Around the World in Stories: A Child’s Weekly Journey of Wonder

A single cattle ranch in Australia is bigger than the entire country of Belgium. That kind of wide-open space is a world away from the busy banks of the Nile we sailed last week, isn't it? But the stories here are just as ancient. Ready for another adventure? Good. Fasten your seatbelt. Our plane touches down not on a runway, but on a long strip of red dirt. The door opens and a wave of heat washes over us, smelling of dust and something sweet, like honey and mint. This is the Australian Outback. The sky is SO big, a deep, cloudless blue that seems to go on forever.

A man named Jarli, with kind eyes and a warm smile, is waiting for us. He’s an Aboriginal elder, and his people have lived on this land for more than sixty thousand years. "Want to see some real magic?" he asks, his voice like the low rumble of distant thunder. We climb into his dusty jeep. For hours, we drive. The red earth stretches in every direction. At first, it looks empty. But then, you start to see it. A flash of green and red as a parrot darts by. A lizard, sunning itself on a hot rock. Jarli points. “The land isn't empty,” he says.

“It’s just quiet. It’s waiting.” He tells us a story from the Dreamtime, the time before time. He tells us about the Rainbow Serpent, a creator being who slithered across the flat, sleeping land. As it moved, it carved deep grooves with its body. Those grooves became the rivers. Where it rested, it created waterholes, called billabongs. The whole world, he explains, is a story the serpent wrote. Just as the sun begins to dip low, we arrive at one of those billabongs. And that’s when the quiet land wakes UP. A family of kangaroos, tall and graceful, are drinking at the water's edge.

One has a baby, a joey, peeking out of its pouch! High in a eucalyptus tree, a sleepy koala munches on leaves. And then, a sound echoes through the air. A wild, bubbling laugh. A kookaburra! Jarli builds a small fire as the sky turns orange, then purple, then a deep, velvety black filled with more stars than you could EVER count. He mixes flour and water and bakes a simple bread called damper in the hot coals. It’s warm and smoky and the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. "The Rainbow Serpent is sleeping now," Jarli says, looking up at the Milky Way.

"But its dreams are all around us." And sitting there, under that blanket of stars, I understood. The land wasn’t just dirt and rock. It was alive. It was a library of stories, a home, a song. The world is full of these ancient songs, you just have to know how to listen. I wonder… where the next one will take us?