Coloured sand on Fraser Island

Near the top end of Fraser Island one can find a bay with totally different sand colours: White, yellow, black, red, green… The Aborigines were telling the following story to explain the colours:

A beautiful black maiden named Murrawar fell in love with the Rainbow who visited every evening. Burwilla, a bad man from a distant tribe, stole Murrawar for his slave wife. On day Murrawar ran away along the beach and Burwilla followed her with his terrible killing Boomerang. She called for help and her faithful Rainbow raced across the sea to her. The wicked Boomerang attacked the brave Rainbow and they met with a roar like thunder. The Boomerang was killed instantly while the Rainbow was shattered into tiny pieces and lay on the beach to die. Today one can still see it – because of the many colours in the sand.

How the “Three Sisters” were created

The highlight of the “Blue Mountains” is called “The Three Sisters”. Those are three rocks joined together. To explain this, the aborigines used to tell the following story: Once upon a time a man called Thaiwan had three daughters. Every day he was going out and looking for food. He was always worried about his three girls and so took them up on high rock to see them all the time when he was out. One day a Bunyip was climbing up the rock the three girls were sitting on. A Bunyip was a people-eating monster. Thaiwan used his magic stick and pointed it on his daughters to change them into rocks. Then he saw the Bunyip moving towards him. He changed himself in a little bird so that the Bunyip doesn’t attack him. But anyway – he was still moving towards him. So he used his stick again and put himself in a cage. Unfortunately he forgot his stick outside. When the Bunyip was moving away from him he tried to find the stick – but he couldn’t.

So, if you see a little bird today scraping in the ground, it might be Thaiwan, looking for his stick to change him back into a person and his three daughters back into girls.

How the Koala lost its tail

Once, a long time ago, there was a terrible drought. The land was dry and the animals were thirsty. The long-tailed Koala however was plump and healthy. The other bush animals wondered why. Did he have water hidden somewhere? They searched but couldn’t find any. One day, Lyrebird discovered Koala drinking from a hollow in a tree. Lyrebird was very angry, because he couldn’t get to the water. So he picked up a fire stick and set fire to the tree. The tree exploded, and as the Koala jumped away his tail burst into flames. Water gushed out and the animals came from everywhere to drink. Now, if you can see at a Lyrebird you can see the brown marks on its tail caused by the fire stick. And ever since that time the Koala has never had a tail.