Indigenous Australia

The Dreamtime for Aboriginal people is the time which the earth received its present form and in which the patterns and cycles of life begun.

Sometimes creating their surroundings and sometimes changing into animals or people, the Dreamtime reflected the events and characters of daily life in the Australian desert.

The expression 'Dreamtime' is often used to refer to the 'time before time', or 'the time of the creation of all things, while 'Dreaming' is often used to refer to an individual's or group's beliefs.

The Dreamtime

Australia Aborigines created stories to teach each other about the Dreamtime, these stories taught about life, including birth, love, food gathering, hunting, warfare, marriage and death but also about the Creation.

The Aboriginal traditional way to educate about the Aboriginal History, Culture and Laws was storytelling, using a combination of Arts form such as painting, singing, music and dancing to illustrate the ancient "Dreamtime Stories".

Because the "Stories of the Dreaming" have been handed down through the generations, they are not owned by individuals. They belong to a group, the storytellers is choose by the Elders, and have the obligation to pass the stories along, ensuring that young people build and retain a sense of who they are.

The Dreamtime Stories

Dot painting is the traditional visual art form of the Aborigines in Western Australia Central Desert. These paintings consist of thousands of "Dots" and done the traditional way, takes the artist many days of dedicated concentration just to "fill in the background.” The traditional aboriginal dot paintings usually represent a story, generally regarding hunting or food gathering, and usually have traditional aboriginal symbols imbedded throughout the painting.

As the Australian Aboriginals never had a written language, these traditional dot paintings are in reality, the aboriginals way of writing a short story, which has not changed for over 50,000 years.

Bright colors are now more common with the use of acrylic paint, but traditional dot painters used natural pigments such as ochre and crushed seeds.

Art and Dot PaintingsAboriginal people used symbols to indicate a sacred site, the location of a waterhole and the means to get there, a place where animals inhabit and as a way to illustrate Dreamtime stories.

Generally the symbols used by Aboriginal Artists are a variation of lines, circles or dots.

What the dots stand for

Activity: Let’s get storytelling!

Brief:Create your own original dot paintingChoose ONE of the following Aboriginal stories/scenes:

1) Group of Aboriginal elders sharing their story to younger Aboriginals2) An animal that reflects the importance of the dreamtime3) A scene or landscape in Central Australia

Materials Provided : A4 paper, paints

You will need: A small stick from the garden to use as your brush