Algaihgo (the fire-woman)
Kunwinjku · deity · Kunwinjku traditional religion; continuing · Recorded classification
Algaihgo is the fire-woman of western Arnhem Land, one of the First People who created the world in the creation period. She carried fire in the smouldering flower-spikes of the yellow banksia and hunted her favourite food, the rock possum, with the help of the dingoes that travelled with her across the stone country. People fear Algaihgo because she burns and kills, and they avoid the sacred site on the Arnhem Land plateau where her dangerous power is said to remain. She is depicted in the escarpment rock art of the region and is recorded in the rock-art ethnography of George Chaloupka and in the wider corpus of western Arnhem Land myth.
Domains
- fire
- hunting
Powers
- to carry fire and set the country alight
- to hunt rock possum with the dingoes that travel with her
Epithets
- AlgaihgoGeorge Chaloupka, Journey in Time: The 50,000 Year Story of the Australian Aboriginal Rock Art of Arnhem Land (Sydney: Reed, 1993) (secondary)
Sources
- Algaihgo is the ancestral fire-woman of western Arnhem Land, one of the First People who made the world, who carried fire in banksia flower-heads, hunted rock possum with dingoes, and is feared as a being who burns and kills, her power remaining at a sacred site on the Arnhem Land plateau.: George Chaloupka, Journey in Time: The 50,000 Year Story of the Australian Aboriginal Rock Art of Arnhem Land (Sydney: Reed, 1993) (secondary); Ronald M. Berndt & Catherine H. Berndt, The Speaking Land: Myth and Story in Aboriginal Australia (Ringwood, Vic.: Penguin, 1989) (secondary)