It had been raining for days and weeks and months and years. The water ran down the hills, forming creeks and rivers that flowed across the plains and collected in the hollows. The water rose almost imperceptibly, lapping gently at the feet of the hills. As the deepest depressions were filled with waters that grew into the vast oceans, the land area shrank and divided into many islands. Groups of animals and men were divided from one another by the encircling seas.

On an island far distant from the continent that is now called Australia were men who were skilled throwers of boomerangs. They were able to split a small stone at a hundred paces or more, bring down the swiftest bird flight, and send their boomerangs so far away they were lost to sight before returning to the thrower.

They loved to engage in contests of skill to show how far or how accurately they could hurl their weapons. Among them was one who was noted for his strength and also for his boasting.

He was often heard to say, “If I wished, I could throw my boomerang from here to the most distant of all islands.”

“If you were able to do that, how would you know whether you had succeeded?” asked one of the more skeptical men.

“The answer to that is simple,” the strong man replied.

“What happens when boomerangs are thrown?”

“They come back to the thrower, of course.”

“What happens if the boomerang hits a tree or a rock?”

“The boomerang stays there, especially if it breaks.”

“You have answered your question,” the strong man said with a grin. “If I throw my boomerang as far as the farthest island and it fails to return, then you will know I’ve succeeded, won’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose that is so, but what’s the use of talking about it unless you actually do it?”

“Very well,” the strong man said, “watch.”

He chose a well-balanced boomerang. Whirling it round his head several times, he released it. The weapon flew from this hand so quickly that few could see it as it sped across the ocean. Expectantly the onlookers waited, but as the hours dragged by without any sign of its return, even the old-man skeptic was forced to agree that it might have landed on a distant island.

“But there’s another possibility,” he said, annoyed by the way the strong man was strutting to and fro, winning admiring glances from the women. “It may have landed in the sea.”

“Not my boomerange!” the strong man shouted. “It would cut its way back to me through the sea if it had not reached the island. You are jealous of my skill, old man.”

“There’s only one way that we can know for sure,” was the reply. “Someone must go there to see if he can find it.”

“I know how we can do it,” a small boy piped up. The old man looked at him disapprovingly.

“We’ve heard too much from you already,” he growled. “It would be much better if you ate the food you’re given like the other children. I’ve seen how you spit food out of your mouth–food that’s good for you as well as good to eat.”

“That’s because no one has ever brought me a Koala to eat. That’s what I like best.”

“How can you know you’ll like it if you’ve never tasted it?”

“How do you know there’s an island far away over the sea if you’ve never seen it?” the boy asked cheekily.

“Because I know it’s there. It is part of what men who lived and died before I was born have said,” the old man replied.

“I expect they liked Koala meat too,” the boy said. “My sister’s husband caught one this morning. There it is, beside that tree.”

The old man picked up the animal and threw it at the youngster, knocking him over. Picking himself up, he snatched the body of the Koala and ran with it to the beach. Taking a flint knife from the skin girdle he wore, he slit the belly and drew out its intestines. Putting the end in his mouth, he blew into them until they swelled into a long tube that reached the sky. He kept on blowing. The tube bent over in a majestic arch, its end far out of sight byond the curve of the ocean.

“What are you doing” the old man asked. “If you really want to taste the flesh of the Koala, take it to your mother and she will cook it for you.”

“No, no,” exclaimed the boy’s brother-in-law. “Look what he’s done. He’s made a bridge to the island beyond the sea. Now we can cross it and find where the boomerang has landed. It’s sure to be a better place than the one we’re living in now.”

He put his foot on the bridge of the intestines and began to climb the arch. Next came the boy, followed by his mother’s uncle, his father and mother, and aunts and brothers and sisters. Seeing that everyone was crowding on to the bridge of intestines, the old man followed too.

The crossing took many days, days without food and in the burning heat of the sun, but eventually they came to an end of climbing. They slid down the far end of the arch and found themselves on the far away island. It was a good place. The grass was greener than in their own land, shaded by gum trees, with cooler, clearer water than they had ever seen or tasted. And no wonder, for this land to which they come was the east coast of Australia.

When all the tribe’s people were there they let the arched bridge float away. The sun shone on it, turning it many gleaming colours which formed the first rainbow arch that had ever been seen by men. As they watched the brilliant colours, the rainbow slowly disappeared. The boy was turned into a Koala and his brother-in-law to a Native Cat. Although the other tribesmen remained unchanged, they split up into a number of groups, each with its own totem, and departed to various parts of the island continent. And so it was, said another old man, many generations later, that the first Aboriginals to come from another island became the progenitors of the various tribes which occupied the new land.

Jackson, Stephen. Koala : Origins of an Icon. Belmont: Allen & Unwin, 2008.

Source: Reed, A.W. (1978), <i>Aboriginal Legends: Animal Tales, <i>Sydney: A.H. & A.W. Reed, pp.37-9.