2nd Annual Challenge of Travel :: Staycation Edition

I missed this challenge last year but remember how much fun I had reading all the participants stories.  This year the wonderful Miss Erin has designed a challenge around your home space - "staycation" as she calls it.

Australia is an amazing country and its easy to stay at home and have a staycation.  In fact that is all I do!  There are so many beautiful natrual wonders - from the Barrier Reef to the heart of the country - so that is where I am going to take you.  Through my work I have a lot to do with remote communities - I help establish kindergarten (pre-prep for children the year before school) so I would like to visit the Central-Queensland region to meet some of the families I have spoken and email with.

As you drive inland away from the coast - the soil goes from a brown tones to a rich ochre red.  It is a fine dusty powder that works its way into everything.  White is certainly not a colour of choice to wear!  The earth is rich with stories of the past and present - dinosaur bones have been found in this region and you can walk the dinosaur trail at Winton.

The history of the Australian Aboriginal is prevalent in the outback - the stories of the dream time were woven around the fabric of our land. The Dreamtime (Tjukurrpa or Jukurrpa) can be explained as 'the time before time' when all things were created. Dreamtime encompasses the 'Ancestor Spirits' which are believed to have arrived in human, plant and animal form. The Ancestor Spirits built relationships with individuals and groups, both human and animal, and were responsible for creating the mountains and rivers. These creations are the basis of many Dreamtime stories which have been handed down through the eons of time from one generation to the next.

One such story is around the rainbow serpent. Paintings of the Rainbow Serpent first appear in Arnhem Land rock art more than 6000 years ago.  The Rainbow Snake is a creature from Aboriginal mythology. The Rainbow Serpant is depicted as a long mythical creature made of the parts of different animals - kangaroo's or flying fox's head, crocodile's tail - joined along the body of a huge python decorated with water lilies, yams and waving tendrils.

My cuff is an interpretation of the rainbow serpent.  I was blessed to have a gorgeous lampwork bead from a good friend of mine (Bead Up A Storm) and used this as the focus of the cuff. 

Mythology says that in the beginning the earth was flat, featureless and grey. Then came the Dreamtime when giant creatures rose up from the plains. They looked like animals or plants or insects but behaved just like humans.  The greatest of all these beings took the form of the Rainbow Snake. The movement of his huge multicolored body across the land formed the mountains and the rivers that flow to the ocean. By lifting his tail he makes rainbows.

I hope you liked wandering through the mythology and folklore of my staycation and you enjoyed the visit to this great land.  For other blogs who are participating in the staycation - please visit:

Erin's blog post and scroll to the bottom