At first Nimbuva was a rainbow, but he became tired of his lonely life, and he descended to earth and turned into the fish Barramunda.
When he was a rainbow, he often looked from his heavenly home at a certain woman. She was diving for the roots of water lilies in the lagoon while her two children played on the shore. She was beautiful and when she came out of the water she sparkled like a brown fish.
Nimbuwa fell in love with her and, as soon as he turned into the Barramunda fish, he settled in the lagoon, among the water lilies, to be closer to this woman. One day a woman stood with her children on the shore of the lagoon and suddenly heard a conversation between two hawks.
“Look, there’s fish there,” said one hawk. - Yes, it’s so huge that you and I probably won’t be able to lift it.
- Do you hear what the hawks say? - the mother asked the girl. — Apparently, there are good fish swimming in the lagoon.
She took a long spear and said to the boy:
“You and your sister stay here, away from the water.” — And she went to the shore and began to look for fish.
They saw Barramunda almost at the very surface of the water. It was shallow in that place, so the woman entered the water and raised the spear over the fish.
But Barramunda ducked to the side, and the woman missed. She aimed her spear again and missed again.
Meanwhile, the water in the lagoon began to slowly rise, and the fish began to grow and grow.
The girl saw what was happening to the fish, got scared and screamed:
- Mom, kill her! Look what a monster!
“It’s just a big fish,” the mother answered. - And I will kill her.
She struck again with the spear, and again missed. And the water kept rising and rising, and the fish became bigger and bigger.
The woman kept hitting the fish with a spear, but the water kept rising and the fish kept growing.
Suddenly Barramunda swam under the woman, lifted her onto his spine and dragged her away. Barramunda carried the woman to his own region, and there he turned into a mountain cliff, and turned the woman into a stone pillar near him.
The girl and the boy ran home to their father, and the girl said:
- Father, a terrible misfortune has happened! Our mother saw a fish, but it was not a fish, but a monster, and it dragged her away.
The father took a stone ax:
“I’ll go and cut off his head.” This is Nimbuva.
He reached the cliff and began to chop off Nimbuva’s head, and when he had almost completely chopped it off, he suddenly turned into stone, and now he stands next to his stone wife and Nimbuva.
That's why the rocky cliff of Nimbuwa in Arnhem Land looks like a head with its neck half severed, and why there are two large stone pillars next to it.
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru