Australian aboriginal stories are told through the use of words, ceremonies, and paintings of traditional designs on bark, rocks, the sand, and their own bodies. The roots of their mythology lie in the concept of Dream Time. According to Willis, in Mythology: An Illustrated Guide, Dream Time is both a period of time and a state of being. "As a period of time, it refers to the primordial epoch in which the ancestors traveled across Australia". As a state of being, "the Dreaming remains accessible to participants in ritual".
Paintings of the Rainbow Snake and Dirawong (Goanna). Aboriginal art on the Northern Tablelands of NSW Australia. Photo: Don Hitchcock 2011
Bark paintings are used as the chief non-oral source to illustrate rituals, myths, and everyday events. The paintings consists of flattened pieces of dried, smoothed eucalyptus bark decorated with brown, white, yellow, black, and sometimes, red pigments. Stylized bark paintings often depict a wandjina, an ancestral spirit being from Dream Time. Every clan has a wandjina, who is associated with a particular animal and its guardian ancestor.
In northern Australia animals, humans, and other beings are depicted in the outline or silhouette style, which is believed to be 15,000 years old. In central Australia, stories are told by using the marks that animals and humans leave in the sand. Consisting of dots, lines, dashes, bands, wavy lines, and spirals, the illustrated myths are passed on by means of this non-oral tradition.
Willis, R., Ed., Mythology: An Illustrated Guide, Barnes & Noble Books, New York, 1998