how huge it was. “Where the Hell do we start?”

“How about with Old Glenda?” asked Bear in a whisper, nodding back to where the Head Librarian was sorting books at the reception counter near the front door.

Glenda Pettyjohn had been employed at the library for as long as anyone could recall. A tiny, birdlike woman, who wore horn-rim glasses and kept her silver hair up in a tight bun atop her head, no one really knew how old she was. She had looked to be in her late eighties for as long as anyone could recall and some pundits had been cruel enough to suggest that when the library had opened its doors for the first time on January 17, 1842 Glenda Pettyjohn had already been installed as Head Librarian. Whatever the truth about her age, though, there was no doubt that the tiny lady had a phenomenal knowledge of literature and seemingly knew from memory where every book was situated in the library.

“Why not?” said Ernie, not knowing at the time that this would be the first but far from the last time that he would call for the old lady’s assistance to combat some supernatural creature threatening the Glen Hartwell area.

“Good day, Sergeant,” said the old lady as Bear approached the counter. “And you too, young master Ernest,” she added, making Ernie blush from embarrassment, having hoped that she would have forgotten him. In his school days Ernie and his class had frequented the library for two hours a week as their library period, since Glen Hartwell High School was only two blocks away in Wentworth Street and had no library facilities of its own.

“Good ... good afternoon,” muttered Ernie, having almost responded “good morning, Miss Pettyjohn” as he had done faithfully every week for five years at high school.

After a few seconds’ hesitation, almost wilting under the gaze of Glenda Pettyjohn, who was not used to being kept waiting, Ernie started to explain, “We are ... we are trying to track down details of a legend.” He paused to look at Bear, who shrugged as if to say, It’s your ball game. “A legend about a flying serpent. We had heard that it was part of the Aboriginal Dream-Time cycle ....”

“That would be the Great Rainbow Snake,” said Glenda starting around the counter. “Although legends of flying serpents are not restricted to the Australian Aborigines.”

“They’re not?” asked Ernie, thinking, ‘Don’t tell me these monsters occur worldwide?’ as they followed her toward the rear of the library.

“Indeed not,” she replied as they reached the non-fiction section at the back.

She peered at the covers of the row-upon-row of hard-bound books through her horn-rimmed glasses for a few moments before snatching out a volume to place it in Ernie’s hands.

“Legends of Ireland, England, the two Americas, Australia, and the Antarctica, by Professor Daley Bromby,” Ernie read aloud, almost dropping the encyclopaedia-sized book as Glenda placed a second book, this time a slim paperback, into his hands.

“The Lair of the White Worm, by Bram Stoker,” read Bear Ross in surprise.

Soon book followed book, most of them paperback novels: At the Mountains of Madness, by H.P.Lovecraft; The Burrowers Beneath, by Brian Lumley; The Great White Space, by Basil Copper; All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By, by John Farris, plus a couple more.

Smiling at Ernie’s bemused look, the old lady said, “Will that do for now, master Ernest?”

“I ... Er, yes thank you,” muttered Ernie.

They started to head back toward the front of the library when with a stroke of genius Ernie thought to say, “There was one other thing ... I’ve heard that beneath the deserts of outback Australia there are a series of giant tunnels ...?”

“Yes, indeed,” agreed Glenda Pettyjohn scurrying back mouse-like to hunt through the racks of books again. After a few seconds she hefted out a great encyclopaedic work that Bear Ross quickly took from her, fearing that the great tome would be too heavy for the tiny old lady. Holding the book up he read, “The Mysterious Caves of the Australian Desert, by Professor William Morrissey-Blaxland.”

As they finally reached the front counter Glenda explained, “Normally we don’t allow the encyclopaedias to be taken out, but I suppose we can make an exception for you, Sergeant.”

Thanking the old lady profusely, they headed for the exit with their arms full of books, with Ernie thinking, ‘I hope she doesn’t get in trouble for bending the rules for us?’ But then on reflexion he thought, ‘Not that anyone in the local council (or anyone else for that matter) would ever dare to question Old Glenda’s supreme rule in the running of the library.’


“Well, where do we start?” asked Bear a few minutes later, looking over the small mountain of books that covered the top of his desk at the police station.

Picking up The Lair of the White Worm, Ernie said, “I suppose we just start reading at random and hope we find something useful.”

Shrugging his shoulders in resignation, Bear picked up The Great White Space, and the two men seated themselves around the desk to begin reading.

It didn’t take Ernie long to realise that “Lair ...” was a Lamia tale. A story of a woman who can metamorphose into a monstrous snake. ‘I’m in no position to laugh the legend off,’ thought Ernie, ‘since I go through a similar transformation to a wolf two or three times every month. But I hardly think that Mamaragan can be regarded as a lamia!’ Briefly rereading Bram Stoker’s description of the voluptuous beauty, that the “white worm” transformed into, he thought, ‘There’s nothing remotely voluptuous about the Great Rainbow Snake!’

One look at the cover, with its frontispiece of a beautiful naked woman with snake-like scales, was enough to make Ernie aware that All Heads Turn as the Hunt Goes By was also a lamia story, so he put the book aside without even skimming through it.

After a moment Bear put aside The Great White Space, saying, “That one looked promising for a while there. It was about a hunting party travelling through mysterious underground caverns, looking for blasphemous tunnelling monstrosities. But in the end the Great White Space of the title turned out to be some strange kind of dimensional warp, through which monstrous beings crossed over into our dimension.”

Ernie considered that for a moment. “No, I’m positive that whatever else the Great Rainbow Snake is or isn’t, it definitely comes from our three dimensions.”

So they reached for two more novels. Ernie picked up, At the Mountains of Madness, while Bear picked up The Burrowers Beneath. They had hardly started reading again but when Terry Blewett returned and said, “Are you two working the graveyard shift or something?”

Looking up at the electric clock on the wall behind the desk, they were surprised to find that it was after seven o’clock in the evening.

After a moment’s debate between the two men, they decided to take the books back to Bear Ross’ small flat in Boothy Street, where they could read right through the night if need be.


“Make yourself at home,” invited Bear, waving Ernie into the two-room apartment.

Looking around Ernie wondered how the big man coped in the dingy flat. On the left as they entered was a large sofa, a metre or so in front of which was the television set, then another metre-and-a-half to the right was a small single bed. At the other end of the flat was the second room (the bathroom) on the left; on the right a small kitchen niche, with gas stove, half-sized refrigerator and a tiny dining table, with two high-backed wooden chairs.

Clearly embarrassed by the tininess of his apartment, Bear led Ernie across to the sofa and said, “At least this should be more comfortable than sitting at the desk at the police station.”

So, with occasional stops for hot coffee to help keep them awake, the two men settled down to read their respective books, and by morning both felt that they might be on the brink of a solution:

In The Burrowers Beneath, Brian Lumley wrote of great, cuttlefish-like monsters that tunnelled along beneath the length and breadth of the British Isles.

“Lumley says that the creatures can be laid, or put to sleep indefinitely, if you can find their burrow and place a stone carven with the emblem of the ‘Elder Sign’ directly over top, ” explained Bear. “Unfortunately he doesn’t give a clear description of what the hell the Elder Sign looks like.”

For the most part At the Mountains of Madness seemed to have no relevance at all to the subject that they were researching. It was a tale of archaeologists searching through the frozen wastes on the seventh continent and finding remains of strange Antarctic winged reptiles with star-shaped heads. But toward the end of the novel the explorers were forced to flee for their lives as up from the bowels of the earth raced a gigantic proto-shoggoth, which roared along, “like a vast onrushing subway train, looming out of the subterranean darkness, thundering down on its victims with the ruthless determination of a high-powered bullet ....” ‘An onrushing subway train!’ thought Ernie remembering his own encounters with the Great Rainbow Snake, recalling his own impression of the serpent roaring along like an express train. ‘Yes, this has to be the same kind of creature. Lovecraft’s proto-shoggoths and Mamaragan must be one and the same!’

When he shared his thoughts with Bear Ross, the big man agreed, “It certainly sounds like the rainbow serpent. And the Antarctica is a hell of a lot closer to Australia than the British Isles are, so the two creatures are a lot more likely to be the same. But more importantly, what solution does Lovecraft give for dealing with proto-shoggoths?”

“None,” conceded Ernie with a sigh of frustration, “the ‘tale’ ends with the scientists running for dear life with the proto-shoggoths roaring down on them.”

The two men discussed their next course of action and decided to return to the library to look for more books by Brian Lumley and H.P. Lovecraft. But despite their best resolutions both men were so dog-tired after their all-night vigil that they realised that they needed a few hours sleep above all else.

So, after a quick breakfast of cornflakes, they settled down shortly after 6:00 AM, with Bear using the bed; Ernie the sofa.


Although they had set the alarm clock for 2:00 PM, both men were so tired that it was nearly a quarter to three before Ernie finally heard the alarm and awakened. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he sat up to switch off the alarm, then grunted from agony at the state of his back after near nine hours on the lumpy sofa. Remembering Bear’s claim that the sofa would be more comfortable than the wooden chairs at the police station, Ernie cursed the big man, thinking, ‘At least wooden chairs don’t have broken springs to dig into you.’

After shutting off the alarm, he staggered across the room to shake Bear awake, with a great deal of difficulty. ‘He’s aptly named,’ thought Ernie, ‘he sleeps like a bear in hibernation!’

Then the two men settled down to another meal of cornflakes before starting their second day’s researches.

Originally they had planned to both go to the library but Bear suggested, “Why don’t you stay here and try to dig up something from the two encyclopaedias? I’ve got to stop in at Mitchell Street anyway, to let Terry Blewett know I’m still alive, so I can stop at the library on the way back.”

“Fair enough,” agreed Ernie. Although looking at the two bulky reference books that now sat on top of Bear’s television set, he couldn’t help feeling weary at the prospect. But remembering that Joseph Garbarla and his tribe depended on him, Ernie felt ashamed at his own laziness and immediately settled in to his researches.

As Bear set out in the Range Rover, Ernie looked from one book to the other, undecided where to start. After a moment’s hesitation he picked up The Mysterious Caves of the Australian Desert by William Morrissey-Blaxland, and began to read:

One of the greatest puzzles of the Australian continent, has always been a series of vast underground caves, spanning thousands of kilometres of the continent, crisscrossing virtually all of mainland Australia, although most predominant in South and Western Australia, and the Northern Territory.

Remembering his recent encounter as the black wolf with Mamaragan, clearly recalling the bulldozer-like dredging of its gargantuan body ripping great tunnels around the plains of south-eastern Victoria, Ernie wondered whether the book’s statement was still accurate. But then, thinking that thousands of the great serpents could be living under the Australian continent, he realised that the tunnelling done by Mamaragan might be minute compared to that done by others of his kind in the western and northern most reaches of Australia.

Sighing deeply, he read on:

For more than a hundred years it has been known by geologists that vast tunnel networks crisscross under virtually all of the continent. Until recently, however, it has been impossible to explore the tunnels, and even today exploration is fraught with grave danger: explorers can be killed in rock falls, lost in the subterranean depths, or even drowned in flash rains above ground that can flood the tunnels in only hours.

Gazing in wonder at the full colour photographs of the brown-earth walled tunnels, Ernie couldn’t help thinking of his own aborted attempt to explore the tunnels. And recalling the terror that he had experienced at the sound of Mamaragan racing up to the surface, Ernie thought, ‘Fraught with danger is right!’

With the return of Bear Ross, forty minutes or so after his departure, Ernie articulated his fears to the big man, who replied, “Yes, if you’re right that the Great Rainbow Snake dug out the tunnel network around Australia, then who knows how many of the monsters exist under this continent?”

He dropped his load of paperback books onto the middle cushion of the sofa and Ernie put down the large tome to spend the rest of that day and the next few days also skimming through the books: The Caller of the Black, Beneath the Moors, The Clock of Dreams, The House of Cthulhu, and The Transition of Titus Crow, all by Brian Lumley; The Lurking Fear, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, The Haunter of the Dark, and The Tomb, by H.P.Lovecraft, and The Lurker at the Threshold, and The Shuttered Room both by H.P.Lovecraft and August Derleth.

“You should have seen the look I got from Old Glenda when I told her that I needed these books for a special case that I’m working on,” said Bear, making Ernie laugh aloud for the first time in months.

They spent more than three days poring through the large collection of books before finally they conceded that there was little more that they could learn from Lovecraft and Lumley. Both authors spoke repeatedly of the Elder Sign and its powers to hold the Great Old Ones in the ground, but neither writer was prepared (or able) to say in plain English exactly what the Elder Sign was.

“The Star of David perhaps?” suggested Bear, more from hope than belief, late on the fourth day of their researches. “I’ve heard that it was originally meant as a talisman to ward off evil.”

“So were a million other symbols, including the swastika before the Nazis got their evil hands on it,” pointed out Ernie. “But without knowing which one is right, we’re stuck. We can hardly try them out one at a time against the rainbow serpent!”

“That’s true,” conceded Bear.

So, much as they both dreaded the prospect, they reluctantly conceded that their one remaining hope was to scour the 1500 pages of Legends of Ireland, England, the two Americas, Australia, and the Antarctica, by Professor Daley Bromby.


At the Aboriginal village outside Pettiwood, there had been two more attacks on hunting parties by Mamaragan over the four days since Ernie’s departure. Resulting in the deaths of five more young hunters. That night another corroboree had been called to revise their strategy after the latest killings.

Inside the blue gum circle, they sat around the ceremonial fire where blue and red gum boughs burnt, their eucalyptus scent emanating from the fire like incense, while the religious rites at the start of the corroboree were conducted.

Joseph Garbarla felt sick at the loss of so many of his friends (two of the latest victims had been distant cousins of his). Yet he recalled the words of Mayuldjumbajum at an earlier gathering, “How we kill rainbow serpent?” when the young hunter Nambidjimba had suggested that course of action and realised that the old man had been right. Although he had originally been hurt by Ernie’s departure from the village, he now thought, ‘Ernie you were right after all! No matter how many of the tribe Mamaragan decides to slaughter, what can we puny mortals hope to do to stop him?’

A sentiment shared by more than one of the others at the gathering. “We go walkabout?” suggested Weari-Wyingga, a tiny grey-skinned Elder, who looked well over a hundred years of age, but was probably in his eighties.

Originally the walkabout ceremony had been strictly a marriage ritual: before the white man invaded the Australian continent, there were nearly 300,000 Aborigines on the mainland, but divided into more than 3,000 separate tribes, spread across the breadth and width of a continent almost as large as the USA. Some of the tribes were only fifty to a hundred people in size, which meant that there was a major danger of inbreeding. To prevent this, for 50,000 years or more the Aborigines held half yearly walkabouts so that the separate tribes could meet up in groups of 3,000 to 5,000 so that marriage aged males and females from different tribes could pair off to prevent inbreeding. But after many centuries the ceremony had pseudo-religious trappings attached and was now often practised for strictly religious reasons, or in the belief that hunting might be better elsewhere on the continent.

So, the old man did not hesitate to use the term walkabout, when he meant they should flee for their lives from Mamaragan.

“You want us to run away with our tail between our legs?” asked Jumjum.

“Better to run away than to be eaten alive.”

“And what about the whites?” asked Jumjum, referring to the inhabitants of the nearby town of Pettiwood. “Do we leave them to Mamaragan?”

“What have the white men ever done for us?” demanded Weari-Wyingga. “Stole our country two hundred years ago, poisoned it with their chemicals, logged our forests and turned them into deserts ....”

“Yes, yes,” agreed Jumjum, quickly cutting off the old man (to the relief of most of the others present), for fear that he was going to break into one of the five-hour recitations on the evils of the white man, that he was notorious for. “All that is true. But Mamaragan belongs to the Aborigines. He has always been our god. Now he has gone insane, he is our demon, not the demon of the whites, and it is our job to kill him. Not theirs.”

“How we kill rainbow serpent?” asked Weari-Wyingga, chuckling to himself at Jumjum’s look of consternation at having his own words thrown up in his face.

“In the past when we met Mamaragan it has been on the surface where he is too fast for us,” said Jumjum. “But if we follow him underground, through his tunnels, we can come up behind him and spear him with fifty or more spears and kill him before he can attack us. Even the rainbow serpent can be killed if enough spears pass through him!”

‘Oh my God, that’s crazy, we’ll all be killed!’ thought Garbarla, as the rest of the men started to murmur their approval of Jumjum’s plan.

“We’ll all be slaughtered!” said Garbarla, startling Jumjum, as he spoke up at a corroboree for the first time since his return to the village nearly two years ago. “Mamaragan is too powerful for us, and going down into his tunnels will only be playing into his hands. Mamaragan’s lair is underground, how can we have any hope of sneaking up on him down there?”

Jumjum didn’t bother to answer, merely gave Garbarla a withering look, leaving it up to the teenage hunter Nambidjimba to say, “Have you forgotten that Mamaragan killed your own brother Gunbuk less than a week ago? And Mutukatpina and Bindul, your cousins, over the last four days?”

“No, of course I haven’t forgotten!” responded Garbarla, furious at the accusation. “But what is the point of the rest of us getting massacred? Our death won’t bring back Mutukatpina, Bindul, or any of the others!”

“You don’t have to come with us!” said Jumjum pointedly. And from the murmurs of the rest of the gathering Garbarla knew that it was pointless to argue any longer, they had already decided to go along with Jumjum’s plan.

A vote was taken on Jumjum’s suggestion, and passed almost unanimously -- with only Weari-Wyingga voting against the plan, and Garbarla abstaining from voting.

For the first time since returning to the tribe, Garbarla really felt as though he didn’t belong there at all, as the others snubbed him when the gathering finally broke up. Only Weari-Wyingga came up to him. Placing one arm comfortingly around his back, the old man said, “You are right, that old fool Mayuldjumbajum is wrong. He will get everyone killed, rather than admit you know more than him!”

Garbarla murmured his gratitude for the old man’s words, but in his heart he had already decided to go along on the hunt too. ‘Better to die a hero, than live with everyone thinking that I’m a coward!’ he decided.


After poring through the great volume for hours, Ernie located a section that was relevant to their problem:

In virtually every part of the world we are able to locate references to gigantic reptiles and winged serpents: In Ireland, England, Wales, and Scotland there are numerous legends of “white worms”, which are actually giant snakes, often maned and possessing wings. The dragons of mediaeval legend are another example of white worms and are reported by some Britons to still be lurking, waiting in old ruins for the unwary. As mentioned in a recently published (1978) poem:

Ancient forts where

Sleeping dragons lie in wait,

For unwary callers.

In Greece and Libya they have the legend of the lamia or lamiae, a female demon which is either half-woman and half-snake, or else a woman who can change into a serpent. In some legends the lamia is an avenging creature that devours the genitalia of male criminals leaving them to bleed to death, as referred to in a recent poem:

A large snake coiling

Changes to a woman:

Beautiful but deadly.

In North America, legends of great serpents have proliferated amongst the Indians for thousands of years. Although they were not widely known by black or white Americans until the 1930s when science fiction great H.P.Lovecraft wrote many tales of crawling, slithering monstrosities. One of Lovecraft’s many “inventions” being the Night Gaunt, which a poet of the 1930s described as follows:

Night Gaunts haunt your nights

Great serpentine shapes winging,

Round and round the sky.

It was also Lovecraft who first warned the western world about the dangers of proto-shoggoths, great serpentine monsters that burrow beneath the ice covering the Antarctic continent.

The Incas of Southern America worshipped the maned, snake-god Quetzalcoatl. In poetry of the early 1900s, Quetzalcoatl was described thus:

A great maned serpent

With large, feathered wings:

Evil Quetzalcoatl.

And also:

The flying serpent

Quetzalcoatl: God to some;

Devil to others.

And, of course, right here in Australia, the Aborigines worship (and fear) Mamaragan, the Great Rainbow Snake. Once described as:

A giant serpent

Coloured like a rainbow,

writhing ’cross the sky.

Like the Night Gaunts and Quetzalcoatl, Mamaragan is a winged serpent able to writhe at high speed overhead. But like the proto-shoggoths and the white worms, the rainbow serpent also has the ability to burrow underground, weaving a network of tunnels extending for many thousands of kilometres around Australia ....

