Bunjil- Aboriginal Australian GodDeity"The Eaglehawk"

The Making of the Land

In the Dreamtime, Bunjil came down to an unformed world. He traveled across the country of southeastern Australia with his brother Pallian the Bat, and between them they built it. Bunjil heaped up earth and stone to make the mountains. Pallian cut the channels where rivers would run. Every ridge and valley in Kulin country carries the mark of these journeys: hills where Bunjil rested, plains where he walked, watercourses that followed Pallian's knife.

Bunjil did not work alone. Six young men traveled with him, each carrying a different gift necessary for life. Djurt-djurt the nankeen kestrel carried fire. The others brought knowledge of hunting and water-finding. But fire was the gift that changed everything, the one that gave humanity warmth, cooked food, and the ability to burn the country in the careful patchwork patterns that kept it alive.

The First Men

According to Woiwurrung tradition recorded by R. Brough Smyth, Bunjil dug clay from the banks of the Yarra River. He shaped it carefully, forming limbs and features and organs. He took strips of stringybark and pressed them onto the figures' heads for hair. Then he bent down and breathed into their nostrils. They lived.

Some Kulin traditions hold that Bunjil created men while Pallian created women, others that women were created from water. The division mirrored the two halves of the world Bunjil had already made: Eaglehawk and Crow, sky and earth, each needing the other.

Eaglehawk and Crow

Bunjil the Eaglehawk and Waa the Crow divided everything that exists between them. Not just people but animals, plants, winds, and landforms. Every person born into Kulin country belonged to one moiety or the other, passed down from father to child. A person of the Eaglehawk moiety married someone of the Crow. This was not custom. It was the structure of creation itself.

The two were not enemies. Eaglehawk held the sky, Crow held the earth, and together they formed a complete world. No ceremony could proceed without both present. No camp could function with only one. The wedge-tailed eagle circling high and the crow picking through the scrub below were both doing the work Bunjil had set for them.

The Flood

The Kulin people broke the marriage law. They took partners from within their own moiety, Eaglehawk marrying Eaglehawk, Crow marrying Crow. A.W. Howitt recorded what followed: Bunjil sent a great flood. The waters rose and covered the land, sweeping away camps and drowning the country Bunjil himself had shaped.

The flood continued until the people acknowledged what they had done and swore to restore the proper order. Then the waters receded. The world returned, but the lesson remained: the laws Bunjil had built into creation could not be broken without tearing the world apart.

The Whirlwinds

When his work was finished, Bunjil gathered his family at a place in the Kulin country and called for Bellin-Bellin, the musk crow who keeps the whirlwinds in bags. Bunjil told him to open them. The winds burst out, caught Bunjil and his two Ganawarra wives, and carried them up into the sky.

He is there now. The Kulin identify him with the star Altair, the two stars flanking it with his wives. His son Binbeal appears as the rainbow after rain. And in the Black Range near Stawell, on the rock wall of a shelter sacred to the Dja Dja Wurrung, someone painted Bunjil with his two dingo companions. The painting is still there. So is he. When the wedge-tailed eagle circles high above the country, elders say Bunjil is looking down, watching whether his people are caring for the world he made.