The informant is my friend (referred to as CM) who is Australian. She is 20 years old and grew up in Brisbane Australia and lives in Sydney now and has moved to Byron Bay. I was enquiring about the Aboriginal people and if she knew any stories. Below she discusses an Aboriginal myth about “Dreamtime.”

CM: “Yeah the Aboriginal people are so beautiful. They’re not as much in Brisbane or Sydney but in places like New South Wales and Queensland. Yeah growing up my best friend was Aboriginal and her mother would always tell me about the belief system of the ‘Dreamtime.’ She would say that the earth was created by all of these spiritual beings who physically were the land and sea and the animals on the earth. Everything that was in the natural world was kind of like, a representation of the spiritual aspect of the world. Dreaming exists before you’re born and after you die.  Your spirit or I guess dream spirit, exists when you can’t humanly perceive it. A lot of aboriginal myths and stories are just so beautiful, but there is still a lot of racism and hate. They’re the oldest people on Earth. They know so much.”

I have been to Australia three times myself now and I think that this is such an interesting concept expressed by the aboriginal people I have found that mainstream Australian culture is deeply rooted in spirituality. Along the streets of Byron Bay and Sydney, there are crystal stores, dream catchers, tarot decks and so many “spiritual” healing objects that I find it so surprising that the aboriginals are actually treated so horribly and disregarded. So much of the Australian spirituality culture is rooted in this idea of the Dreamtime, and I definitely see that in all of my Australian friends.