‘I can vouch for that much,’ thought Ernie, remembering the great ‘riverbed’ where he had first seen Mamaragan, and the series of canals that the serpent had cut out of the rock-hard brown earth while chasing him as the black wolf.

Turning back to the book he read, “And like all the other ‘white worms’ around the world, Mamaragan is both the Creator and the Destroyer to his followers: God to some, Devil to others!”


Shortly after dawn the next day, all the able-bodied men of the tribe started to gather at Mayuldjumbajum’s hut, ready to start out on the hunt for the rainbow snake.

At Debbie Bulilka’s hut, Debbie and the tiny Elder, Weari-Wyingga, did everything that they could to try to talk Garbarla into staying behind.

“I’ve already lost one son!” wailed Debbie. “How will I survive if both my sons are taken from me?”

“Mum, I won’t be killed,” insisted Garbarla, only wishing that he could believe it himself.

“Your mother is right,” agreed Weari-Wyingga, “there is nothing anyone can do for Mayuldjumbajum and his hunters, they are already as good as dead. Your one extra spear won’t kill Mamaragan when all of theirs fail. Your mother needs you more than they do. Besides, after all the other young men in the tribe have been slaughtered, your white education will be vital to the remains of our people, to stop the whole tribe from becoming extinct.”

This last argument had more effect on Garbarla than the others, since his original purpose in returning to his tribal people had been to make use of his western education to help raise their standard of living. But after a moment of inner turmoil, when he almost allowed his resolve to weaken, he finally thought, ‘No, that’s only an excuse for cowardice!’ Knowing from the treatment that he had received the night before, that most of the other men already thought him a coward, he decided, ‘A man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do ... Even if it means he’s gonna get himself slaughtered!’

So, without further argument, he set out for Jumjum’s hut. He arrived just as they were sorting out their weapons ready for departure.

Although clearly astonished to see Garbarla there, Jumjum picked up a large hunting boomerang and held it out toward him. ‘Oh great,’ thought Garbarla, ‘this is about the most useless kind of weapon possible if we’re attacked in an underground tunnel!’ But not wanting to anger Jumjum any further, he took the boomerang without complaint.

After the weapons had been distributed, there was the question of the torchbearers. Although none of them had ever been down into the underground tunnels, some of the younger, more foolhardy, hunters had ventured as close as the opening to an underground cavern and all told of the near Stygian darkness within the tunnels. So rather than travelling blind, suitably large branches of gum or pine trees were located and coated with moss, so that they would light easily.

The torchbearers would have to enter the cavern first, and therefore were the most likely to be slaughtered. But to the surprise of Jumjum and young Jimba, Garbarla insisted on carrying one of the torches -- which would not be lit until they were at the entranceway to a tunnel.

Finally, setting out shortly after 7:30 AM, they traipsed across the brown-dirt plains until shortly before noon, before finally coming to one of Mamaragan’s canals. Scrambling down the sloping sides, the more than fifty men quickly regrouped and looked about themselves.

“Which way?” asked Jimba, since the canal ran seemingly for kilometres in each direction.

His question started a furious debate among the hunters, with some of them wanting to split the group into two and go both ways; others insisting that they stay together.

Garbarla favoured the first suggestion, thinking, ‘At least if we split into two groups, half of us will have some chance of surviving,’ remembering Weari-Wyingga’s comments about the problems of keeping the tribe alive if most of the men were killed. But he was careful not to articulate the thought, knowing that the others already thought him a coward.

After much debate Jumjum had the final say, and the hunting party all set out in the same direction, following the course of the canal further away from the village. They traipsed along beneath the scorching summer sun for more than two hours, before finally the canal started to slope downward. After a moment the slope became pronounced and they soon found themselves at the entrance to an underground tunnel.

Just like Ernie a few weeks earlier, they stood at the entranceway peering into the inky darkness for a moment, not quite so confident now that they were actually at the entrance to the subterranean world.

Sensing the growing anxiety amongst the hunters, Jumjum was quick to get the torches lit, then coaxed the party forward before they had time to lose their nerve.

At the head of the procession, Garbarla thought, ‘At least I’ll be able to see Mamaragan for a split second ... Just before he gobbles me down!’

As they entered the cavern, Garbarla’s thoughts mirrored those of Ernie earlier in comparing the tunnel to an underground railway station. The cavern was immense: wide enough for the hunters to march six abreast, with plenty of room between them to swing their spears, and high enough so that they could barely see the roof overhead, even with the aid of the flaming torches.

They seemed to travel many kilometres underground -- and without the sun to guide them they had no way of keeping track of the time -- when the walls of the tunnel began to shake alarmingly, throwing many of them to the ground. The ground rumbled beneath them and large rocks and mounds of brown dirt began to cascade down onto them from the ceiling far above.

‘Earthquake!’ thought Garbarla, struggling to climb back to his feet as the earth beneath him rocked and rolled like a stormy sea. ‘Oh my God, we’ll all be buried alive!’ But then, hearing the express train-roar of Mamaragan thundering up from the bowels of the earth, Garbarla realised that they were unlikely to live long enough to be buried alive!


“Christ we know most of this already from the novels,” complained Bear Ross. He lay back on the couch as Ernie read aloud from Legends of Ireland, England, the two Americas, Australia, and the Antarctica. “What we need to know is whether there is any way to actually kill any of these damned serpents? Surely there must be if they’ve been known around the whole world for so damn long!”

“You’d certainly think so,” agreed Ernie, although thinking, ‘But frankly I’m starting to have my doubts!’

Aware that his friend was even more fatigued than he was by their so far fruitless search, Ernie suggested that they take a brief rest. Looking round at the clock they were both surprised to see that it was nearly two in the afternoon.

“No wonder my belly’s rumbling,” said Bear, and, putting the book aside, they set out for a quick counter lunch at Bateman’s public house in Lawson Street.

On the way, Bear stopped in at Mitchell Street to let Terry Blewett know that he was still alive and to check that there was nothing urgently requiring his attention. Although he thought, ‘But what could possibly be more urgent than trying to stop a monstrous snake threatening the whole population of Victoria, possibly Australia even?’

At the hotel the two men settled in for a leisurely meal of steak and eggs with a couple of glasses of cold Foster’s Lager, unaware that while they relaxed most of the young men in Joseph Garbarla’s tribe were being slaughtered by the Great Rainbow Snake.


At the head of the procession as the express train roar bore down on them, Garbarla expected to be one of the first to be devoured by Mamaragan. But then hearing terrified screams from the rear of the party, he realised that the monstrous reptile had entered the tunnel behind them.

