MYTHS AND LEGENDS

The Hunters of Morowie:

In the early days of Dreamtime when the northern Flinders Rangers were being created, two brothers went hunting in the rugged Mount Chambers Gorge. At Morowie Springs, near the eastern entrance, they caught an emu. After trussing it up for carrying, the elder brother placed it on his head.

The two continued their hunting until mid-day, but when they camped to prepare the emu for cooking, the flies, already troublesome, settled on its body in thousands. The brothers had just made the fire to drive away the pests, when a hot north wind sprang up.

It scattered the embers and burning sticks everywhere, lighting a bushfire that raged so fiercely among the grass and the low scrub that the hunters had to climb the steep sides of the gorge for safety. But the fire , still spreading, forced the men higher and higher up the cliffs until they were standing on the summit of a tall isolated peak.

But even there, the flames and the smoke of the bushfire still surrounded them. So, to save themselves, the brothers flew up into the sky where they were changed into the brightest stars in the firmament, the Pointers of the Southern Cross.