The First Kangaroo

One Australian myth relates how the first kangaroos were blown to the Australian mainland by a violent windstorm. The creatures became exhausted on that journey, for they could not land, even though their hind legs had grown longer and longer in their attempts to gain a foothold.

A party of aborigines were out hunting when this extraordinary storm of wind swept across their country, uprooting the trees, tearing the grass and shrubs from the earth, and driving the aborigines into the shelter of the rocks. As the hunters looked upward at the clouds of swirling debris, they saw the kangaroos being carried along by the storm.

Never before had the aborigines seen such strange animals, with their small heads and small arms, large bodies and tails, and long legs with which they were always trying to touch the ground, only to be swept into the air by the next blast of wind. But, during a short lull in the storm, the hunters saw a kangaroo become entangled in the branches of a tree, fall to the ground, and hop away.

Knowing that so large a creature would provide food for many people, the whole tribe moved to the locality where the hunters had seen the kangaroo, for it was good country with streams of running water, much fruit on the trees, and grass on the ground.

But it was a long time before the aborigines learnt how to capture the kangaroos, the largest and swiftest of all the Australian animals.