Forcing himself to turn round, holding his flaming torch up high, Garbarla saw the giant diamond-head of the rainbow serpent less than a hundred metres behind him in the cavern. As he watched in horror, its great jaws snapped furiously, snatching up and gulping down the screaming hunters like a greedy child gobbling down chocolates by the handful.

Despite his terror, Garbarla was more angry than afraid and screaming his rage, he hurled first his hunting boomerang, then the flaming torch at the gargantuan reptile. Although both objects bounced off the serpent’s varicoloured hide, the monster didn’t even flinch as it continued to gulp down the Aborigines gluttonously.

Seeing Marbungga and Nanguru, two of his closest friends, lifted screaming into the air by the monster’s great, snapping jaws, Garbarla lost all control and started to run weapon less toward Mamaragan, overcome with grief and anger.

Realising his intentions, young Nambidjimba (who had also been at the head of the procession and therefore had not been devoured) ran forward to stop him. After a brief struggle with Garbarla, who was screaming unintelligibly at the rainbow serpent, Jimba managed to half lead, half carry him away from the monster.

Along with five others, Jimba and Garbarla set off deeper into the tunnel network, moving further and further from the surface of the earth in the hope of escaping before Mamaragan came looking for them. Hoping against hope that they would not become hopelessly lost underground, never to find their way back to the surface again, as had happened to so many other explorers of the tunnels down the years.


It was nearly 4:00 PM before Ernie and Bear finally returned to the dinky, two-room flat. Sitting on the small sofa, Ernie looked down at “Legends of Ireland ...” that sat where they’d left it on the middle cushion of the sofa, and found himself hating the great tome. ‘Why the hell won’t you give us the information that we need: how to kill the blasted rainbow snake?’ he thought, picking up the encyclopaedia.

Despite his loathing for the 1500 page book, Ernie forced himself to return to his researches. It was nearly two hours later when finally he read:

All of the great serpents, or ‘white worms’ of legend are supposedly supernatural of origin, or at the very least beyond the human capacity for understanding the laws of science, and therefore cannot be killed or even seriously wounded by human beings ....

“Bloody Hell!” said Bear Ross in despair as Ernie read out the passage. But then he read:

However, all serpent legends speak of ways to ‘lay’ the creature in the ground, so that although still alive, it is rendered harmless, in a permanent state of suspended animation. There is the pentacle or Elder Sign, mentioned by H.P. Lovecraft and his contemporaries, the carven obelisks and standing stones, such as Stonehenge, that dot the British countryside, and here in Australia, the Aborigines have the Dark Stone, as mentioned by an early white explorer-cum-poet:

A dark amulet

Made of burnished black stone,

Used to ward off evil.

The Dark Stone is a large, triangular black stone, carefully burnished to a high lustre and hand-carven, inlaid with triangles of white ochre ....

“Oh my God! That’s it!” cried Bear when Ernie read out the passage.

“Assuming, of course, that Garbarla’s tribe have a Dark Stone lying about unused,” said Ernie. “Surely they would have used it already if they had one?”

“Hell that’s right,” said Bear, crestfallen. “Well, what do you suggest?”

They debated their best course of action until after 11:00 PM, then finally decided that Ernie would drive back to the village the next day in the hope that the Aborigines already had a Dark Stone. In case they didn’t, but Bear would spend the day at the library again, with the help of Glenda Pettyjohn, trying to find a book on Aboriginal lore that explained how to make an authentic Dark Stone -- and just as importantly, contained the ritual that had to be performed with the stone to lay Mamaragan safely underground.

Although Ernie had suggested rushing back to the village that very moment, Bear had overruled him, saying, “You’re too tired. We both are after a long, hard day. Better to get some rest, then go back bright and early tomorrow. Besides, if they’ve waited 50,000 years for a way to send the rainbow snake to sleep, what harm can a few more hours do!” Unaware that for most of the men in the tribe, it was already too late anyway.


Nambidjimba, Garbarla, and the others travelled underground for hours, too numb from the shock of seeing so many of their friends die horribly, to even feel their own fatigue. They had no way of even knowing whether they were travelling up toward the surface or further down into the bowels of the earth.

It was well after 7:00 PM when finally they became aware of a cool breeze from not far ahead and realised that they were close to an entranceway. “The way out,” said one of the young hunters without enthusiasm, and they all wondered how they could explain what had happened to the women and old men back at the village.

Still at the front of the procession, Garbarla led them up the suddenly steep ramp and soon they stepped out into the surface world ....

And were all nearly blinded by a bright flashing of varicoloured lights: red, blue, green, orange, purple, brown, and yellow flashed into their eyes in turn, forcing them to tightly clench their eyes and back into the mouth of the tunnel.

“Mamaragan!” cried one young hunter, more from resignation than fear.

Looking up through tightly squinting eyes, Garbarla could just make out the gigantic figure of the Great Rainbow Snake, writhing across the shimmering summer sky -- for only the second time since his return to the village actually seeing the monstrous serpent in flight.

At first it was almost impossible to make out the outline of the giant reptile due to the blinding flashes of different coloured lights from his great scales that winked on and off like strobing disco lights in the twilight sky. But as the sun dimmed, Garbarla could just make out the serpentine form which writhed across the evening sky as though it were a normal snake slithering along the ground.

The hunters waited at the cave entrance until Mamaragan was out of sight, then wearily started forward again.

It was nearly midnight by the time that they finally arrived at the outskirts of the village, where they found the women and old men waiting for them. Seeing the tiny group of men returning, even before hearing of the slaughter, the women began wailing their distress, suspecting the worst.

“So few,” said old Weari-Wyingga in dismay, managing a half smile when he saw that Garbarla was one of the seven survivors.

Seeing her son among the returning men, Debbie Bulilka let out a shriek of joy and raced across the last few metres to hug Garbarla wildly, followed closely by the mothers, wives, or girlfriends of the other six men. But for most of the women there was no reason for joy, since their husbands, sons, or boyfriends had not returned.


Despite awakening at 8:00 AM, it was nearly 10:30 before Ernie arrived back at the Aboriginal village. He parked the Range Rover just outside the village and started to walk toward Debbie Bulilka’s iron-sided hut.

As he entered the village, he was surprised by the lack of noticeable activity. Usually the women would be sitting round outside their huts or lean-toes weaving grass mats, sowing and darning, grinding wild maize into flour to make home-made bread. Instead he was greeted by the sight of a seemingly empty village: the corrugated iron huts looked like the ramshackle remnants of a long deserted ghost town. ‘Surely they couldn’t have all packed up and gone walkabout in the less than a week that I’ve been away?’ thought Ernie. But then as he got deeper into the village he heard the sound of a woman’s wailing from one of the huts and thought, ‘My God, there’s been another attack on a hunting party!’ This time much closer to the truth. But it was only when he finally reached Debbie Bulilka’s hut that he learnt the whole, dreadful truth.

