The Kunia Rocks An Aboriginal Dreaming Story Long

The Kunia Rocks An Aboriginal Dreaming Story

Long ago in the Dreamtime two separate Aboriginal groups, the Woma and the Kunia, lived together in the desert area of Central Australia, near the mighty rock of Uluru. They lived peacefully in the same area, sharing their food and whatever water was available, and giving each other support.

There came a time, however, when the Kunia people longed for a campsite of their own. They still felt friendly towards the peaceful Woma people, but more than anything else they felt the need to have a place which was solely their own. After much discussion by the elders, the Kunia decided to move from the desert plains to a rocky area not too far distant.

‘We like the rocks and boulders, ’ they explained to the Woma. ‘If we make our camp among them they will give us shelter. ’ So they made their new camp, right at the base of Uluru.

It was a hard life they had chosen, for though there were springs of water nearby, food was not always so easy to gather. But this did not daunt them. With hard work and skill they managed to maintain a good living, and for some years they were contented, pleased with their decision to be independent.

One day, however, a party of men came from the west. Unlike the Kunia and the Woma they were fierce warriors, and without warning they set upon the Kunia and killed them. Next day a Woma man came to visit his old friends. Instead of a cheerful welcome he found a silent camp with all its people lying slaughtered. He was overcome with grief and fear.

So distraught was he that his ancestor spirits felt they should change him. Suddenly he became a small snake. The snake, still very disturbed, quickly slipped away to hide behind a pile of rocks.

Shocked and saddened by the violent deaths of the gentle Kunia, the ever-watchful ancestor spirits did not think it right that their bodies should be left untended and unburied. They changed each one into a smooth-edged stone.

These stones they left there, clustered pathetically together. Just as the Kunia people had been when they died, adults and young children, so some of the stones were large and some small, and they have lain untouched since that time.

There is a kind of small snake that lives, and will only live, in the red sandhills of the Central Australian desert. To this day that kind of snake nervously hides behind rocks and in crevices, just like the grief-stricken Woma man who became the first of them. As the tourists to Uluru look around the areas nowadays, some say they sense a deep aura of sadness among the silent Kunia rocks.