Dream Time: One of the main similarities in the culture of Australia's indigenous peoples, who had different languages and ways of life, was a cosmology called Dream Time. The Dreamtime cosmology connected people, landscape, animals and plants, ritual places, spirit beings and time.

Map~aboriginal

For Indigenous Australians, both culture and environment are products of the events of the Dreamtime. At the beginning of the world, the ancestors shaped the landscape we know today through their actions. They infused everything they touched and every place they visited with their own life force.

After their deeds on earth, the ancestors went back to sleep and became churungas. But this did not end the Dreamtime, it continued in the activities of people going about their ordinary lives. The intertwining of the Dreamtime and the everyday world is always condensed into some kind of ritual event: dancing and singing, visiting sacred places, myths and dreaming. At such times, the hidden can also appear in the world of forms through transformation. These are what lift the Dream from the past to the present.

The key figures in the Australian concept of Dreamtime are the churungas. These wooden or stone objects covered with oval and geometric symbols are the objectification of the power of the Dreaming ancestors. They are at once maps of the mythical past and instruments of connection with it. Equally important links with the creatures of the Dreamtime are the ritual bark and rock paintings, the strange-sounding train bells, the body painting, the dance hall, the songs and the musical instruments.