The Dreamtime
Uluru (Ayers Rock)
The “Dreamtime” of the Australian Aboriginal peoples is commonly known as “Altjeringa”. It is the time in which the world was created, but it is not the past — rather, it is an eternal present, accessible through ritual.
In this way, the mythological accounts, or “dreams”, speak of the deeds of the Ancestors, who were the ones who did things for the first time. All future actions are merely copies of these.
The stories of ancestors contained in the dreams have been expressed through art (songs and paintings), which together form a mythological map of Australian territory: a web of sacred memories whose centre is found at Uluru (Ayers Rock).
The ancestors of the Dreamtime are considered beings who were asleep in that primordial world; then, upon awakening, they would shape human beings and the land in which they could live.