Tiddalik- Aboriginal Australian CreatureCreature · Beast

The Frog Who Drank the World

In the Gunai/Kurnai telling from Gippsland, Tiddalik woke one morning in the Dreamtime with a thirst nothing could satisfy. He drank the nearest creek in a single gulp, then every river and waterhole beyond it. He drank until his body had swollen to the size of a mountain, tight and round with all the fresh water in the world. Not a drop was left anywhere in the land.

Around him the ground cracked and the trees dropped their leaves. Fish lay gasping in the mud where rivers had been. The animals gathered at the dry beds. There was nothing to drink, and the frog who held it all sat enormous and unmovable in their midst.

The animals held a council. They spoke to Tiddalik, they threatened him, they begged. The frog did not answer. His belly was taut with stolen water and his eyes were half closed. The kookaburra gave his loudest call, the laugh that carries across the bush, but Tiddalik did not smile. One creature after another tried and failed.

Then Nabunum the eel came forward and began to dance. Nabunum wriggled in the dust and coiled himself into knots and threw himself flat on the ground. Each contortion was more absurd than the last. A smile crossed Tiddalik's face. The smile became a chuckle. The chuckle became a laugh the frog could not hold back, and when his mouth opened wide, all the water of the world poured out.

The flood rushed across the dry land. Rivers filled. Waterholes brimmed. The animals drank until they were no longer afraid. In Gippsland, the Gunai/Kurnai say the water carved the courses of the rivers in their country as it rushed from the frog's mouth. Tiddalik, empty at last, shrank to the size of an ordinary frog and sat in the mud. The land that had been dead was alive again.