At the door to Debbie’s hut, Ernie hesitated, unsure what his reception would be. After a moment’s hesitation he opened the door and stepped inside. He found the hut in darkness, the three small windows covered by black drapes. At first he thought that no one was home, but then seeing a dark outline through the doorway he stepped into the back room and found Debbie and Garbarla huddled together on the floor in a corner of the room, both seemingly in a state of shock.

Horrified by Garbarla’s listless state, Ernie said, “I ... I think I’ve found the answer.”

“Found the answer?” repeated Joseph Garbarla listlessly.

“I think I know how to stop Mamaragan.”

To Ernie’s amazement, instead of the joy that he had expected, his words brought only loud wailing from Debbie and wracking sobs from Garbarla. ‘Oh my God, what have I done to cause this?’ wondered Ernie. He watched Garbarla and Debbie, sitting rocking from distress, hugging each other for comfort, and wanted to hug them both to comfort them, but didn’t want to intrude upon their grief.

Finally Garbarla’s sobbing slowed enough for him to say, “Too late ... you’ve come back a day too late.”

“I don’t understand,” said Ernie, kneeling on the dirt floor of the iron hut.

“Most of the men of the village were killed yesterday,” said Garbarla. He went on to give Ernie a faltering account of the futile venture into Mamaragan’s tunnel network.

“Oh, my God!” cried Ernie, feeling sick. “They never had a chance!”

“No, they didn’t,” agreed Garbarla. They sat in the dark in silence for a few minutes, then finally he asked, “What ... what have you discovered?”

Ernie told him about finding the reference to the Dark Stone in the large tome.

“Yes, yes I’ve seen one,” said Garbarla, taking Ernie by surprise.

“What?”

“A Dark Stone. There’s a large, triangular black stone amongst the ceremonial tools used in our corroborees. But I’ve never seen it used for anything ... I don’t think anyone knows what it’s even supposed to be used for.”

They talked for a while longer, then Garbarla broke free from Debbie’s grip with difficulty, since at first she refused to release him, and led Ernie to see the tiny sparrow-like man Weari-Wyingga, who with the death of Jumjum was now the most senior Elder and unofficial leader of the tribe. (By tradition the Aborigines have no single leader of any kind, but rather a council of Elders who have equal say and must all cast a vote on every issue effecting the wellbeing of the tribe. In reality, though, after the previous day’s massacre, only five Elders were left alive. The other four were all over a hundred years old and bedridden, so Weari-Wyingga had had to take on the role of temporary leader.)

Weari-Wyingga listened to Ernie’s tale, then agreed with Garbarla that the purpose of the Dark Stone had been forgotten long ago.

“But how could that happen?” demanded Ernie. He was angry to think that so many men of the tribe had died because of the forgetfulness of the village Elders.

Sensing his anger, Weari-Wyingga hurried to explain, “The Aborigines lived on this continent for at least 50,000 years, maybe as much as 100,000, before the white man came only two hundred years ago. In that time we had no form of written language, so like all tribal people, had to pass our rituals down from generation to generation by word of mouth alone. Although, like with all primitive peoples around the world, great care was taken to try to retain the purity of our rituals and traditions, over such a great period of time, naturally mistakes were made. Some rituals have been forgotten altogether, others have had trappings added or portions lost. Sometimes ceremonial tools have been retained for hundreds of centuries without anyone knowing what they are meant to be used for ....”

“But the book,” interrupted Ernie, “the book I found in the library was written by a white man, so it must have been written within the last two hundred years. Yet it clearly gives the purpose of the Dark Stone?”

“Because the white man who wrote the book must have interviewed people from hundreds of small Aboriginal tribes right around Australia. Somehow -- possibly after years of research -- he found a small tribe somewhere who still knew the purpose of the Dark Stone, although the Aborigines in Victoria at least had long forgotten it.”

“Now at last you know it,” said Ernie with enthusiasm.

“Yes,” agreed Joseph Garbarla, less confidently. “Now if only we knew the ritual that went with it, we could send Mamaragan into a deep hibernation.”

“We know the ritual to put Mamaragan to sleep,” said the old man, to the astonishment of both Ernie and Garbarla.

“Then why the Hell wasn’t it used, instead of that bloody slaughter being allowed to take place?” demanded Garbarla.

“Because the ritual doesn’t work,” explained Weari-Wyingga. “Or at least it hasn’t worked for as long as living memory. The ritual has been passed down the generations for millennia. Dream-Time legend tells of a time when the ritual was used to put the rainbow serpent into a deep sleep, but it never has. Not over the last five hundred years or so anyway ... Until now we’ve always assumed that the ritual had been altered at some stage down the centuries ....”

“But in truth, what you had forgotten was that the Dark Stone was a central part of the ritual,” offered Ernie.

“Yes, for centuries we’ve had the ritual and the Dark Stone, but haven’t known that the two were meant to be used together.”

“But now ...?” started Garbarla.

“Now we have the missing piece of the ritual, we can perform it at a special corroboree tonight and hopefully stop Mamaragan once and for all.”

“But do we have enough men left?” asked Garbarla. Normally an all-male corroboree called for at least two dozen men to take part, but now the tribe was left with little more than half that number of males.

“It will have to be enough,” said Weari-Wyingga, setting off to inform the others of the corroboree and to start the preparations.


The corroboree started a little after 8:30 that night. Altogether there were sixteen men present inside the blue-gum circle (four of them the bedridden Elders who had been carried there on stretchers), including Ernie who was astonished to find that he would have pride of place on the right-hand side of Weari-Wyingga.

“Since you brought this good news to us, of how to stop Mamaragan, you will have the double honour of being the first white man ever to be allowed to attend our corroboree,” explained the old man, “and also of being allowed to hold the Dark Stone while I conduct the ritual and the young men do the ceremonial dance.”

So saying, the old man nodded toward Nambidjimba who slowly stepped forward, carefully carrying the Dark Stone, which was about the size of a small dinner plate and many kilograms in weight, as Ernie discovered when it was handed to him.

Seeing Ernie’s discomfort at the weight, Weari-Wyingga bent down to whisper, “You can rest the stone on your lap, but keep both hands touching the stone at all times.”

Straightening up again, the old man went through the usual religious ceremonies, which lasted for more than an hour, before starting on the ritual to lay the Great Rainbow Snake in the ground.

It was a hot, humid night, only a week or so before Christmas, and, Ernie realised suddenly, ‘The first night for my transformation to the black wolf this month!’ Remembering his previous near miss when he had metamorphosed only moments after Garbarla and the others had settled down for the night after a late-night corroboree, Ernie only hoped that this gathering would end much earlier, thinking, ‘My God, what if I was to shape change in front of all these people!’ Up to that date he had managed to keep his transformations secret from even his closest friends for nearly two years, but he realised that with fourteen or fifteen witnesses, word of his shape-shifting would soon spread back to the white community. Even if most people shrugged it off, ‘There are bound to be a few who will take it seriously! Just as most people shrug off the ‘legend’ of a black wolf roaming the countryside around Glen Hartwell, but a few don’t!’ As he well knew, after a couple of near fatal run-ins over the last couple of years, when he had almost been shot as the black wolf.

As thunder began to crash in the distance, Ernie’s thoughts were rudely dragged back to the corroboree. He knew that by Aboriginal law, once a ‘magic’ ceremony is in progress, the corroboree cannot be stopped for any reason. So that if the heavens decided to open up and drench them in one of the summer downpours that the state of Victoria is famous for, then they would just have to sit it out. (A Victorian summer rain can pelt down for five minutes, or five hours, but Ernie realised that even five minutes of teeming rain would leave them all wet and miserable, sitting around in a sodden mire.)

Looking up at Weari-Wyingga, Ernie realised that the ritual was well under way: While the old man on Ernie’s left chanted words in the Koori tongue, six or seven near naked youths, their bodies painted in white ochre, performed a ritual dance around the ceremonial fire.

On the other side of Weari-Wyingga sat Joseph Garbarla. Like Ernie, he also thought back to the earlier corroboree, remembering that his half-brother Gunbuk had still been alive then, as had Judawali, Ulagang Gang, Nanguru, Marbungga, and so many others of his friends and relatives who were now dead. ‘Please God,’ thought Garbarla, not even sure as he prayed, whether it was to a white god or black one, ‘let the ritual work this time! Let us stop that bloody reptile from killing anyone else!’

Hearing Weari-Wyingga shouting suddenly, Garbarla woke from his reverie with a start, at first thinking that the old man was yelling at him. But then he realised that the Elder was shouting to make himself heard above the booming crash of the distant thunder, which was steadily increasing in volume and moving nearer.

‘A thunder storm!’ thought Garbarla, echoing Ernie’s thoughts that they might all be soaked. But then as the ground began to shake slightly, he recalled the ‘thunder’ the night before they had first discovered Mamaragan’s canals, and knew that the thunder was the Great Rainbow Snake rousing for the night after his daily slumber.


‘God let’s hope the damned creature is moving away from us, not toward us!’ thought Ernie, as the rumbling beneath the ground continued. But as the ritual progressed, the booming thunder increased steadily in volume until even Ernie and Garbarla, who were sitting on either side of him, could not hear Weari-Wyingga’s words as the old man tried unsuccessfully to compete with the noise of Mamaragan.


‘Oh no, the ritual isn’t working!’ thought Garbarla. ‘Instead of sending the rainbow serpent to sleep, it’s calling him down on to us!’

And as the thunder began to boom loud enough to hurt their eardrums, and at last they could hear the sound of Mamaragan’s hissing (like a million death adders hissing all at once), there could be no remaining doubt that the Great Rainbow Snake was heading in their general direction.


‘Perhaps it’ll pass over us and keep on going!’ thought Ernie without any real conviction. He was gripping the shiny surface of the triangular, black stone so hard that his fingers went numb -- although he was too terrified to notice.

The further that the ritual progressed, the louder the rainbow serpent’s thunder became, the more localised it became, as undoubtedly Mamaragan began to zero-in on the Aboriginal village. ‘Please God!’ thought Ernie, unable to finish the prayer, gripping the Dark Stone for comfort, wondering whether by his researches and discovery of the missing key to the ritual, he had sealed the fate of the remaining members of the tribe, by causing the monstrous reptile to be called toward them. On his arrival back at the village, he had been almost overcome with guilt at being a day too late to save the hunters who had been killed in the futile journey into the serpent’s underground tunnel network. Now, as the ceremony continued, he had the terrible sinking feeling that the Aborigines might have been better off if he had never returned, that his return might have spelt the end of the tribe.

Although unable to hear their cries above the booming crashing that was fast approaching, Ernie saw that the ochre-painted youths had stopped performing their ritual dance. Seeing them standing rigid, shouting silently and pointing toward the sky, he risked looking back over his shoulder and saw a bright light in the distant sky, flashing like a winking star above the tops of the blue-gum circle. But then, as he watched, the light became steadily larger and soon broke up into a whole series of strobing lights, flickering purple, blue, red, green, orange, brown, and yellow in the evening sky. Until at last, to Ernie’s disbelief, he finally made out the great serpentine shape of Mamaragan, writhing along coil over coil, just like any other snake -- except that this snake looped its way along more than a kilometre above the ground, swimming through the air in parody of a water-snake swimming along a river.

Even as Ernie watched, Mamaragan began to increase rapidly in size until he soon approached the monstrous proportions of the gargantuan reptile that had roared down upon them like an express train in its canal a month earlier. ‘My God it really can fly!’ thought Ernie as the monster slithered across the heavens toward them, having never quite been able to bring himself to believe that a snake could fly, even after his two near-fatal encounters with Mamaragan on the ground (first as Ernie Singleton, then as the black wolf). Yet now, as the creature looped its way toward them, Ernie had no choice but to believe that a snake could fly.

It was difficult, at the distance, to see how the snake soared through the sky, with its flashing, varicoloured scales doing all that they could to confuse his optic nerves. But Ernie shielded his eyes as best he could with his hands, and by squinting tightly could just make out the four or five double-rows of triangular wings sticking up from the creature’s back, which kept the monstrous reptile looping along, their furious beating causing the thunderous crashing in the night sky as the serpent approached.

Noticing that the youths had stopped their dancing, Weari-Wyingga tried to shout to them to start up again, tried to yell that the dance was just as essential to the success of the ritual as the words that he recited, or the dark Stone that Ernie held but his words were drowned out by the deafening roaring.

Seeing the old man gesticulating wildly, young Jimba took up the command and, by a combination of kicking and punching the other dancers, managed to get them to look away from the terror that soared across the sky toward them. And soon -- despite their fear -- they were all dancing vigorously around the ceremonial fire again.

At last the Great Rainbow Snake had approached so close that it completely blocked out the moon and stars above, blanketing the dancers and their small audience in a giant, serpentine shadow. As the thunder of the snake’s wing beats became almost unbearable, Ernie’s ears ached so excruciatingly that he feared that his eardrums would burst, his eyes watered furiously, blinding him, his sinuses throbbed so much that he expected his nostrils to start gushing blood at any second.

Other onlookers were not so lucky: two of the stretcher bound Elders fell to the ground screaming as their frail eardrums did burst, another suffered a colossal brain haemorrhage and died on the spot.

Finally, as Mamaragan hovered directly overhead, even Weari-Wyingga and young Jimba were unable to stop the young dancers from scattering -- foolishly charging out of the corroboree zone, racing frantically across the brown dirt plains, as though they had any chance of escaping the Great Rainbow Snake if the monstrous reptile decided to swoop down on them.

‘Stop you fools, you can’t outrun it! You’ll only doom us all to annihilation!’ thought Garbarla, rocking on his heels from his own bodily agonies, yet not really believing that the ceremony was going to work this time, despite the Dark Stone that Ernie still held on his lap (although like his friend Garbarla, he had his hands up clutching his ears, futilely trying to block out the deafening roar of the serpent).

But even if Garbarla had spoken aloud, he would not have been able to stop the young hunters, who in their terror forgot all about the ritual and fled, leaving only the bed-ridden Elders, Weari-Wyingga, Jimba, Ernie, and Garbarla himself to attempt to complete the ceremony before the monstrous reptile plunged down to gobble them all up.

Garbarla remembered, what now seemed like years ago, his half-brother Gunbuk telling him that Mamaragan swooped down to gobble up Aborigines who violated tribal law and wondered whether trying to send Mamaragan into an eternal sleep counted as a violation of tribal law punishable by death, in the mind of the rainbow serpent. He giggled childishly at the thought, then wondered whether he was going mad from terror.

Slowly, the Great Rainbow Snake began to drift down toward them, like a leaf fluttering to the ground. ‘A battleship more like it!’ thought Garbarla. He recalled a NASA astronaut had recently described trying to bring a fuel-less space shuttle back down to Earth safely as being no more difficult than gliding a battleship down to Earth from a hundred miles up, and began to giggle again at the notion.

After a moment its slow descent began to quicken, then the rainbow serpent suddenly pivoted round, folded its double rows of wings tightly across its mammoth back and dived headfirst toward them, sending a mountain of earth and rocks high up into the air, making Ernie and Garbarla duck for cover, as it plummeted straight into the ground on the other side of the corroboree zone.


Although it dived into the ground a hundred metres from them, the impact was enough to send Weari-Wyingga, Garbarla, and Ernie all tumbling about the dirt.

‘Oh my God I’ve dropped it, I’ve dropped the bloody stone!’ thought Ernie, realising that the Dark Stone had gone flying from his lap when he had been thrown into the air.

When at last he managed to climb back to his feet (no easy task since the ground beneath their feet rolled like waves on the high seas from the motion of the rainbow serpent tunnelling along beneath the corroboree ground), Ernie began furiously hunting around the dirt for the precious stone, without any luck.

Climbing back to their feet unsteadily, Weari-Wyingga and Garbarla saw that Mamaragan had burrowed into the ground directly opposite where they were, taking the three bedridden Elders to their deaths (along with the body of the fourth Elder who had died earlier) as well as almost accounting for Jimba. The young hunter was holding on for dear life with both hands, hanging over the rim of an apparently bottomless pit, that went straight down into the earth.

Garbarla raced across to grab the teenager by the hands to pull him up out of the pit just in time ... As they heard the express train rumble of Mamaragan and realised that the Great Rainbow Snake had reversed direction underground and was returning to finish them off.

“Quickly! Quickly!” ordered Weari-Wyingga, racing across to pick up the Dark Stone, which he effortlessly hefted despite its weight, to hand to Ernie.

“Help him! Help him!” ordered the old man and Garbarla raced across to help Ernie to hold the stone aloft, stretched out before them in the direction of the gaping pit entrance from which the serpent’s roaring issued.

While Weari-Wyingga began to recite aloud again, shouting the closing portions of the laying ritual, Jimba returned to the ceremonial dance all alone, doing his best to dance around the remnants of the ceremonial fire, which had been all but extinguished by the mountain of flying debris thrown up by the serpent’s headlong dive into the ground. But soon, as the monstrous reptile’s diamond-shaped head came into sight from the inky darkness of the pit entrance, even the plucky young hunter lost his nerve and raced across toward Ernie and the others, to avoid the reach of the tree sized fangs and loathsome forked tongue that flicked from the mouth of Mamaragan.

Both Ernie and Garbarla feared that the ritual had failed, and as the vast serpentine head emerged from the pit, they fully expected to be gobbled up by Mamaragan.

But after a moment, they realised that the giant serpent had ceased its forward motion and was merely lying with its monstrous head pointing up from the pit entrance. Then, as they watched, the evil, green eyes began to lose their lustre, fading like failing fluorescent lights, until they were dull and lifeless, staring sightlessly toward them like the eyes of a corpse.

“My God! My God, it’s dead!” cried Ernie from excited relief.

“No, only sleeping,” corrected Weari-Wyingga. “Thanks to you my friend, the ritual has worked for the first time in five hundred years!”

“Now we can relax and start rebuilding our lives,” said Garbarla.

“First rebuild dark stone,” said Weari-Wyingga.

“Rebuilt dark stone?” echoed Garbarla, puzzled.

“Yes,” insisted Weari-Wyingga. “What happens the next time we need its help. We can’t dig it up, without releasing Mamaragan. So we must build a new dark stone.”

“Is that really necessary?” asked Garbarla. “We might never need it again.”

“Better to have it and never need it, than to need it and never have it,” pointed out Weari-Wyingga.


The next day, when they were finally able to convince the other hunters that it was safe to return to the corroboree site, they found that the sleeping serpent had slowly sunk back down into the tunnel, until its staring, sightless eyes were nearly ten metres below ground level. Weari-Wyingga gave orders for the hunters to fill in the tunnel -- with the Dark Stone being buried about a metre below the ground, to act as a ‘belaying pin’ to keep the giant reptile pinned firmly into a deep sleep below the surface of the village.

Over the next week, the Aborigines celebrated the laying of Mamaragan, although on the second day of the festivities Ernie and Garbarla set off in the Range Rover to return to Ernie’s sheep station. To the obvious relief of Brian Horne, who had started to fear that he would have to spend the Christmas period working Ernie’s farm.

Both men were greeted effusively by Bear Ross, who gave Ernie and Garbarla both powerful “Bear hugs”, as they jokingly called them. “My God am I ever glad to see you two,” said Bear. “I’d started to think that you must have been devoured by that monstrous snake, or something.”

“No, no the ritual was a success,” said Joseph Garbarla and he and Ernie jointly related to Bear what had happened.

“My people are celebrating the laying of Mamaragan,” Garbarla finished, “but with mixed feelings. On the one hand putting the Great Rainbow Snake into a deep sleep has saved the remaining inhabitants of the village from being slaughtered as so many of their friends and relatives have been, on the other hand Mamaragan has always been our God, our Creator. What has happened to the Aborigines is like what would happen to the Christians if they suddenly discovered that Satan and Jesus were one and the same, and that they could only save themselves from the clutches of Satan by crucifying Christ all over again.”


Ernie also celebrated with mixed feelings. Although glad to have helped seal the monster underground, he could not help thinking of all those he had been too late to save. And as they prepared for their Christmas celebrations, Ernie set out again that night to roam through the forests around Merridale as the black wolf.

THE END
© Copyright 2025 Philip Roberts
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia